Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s20.29

c11.s20.29

The great value of the Kauṭilya studies of Breloer cannot be gainsaid. They offer several convincing interpretations by which the apparent conflicts between Megasthenes and Kauṭilya are resolved ; and they have done well to stress the fact that after Alexander's astonishing career, the world was no longer the same as before³. The great economic and political revolutions initiated by the establishment and the early break up of Alexander's empire, the increase in trade due to the multiplication of armed camps in the wars of ‘the successors’ and the divisions of the empire, the accumulation of large fortunes by some and the coming up of a proletariat, the dispersion of the large gold treasures of Persia and the quickening transition from a rural to a money economy, and the rise of several large territorial states under absolute monarchs were the chief features of the new epoch. India was drawn more and more into this welter, and Chandragupta and his teacher grew up in this atmosphere of rapid change and new formations. War, trade, diplomacy and travel, opened up numerous channels of increasing contacts with the outer world, and it should be no wonder if the unique character of the *Arthaśāstra* is partly due to the stress of foreign ideas and influences pressing their way into the political and administrative system of the newly founded empire of the Mauryas. There is much force in Rostovtzeff's observation that 'if one believes in the historical character and the early date of the kernel of the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭilya and in the radical centralization of Indian government effected by Chandragupta on Hellenistic lines, one may say that Chandragupta did more to Hellenize India than Demetrius and Menander.'¹ It is, however, not merely a question of Hellenic influence; for we know with certainty that the administrative system of the Hellenistic monarchies in Asia and Africa 'was practically a continuation of that of the Persian kings and it is equally certain that no such continuation would have been possible without the help of the documents and information assembled in the Persian archives'². In the natural reaction against Spooner's pompous announcement of a 'Zoroastrian period' in Indian history, there is a danger of Persian influences on Indian life being either altogether denied or considerably under-estimated. The mass and variety of detailed statistical information which the *Arthaśāstra* requires the officials of the State to collect and arrange for ready reference (e.g. in II 35 on *samāhartā* and 36 on *nāgaraka*) is something unique in all Indian political literature; we are tempted to suppose that the model for Kauṭilya and the Hellenistic states was furnished by the practice of Persian kings and satraps maintaining lists of inhabited centres of each satrapy, together with approximate estimates of their population and material resources, lists which they employed alike for purposes of taxation and preparation for war³. Kauṭilya's categorical statement in III (i) that a royal edict (*rājaśāsana*) overrides *dharma*, *vyavahāra* and *caritra* is somewhat exceptional in the political literature of India though Nāradasmṛti follows the Arthaśāstra on this point ; the more usual rule is to require the king to frame his edicts in conformity to Dharma, and some writers even go the length of implying that if this condition was not satisfied the royal order was invalid. Kauṭilya’s exaltation of the royal edict above canon and custom deserves to be compared with the growing dominance of royal legislation and jurisdiction, and the active exercise of royal authority in the sphere of civil law that were characteristic of the Persian empire and the Hellenistic monarchies¹.