The Mauryan Polity c6.s4.2

c6.s4.2

To understand correctly the Mauryan administrative system and its achievements and failure, it is necessary that we must first examine the aims and ends of the Mauryan state. What is true of the Mauryan state is largely true of Hindu states in general; for the Mauryan state was not a departure from the established tradition of the land. When we speak of the ends of the state, there is the implication that the ends of state were both proximate and ultimate. The ultimate end was spiritual in character and religious in scope. It perhaps approached the doctrine inculcated by Hegel that morality (*sittlichkeit*) is the end of the state. By its nature the Mauryan administration was not a military rule and consequently the state was not a centralised despotism. As has been stated elsewhere, the end of the state, namely the moral and material welfare of the citizens at large, could not be realised in a polity which made militarism its essential feature. No doubt wars were fought and territories conquered. The object was to bring the whole country under one sceptre. The laws of war are only a code of honour very skilfully incorporated into the body of the civil law, so that militarism may not show itself in all its nakedness.¹ The other aspect, which is, that the Mauryan state was not a centralised despotism, will be examined in the next chapter.