Hindu Administrative Institutions c12.s1.26

c12.s1.26

According to the *Śukranī-sāra*² the head of the village was invariably a member of the Brahman community. That he was not necessarily a Brahman is seen from a comparatively earlier work *Gāthā Saptaśatī*.³ There is inscriptional evidence to show that this office of the village headman became generally hereditary, whatever it might have been in earlier times.⁴ He had a clerk. The lord of punishment (*sāhasa*) was a Kṣatriya. Two tax-collectors are mentioned, one of them a Kṣatriya, and the other a Vaiśya. The sentinel was of the Śūdra caste. There is then a description of rural policing. The *śaladhipati* already mentioned was responsible for the safety, and for any loss that occurred within his limits to travellers and strangers from neighbouring villages. He was to note down their respective names, caste, village, and the destination to which they were bound. It was a peculiar custom that these travellers were sent the next morning with safety up to the boundary limits of the *śaladhipati*. If once the traveller was off the boundary line he came into the custody of that village through which he next travelled. This policing was effective in two respects. It ensured safety of life and property to any way-farer, and facilitated the method of detecting the suspicious, the criminal and other like pests of the high-way. There were again *dvāras* or outposts where sentinels were stationed, perhaps to raise a hue and cry in the face of an impending danger. Another feature of the village administration was the system of night watchmen in each and every village. The establishment charges for these watchmen were to be met locally, taxes being raised from the villagers for these set purposes.¹