Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s9.3

c11.s9.3

³ The Hellenistic view is set forth thus by Rostovtzeff in his *Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic world*, p. 269. "Absolute rule meant, alike from the Egyptian and from the Macedonian point of view, the ownership of the State, of its soil and subsoil, and ultimately of the products of the soil and the subsoil. The state was the 'house' (*oikos*) of the king, and its territory his estate. So the King managed the state as a plain Macedonian or Greek would manage his own household". This view of polity never obtained in India. So far as I know there is only one instance in Indian literature of the apparent assertion of royal ownership of all land and water, and that is in the verse cited by Bhaṭṭasvāmi in his commentary—*KA.* II, 24 : *Rājā bhūmeḥ patiradṛṣṭaḥ śāstrajñair udakasya ca, tābhyām anyat tu yad dravyam tatra svāmyam kuṭumbinām.* But even here *pati* may indicate no more than the right of eminent domain, as is clearly the case with the expression ‘bhūsvāmī’ in a closely argued passage of Kātyāyana which has not been always correctly understood in spite of the excellent gloss attached to it. See U. N. Ghoshal, *Beginnings of Indian Historiography* etc., pp. 158—66.