State and Government in Ancient India c23.s1.23

c23.s1.23

The above picture of the administrative machinery of the period, 200 B. C. to 300 A. D. is undoubtedly very incomplete, but it is so because it takes account of only those facts that are accidentally revealed by the short and often fragmentary inscriptions of the period. Unfortunately no ruler of the period issued administrative edicts like Aśoka; no writer of the age wrote a book like the *Arthaśāstra*; nor was the country visited by an inquisitive foreigner like Megasthenes, whose writings have been handed down to us. We may however well presume that under the bigger kingdoms of the period like those of the Śuṅgas, the Sātavāhanas and the Kushāṇas, the state discharged most of the ministrant functions referred to in the *Arthaśāstra* and had an administrative machinery almost as extensive and varied as that of the Mauryas.