Public Administration in Ancient India c14.30

c14.30

As time went on, these indirect modes of changing the laws of the country must have been found very inconvenient. Originally, the King had no power to legislate for the country, but as society became more complex, it must have been found necessary to entrust the King with some power to issue orders which would be recognised by the law-courts. So some of the law-books mention the King’s ordinances as one of the subsidiary sources of law. These edicts, it seems, at first dealt only with particular cases, and did not lay down any general rules. Moreover, they generally related to the work of executive government, and formed something like the *droit administratif* of France.¹ In more modern times, it seems, the King in Council considerably extended the right of issuing ordinances, and the Agni Purāṇa and the Sukranīti mention a Law Member of Council as one of the principal Officers-of-State. The advice of the Sukranīti that notices of newly-passed ordinances should be put up at the cross-roads, and that the people should be informed of them by beat of drum suggests that the issue of legislative ordinances was not very infrequent in the later years of the Hindu Period of Indian history.