State and Government in Ancient India c17.5

c17.5

Ancient Indian history extends over several centuries, and we need not be surprised if we do not find a uniformity in the nomenclatures of the different territorial and administrative divisions in the various kingdoms flourishing in different centuries and provinces. Thus *bhukti* denoted administrative division even smaller than a modern Tehsil or Taluka in the Deccan and M. P., but in northern India under the Guptas and Pratihāras it denoted a unit as large as the Commissioner’s Division in modern times. Thus *Pratishṭhanabhukti* consisted of only 12 and Koppārakabhukti of 50 villages in the Deccan under the Rāshṭrakūṭas,¹ whereas under the Guptas the Puṇḍravardhanabhukti comprised of the districts of Dinapur, Bogra and Rajshahi, and Magadhabhukti included the districts of Gayā and Pāṭaliputra.² Śrāvastibhukti under the Pratihāras included several districts in northern U. P. *Rāshṭra* was used in literature to denote a kingdom, but it was the name of a Commissioner’s Divisions under the Rāshṭrakūṭas.³ In south India, however, under the Pallava, Kadamba and Sālaṅkāyana administrations, it denoted only a district, if not a Tehsil.⁴ Sometimes, these terms were used with a certain amount of looseness; thus one Rāshṭrakūṭa document describes Nasik as a *vishaya*, and another, issued only 29 years later, calls it a *deśa*.⁵ It would, therefore, be dangerous to draw a precise and *prima facie* conclusion about the extent of an administrative division merely from its name.