Hindu Administrative Institutions c12.s1.6

c12.s1.6

Before we proceed to examine the actual administration that obtained in a village it may be pointed out that local administration in general was carried on by dividing the local area into various political, or administrative, divisions so as to facilitate the smooth working of the administration of the state as a whole. The smallest administrative unit then was a village with a number of families pursuing hereditary professions and sometimes constituting guilds of their own. The next administrative division is a *sangrahaṇa* or a grouping of ten such villages. *Kharvāṭika* is the other division which comprised two hundred villages; whilst *droṇa-mukha* consisted of 400 villages and the *sthānīya* 800 villages.³ The administrative divisions according to the *Mānava-Dharma-śāstra* slightly vary from the *Kauṭalīya*. Manu speaks of both smaller and larger groups. His divisions are a village, ten villages, twenty villages, one hundred villages and a thousand villages.⁴ Between the unit of one hundred villages and that of a thousand there were three groups of two hundred, three hundred and five hundred villages respectively. Manu¹ calls these groups gulmas.