The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c12: Chapter VI. The King's Officers

The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c12

Language: English

Chapter VI. The King's Officers

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In the Jâtakas, where the king appears to us throughout as an absolute ruler, which he probably may have been in the great monarchies of the east, the advisory element of the administration is represented by the ministers (amaccas,. Of a participation of the people in the administration of the State, of a limitation of the kingly power through the will of the people, such as we find in the Vedas,¹ there is nowhere any talk in the Buddhist age. We must admit that under the stupefying influence of the climate and long peace, which followed the subjugation of the aboriginal races and which was only broken by occasional quarrels with the neighbouring kings or with races who were not completely subjugated and who lived in the frontier, the strength and political independence of the people decreased. The secure possession of an over-rich land did away with the necessity for individuals to serve the king with their arms and defend their home which was at first liable to frequent attacks; as they felt themselves sufficiently protected by the king and his strong army, they directed their thoughts towards increasing and improving their worldly possessions and ensuring the prosperity of the family. Through this the condition of the people improved, vast accumulation of wealth took place, agriculture, trade and commerce flourished. With this progress of civilization, there went hand in hand a development of the communal sense—as it did in Greece after the Persian wars; where Indian thought, dissociated from worldly things subserved higher interests, it was mostly occupied with metaphysical questions, with anxiety for the welfare of the soul.¹

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¹ Zimmer, Altindesches Leben, p. 172.

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¹ Cf. Oldenberg. Buddha, p. 11 sq.

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The ancient power of the people manifesting itself in the Samiti was transferred to the council of ministers and here it developed into a factor which had an extraordinary, and under certain circumstances, even a dominating, influence. We saw above, in the discussion relating to the succession of the king, that the decision regarding the succession to the throne was often left to the ministers; we also find mention of the actual exercise of sovereign powers by the ministers; besides the passage already quoted from the Gândhâra Jâtaka, it is mentioned in the Ghata Jâtaka also that the king, sick of worldly life, hands over the reins of government to the ministers (rajjam amaccânaṃ niyyâdetvâ.

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III. 170). Probably, the question here, as in the short absence of the king from the city mentioned in the Râjovâda Jâtaka (janapadaṃ parigaṇhissâmîti amacce rajjaṃ paṭicchâpetvâ II. 2), is only of a temporary direction of State affairs. Leaving aside such exceptional cases, the influence of particular ministers upon the course of internal and external politics depends upon the intelligence and energy of the then head of the State. Not every king could be so independent of his ministers, could behave so arbitrarily with them as the Magadha King Bimbisâra, of whom it is said in the Culavagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka (VII. 3.5), that he stripped some of his ministers (mahâmattas), who had advised him badly, of their offices, degraded other ministers with whose advice he was not satisfied, and promoted those, whose advice he approved of, to higher positions. In the Jâtakas even, we find examples of such an arbitrary treatment of ministers¹; but there occur in contrast with them, cases where the king makes over the entire charge of government to a minister and willingly abides by his superior advice.

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¹ Inconvenient councillors the king gets rid of, probably often on his accession to the throne, on which occasion, as mentioned in the Darimukha Jâtaka, he "examines the offices of the ministers and the duties assigned to them" (amaccânaṃ ṭhânantarâni vicâretvâ, III, 239)

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The court of the king consists in the epics of country nobles, the king’s allies, the king’s relations and feudatory kings; to these are to be added the priests who likewise belong to the King’s Council but who seem to be only admitted by gradual stages into the knightly assembly.¹ We find analogical conditions in the Jâtakas, though only partially. As the *uparâjan* always is, so also is the *senâpati* sometimes a relation of the king, a *khattiya* (I. 133; IV. 168); of other offices which were also in the hands of the *khattiyas* we learn, on the other hand, nothing from the Jâtakas, nor do we find any conquered or friendly princes in the service of the king. As regards the share of the Brâhmaṇas in the administration, this is limited to individual cases. Wherever the question is of the king’s officers, ministers and Brâhmaṇas are reckoned as separate classes and indeed, the latter, along with the other classes of people (the *gahapatis*, etc.), are set over against the ministers (*amacca ca brâhmaṇagahapati-âdayo ca*, I. 260). Thus we find this distinction in the Kumbhakâra Jâtaka, where it is described how, according to the Court etiquette, the mango is first eaten by the king, then by the ministers, then by the Brâhmaṇas, then by the gahapatis, etc. (III. 576). At the coronation ceremony, there stand round the throne of the king, at a distance from each other (ekato-ekato), the ministers, the Brâhmaṇas, the gahapatis, etc., as also the citizens and the dancing girls (III. 408). More clearly is the opposition between amacca and brâhmaṇa expressed in the Mahâmora Jâtaka: the ministers refer the king, when he puts a question relating to the meaning of a dream, as they themselves don't know how to interpret it, to the Brâhmaṇas with the words: "The Brâhmaṇas know it, O great king" (IV. 335).

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¹ Hopkins, l.c., p. 99.

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From the quotations it is evident that by the expression amacca, no Khattiya or Brâhmaṇa is in general to be understood. But to what caste do the ministers belong, if they are not to be looked upon either as Khattiyas or as Brâhmaṇas? In my opinion, they do not always belong to the same caste; the amaccas form a class by themselves which is generally hereditary, and in consequence of this hereditary character, to which probably, as in the case of the Khattiyas, a specially developed class-consciousness is joined, possesses a certain, though distant, resemblance with a caste. When asked about his játi, a minister or some one belonging to him would perhaps have replied, if he was...

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neither a Khattiya nor a Brâhmaṇa, "I come of a family of ministers" (amaccakula. II. 98, 125).

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From this, however, it should not at all be inferred that not even occasionally did the Brâhmaṇa act as a minister of the king and in this way exercise some influence over him as well as over the government. Of the two ministers of Bimbisâra, already mentioned, one, Vassakâra, whom the king employs in the construction of a fortress and thus in purely worldly matters, belongs to the Brâhmaṇa caste. Also the atthadhammánusásaka amacca, the "guide of the king in worldly and spiritual matters," repeatedly mentioned in the Jâtakas, seems always to be a Brâhmaṇa. In the Sattubhasta Jâtaka, this fact of belonging to the Brâhmaṇa caste is clearly stated; the Brâhmaṇa, who has gone to the court of the king of Kâsî after finishing his studies, receives the favour of the ruler and is loaded with honours by him. "The king"—so it is said further—"made him minister and was guided by him in worldly and spiritual things" (atthañ ca dhammañ ca anusási, III. 342). Regarding the particular functions of this atthadhammánusásaka amacca we learn nothing definite from our sources; still we shall, I hope, not be wrong if we compare his position with that of the Chancellor in mediæval European Courts which post was generally held by the clergy. Even the Indian "Chancellor" of that time seems sometimes to take into his own hands all the reins of government, for very often the *atthadhammánusásaka amacca* is characterised as one versed in all branches of public life (sabbatthaka, II. 30, 74). In this "guide of the king in worldly and spiritual matters" of the Jâtakas we have to recognise the *amátyamukhya* of the law-books, of whom it is said by Manu (VII. 141), "His first minister, who is versed in law, is wise, possesses self-control, and is of good family, he will put into this position, if he is himself fatigued with matters concerning his subjects."¹

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¹ In Manu VII. 58, the question is obviously of such a minister, who is here called the "best of all" (*sarveshâm viśishṭa*) and a Brâhmaṇa. Cf. Foy l.c., p. 68 sq.

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Somewhat less general are the statements of the Jâtakas concerning the "leader of the army," the senâpati; of this officer they give us no clear picture but only a vague description. Often, as we saw, himself belonging to the ruling family, he seems to occupy a prominent place among the ministers, sometimes even the first place; in the Cullasutasoma Jâtaka, the King calls his ministers, having decided to renounce worldly life, with the senâpati at their head (*senâpatipamukháni asítiamaccasahassáni*, V. 178). Whether this office, conformably to its literal meaning—*senâpati* means "chief of the army"—was principally a military one, does not appear clearly from our texts; probably, in wars the *senâpati* occupied the next highest military post after the king.¹ In times of peace, he seemed to play a part which had little or nothing to do with the army; his chief work seemed rather to be the administration of justice. We read of a *senâpati* who in discharging his duties as a judge takes bribes (*viniccayam karonto lañcam khádati*) and thereby gives property to the wrong persons (*asâmike sâmike karoti*, II. 186).

