Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s5.4

c12.s5.4

Another aspect of State industrial policy in these times is that relating to the strict control of artisans and traders. We have in the *Arthaśāstra* a whole Section (Section iv) significantly called ‘*Removal of Thorns*’ (*kaṇṭaka śodhanam*), which describes successively the measures to be taken by the king for securing the people against artisans and merchants, against natural calamities, against persons living by clandestine means and so forth. In thorough accord with this attitude is the fact that elsewhere (iv. 1), Kauṭilya characterises merchants, artisans and some other specified classes as thieves in fact, though not in name. In the class of artisans just mentioned, are included weavers, washermen, goldsmiths, workers in copper and other metals, physicians, actors, minstrels and beggars. How drastically paternal the State regulations for protection of the public against these classes sometimes might be, is proved by a number of examples. Not only is a differential scale of wages fixed for weaving different kinds of cloth, but fines and other penalties are prescribed for reduction in their weight and measures. Fines are also prescribed for washermen washing clothes elsewhere than on wooden planks or on smooth stone, for wearing clothes other than those marked with a cudgel, for selling, mortgaging or hiring clothes of others, and even for delay in returning the clothes. Wages at varying rates are laid down for dyeing different qualities of cloth. A scale of penalties is laid down for physicians failing in or neglecting the treatment of diseases.