State and Government in Ancient India c4.1

c4.1

There are a number of books already in the field, dealing with some of the aspects of Ancient Indian Polity, but a comprehensive work, explaining succinctly the Hindu political ideas, theories and ideals and describing the different features and aspects of the ancient Indian administration in its numerous branches is still a desideratum. The present work attempts to supply this need. It may not be inopportune to draw the reader's attention to some of its special features. It is based not merely on a study of the different Smṛiti books and Arthaśāstra works in Sanskrit, which give us the theoretical picture, but it also utilises fully all the data bearing on the subject available in Vedic and classical literature, Buddhist and Jain works, ancient books on history and accounts of foreign travellers and historians. Rich material supplied by inscriptions has been fully tapped and the discerning critic will not be unwilling to concede that no previous work on the subject attempts to give such a comprehensive synthesis of the divergent data supplied by theoretical and literary works on the one hand and by inscriptions and purely historical records on the other. The material has been arranged chronologically and also province-wise, whenever it was possible to do so. In each chapter, attempt has been made to trace the development of political theories and institutions from age to age, though the material in some cases was not quite sufficient to do so.