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¹ Besides the *senâpati*, another officer is mentioned in the Jâtakas whose title also points to a connection with the army, namely, the *mahâ-senâpati*. The only passage where I have found this mentioned (Tesakuna Jâtaka, V. 115) gives us no clear idea about his functions only that he is a high officer, is what it stipulates.

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Of a participation of the *senâpati* in legislation, the already-quoted passage from the Tesakuna Jâtaka speaks, where legislation in accordance with the Scripture is ascribed to him. After refusing the kingship offered to him by the ministers, he writes on a gold tablet, before he goes into the solitude of the forest, the laws to be followed in administering justice (*viniccaya-dhamma*, V. 125). "His opinion—so it is said at the end—remained in force for forty thousand years."

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Along with the circumstance stated here, that the senāpati was offered the kingship, it may be mentioned, as proof of the importance of his position, that the residents of the city, when their request for help is refused by the king, resolve to go to the senāpati, thinking, “The king cares nothing for the city, we will inform the senāpati” (V. 459 sq.)

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Wherein, in particular, the judicial work of the senāpati differs from that of the minister of justice (vinicchayāmacca), whose proper province—as his name implies—was the administration of justice, is not evident from the Jātakas. According to the statement made in the commentary on the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta the vinicchayamahāmattas represented the first and lowest stage of judicial work; their judgment was only final in the case of acquittal; in other cases, the matter was referred to the vohārikas.¹ In contrast with this, the vinicchayāmacca appears to be an important personality; his protest succeeds, as we have already seen, in revising a wrong judgment pronounced by the king in favour of the priest.

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¹ The existence of these vohārikas = Sk. vyavahārikas, I have not found in the Jātakas; we meet them, however, in the Vinaya Piṭaka. In Mahāvagga, I. 40.3, the King Bimbisāra asks the vohārika mahāmatta what punishment he deserves who initiates a hired soldier into the religious order; in Cullavagga, VI. 4.9, they become the subject of a discussion between Anathapiṇḍika and the prince Jeta. Manifestly, we are to understand by the voharika mahāmattas “judicial officers.”

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Although, owing to the nature of our text, it is not everywhere possible to venture any general conclusion from any particular passage, one can mention the Kurudhamma Jâtaka (II. 380) as a proof of this, that the "ministers of justice" not only gave judicial decisions, but also advised on matters of law and morality. A prostitute received 1,000 gold pieces from a youth, and as he promised her that he would come back, made a vow that she would not receive the least thing from any other man, even if it was only a grain of paddy. After she had waited in vain for three years for his return without breaking her vow and had become at last poor, she went to the court and asked the vinicchayamahámattas for their advice: "My lords, it is three years since a man gave me money and went away; whether he is dead, I don't know. I have no means of livelihood, what shall I do?" They advised her to return to her former profession.

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A very important personality for the king—the increase of king's wealth depended obviously in no small degree upon his work—was the rajjuka or the rajjugâhaka amacca, lit., "the rope-holding minister," that is, as appears from the description contained in the Kurudhamma Jâtaka, the “surveyor,” the cadastral officer of the king.¹ As we saw in the account of the king’s revenue, the lands of the tax-paying subjects were measured, either to determine the amount of rent payable by them to the king or to determine from the extent of land the average produce to be brought to the king’s storeroom. “Whether the minister himself

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¹ Bühler shows in the “Zeitschrift der D. M. G.,” Vol. 47, 1893, p. 466 sq., the identity of this rajjûka with the râjûkas or lajukas mentioned in the inscriptions of Asoka, the highest officers of the Government.

