Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s5: Foreign Models

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s5

Language: English

Foreign Models

c11.s5.1

The age of the Mauryan empire was the age of the large monarchical state not only in India, but in all the lands that had formed the empire of Alexander for a brief period ; there was much similarity in the problems of political organization that had to be faced by the successors of Alexander and by Chandragupta Maurya. Considering the fairly steady contact maintained between the court of Pāṭaliputra and the Hellenistic monarchies, we may even suppose that Kauṭilya did not omit the study of foreign models in planning the administration of the newly established Indian empire and in the composition of his treatise on the *Arthaśāstra*. In fact he says expressly that he composed the work for the sake of his monarch after consulting all the *śāstras* then known and collecting information on the practices prevailing in states.¹ Without pressing the idea too far, we may find in it the explanation of the fairly close resemblances between the fiscal and bureaucratic arrangements in contemporary Egypt and Syria on the one side and the system of the *Arthaśāstra* on the other.

c11.s5.2

¹ End of *KA*. II. 10 *Śāsanādhikāra*, a chapter in which Stein sees evidence of a revision in the light of royal letters of the Early Roman Empire. *ZII*. Band 6, pp. 45-71.

Linked texts (1)

Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit