The Mauryan Polity c9.s2.t1.1

c9.s2.t1.1

These new acquisitions were treated as protectorates or vassals, in modern political parlance. The border-peoples to which repeated reference is made in the Edicts of Aśoka² come under the category of these protectorates. The principle underlying the foreign policy was the maintenance of the balance of power.³ This was effected by the diplomatic agents of the Empire. Kauṭalya makes mention of different classes of such agents.⁴ Some of them correspond to our ambassadors. The *cāras* are those employed in secret service. There is the *ubhayavedana* who was perhaps the permanent ambassador in a foreign court. It is difficult to interpret the term as it comes under the common title of Gūḍhapuruṣas. These latter were the secret informants in war in addition to their office in the rank and file of the Mauryan bureaucracy.⁵ They gathered news about the strength or otherwise of the enemy-state, and reported the same to the head-quarters. In accomplishing their ends they assumed different guises—, of a trader, an ascetic, a physician, an agriculturist, lest they should be unable to get at the required information, and lest they should be detected, and the real state of affairs be kept from them. These perhaps are meant by Megasthenes’ ‘supervisors’.