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The account of the rajjugâhaka amacca given in the Kurudhamma Jâtaka seems to be so simple, so obvious, that it is difficult to understand why Rouse in his translation of the Jâtakas (Cambridge, 1895, p. 257) takes the meaning “cart-driver” given by Childers (Pali Dictionary, under the word rajju). Doubts only arise regarding whether and in what way the rajjuka or rajjugâhaka amacca was engaged in fixing and collecting the taxes, whether he is to be conceived, as Bühler wants to do, as a “tax-officer who measures the field” (for the purpose of fixing the land tax). I don’t consider myself compelled, as I have already said, to accept the inference from the measurement of lands to a “land-tax,” and even the circumstance that in the Kâma Jâtaka (IV. 169), in immediate connection with the measurement of the field by royal officers, the question of remission of taxes occurs, does not seem to me to establish conclusively the existence of the land tax, for by bali, a tax on the produce, a fixed percentage of the crops raised, might very well be meant. Even the method of collecting the taxes noticed by us above gives us no fixed data by which to decide the question, as by the corn which was measured in front of the king’s granary, we might understand as well a portion of the produce as an amount fixed for all time, a ground-rent. Against the supposition of such a ground rent there is first the circumstance that neither in the lawbooks nor in the epics is it even mentioned that the taxes which are measured the lands, or whether officers acting under his supervision measured the fields, as the Kâma Jâtaka (IV. 169) shows, cannot be determined from the two mutually contradictory statements; what seems more probable is that the episode of the Kurudhamma Jâtaka owes its origin to the attempt of the narrator to give as ancient a colouring as possible to the events described by him.

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It is, however, narrated how the rajjugáhaka amacca is one day busy in the province, measuring a field. He fastens a rope to a stick, and whilst he gives one end of the rope to the owner of the field, he himself holds the other end (and wants to put the stick on the ground). In this way the stick got into the hole of a crab.¹ He reflects, "If I push the stick into the hole, the crab will perish, if I place the stick in front, the king will suffer loss, if I

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¹ What is meant here, as Bühler, (l.c., p. 469) remarks, is the land crabs which one finds in many parts of India, especially, in damp places.

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only to be paid in the form of a portion of the yearly produce are to be looked upon as rent of the ground; rather, the scruples of the conscientious setthi already mentioned, have a meaning when the question is of a percentage of the produce; for had he had to pay a ground-rent, he would only have injured himself and not the king. That, nevertheless, in some parts of India even in the older Buddhistic age a ground-rent was not collected, is surely not proved; it is rather probable that in different kingdoms, the mode of taxation was different.

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place it behind, the farmer will be injured, what is then to be done?”

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By such considerations, however characteristic they may be of thinking influenced by Buddhistic morality, an officer can hardly be guided; the scruples are represented in the narrative itself as examples of excessive conscientiousness. Rather, we have to suppose from the extremely ironical character of the Jātakas, that frequent cheatings on the part of the royal surveyors may have served as an occasion for this narrative.

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With the *rajjugāhaka amacca*, “the surveyor,” the series of royal officers mentioned expressly as ministers (*amacca*) comes to an end; of the remaining numerous courtiers it is doubtful whether they are to be reckoned as belonging to the category of *amaccas*. In part, they are called, as well as the “taxing officers” (Doṇamāpaka), *mahāmattas*, “of great importance, esteem,” an expression which is probably to be regarded as a designation of an office, similar to that of an *amacca*¹ but is perhaps only to be treated as a predicate, corresponding to our “grandee, magnate.” Whatever that may be, this much seems to me certain, that the *mahāmatta* and the *amacca*, as well as the other courtiers, belonged to one and the same class, namely, that of “people in the king’s pay and service,” the *rājabhoggas*,¹ who are reckoned in the Pâtimokkha (Nissaggiya 10), along with the *khattiyas*, *brâhmaṇas* and *gahapatis*, as a special class. In the passage of the Pâtimokkha in question the matter is this: A monk has been given a valuable object through a messenger, in exchange for which he wanted garments; as givers of such a present, which only wealthy and aristocratic people alone can possess, there are mentioned in order, the king, those in the king’s pay, the Brâhmaṇa, the householder (*râjâ vâ râjabhoggo vâ brâhmaṇo, vâ gahapatiko vâ*). Comparison with this passage of the Pâtimokkha has made me suppose—of the tentative character of this supposition I am perfectly conscious—that by the word *râjañña*, mentioned in the Assalâyana Sutta,² which has already been noted, “royal officers" are to be understood. Also here the highest classes of the population are enumerated, as in the Pâtimokkha, with only this difference, that the gahapatis are omitted; the first to be mentioned are the Khattiyas, corresponding to the *rájá* of the Pâtimokkha, then—probably, through courtesy to Assalâyana,—in the second place and before the *rájaññas*, the Brâhmaṇas and thirdly, the *rájaññas*. I think these are identical with the *rájabhoggas* and that by this word "people in the king's service, high officials of the king, courtiers" are to be understood.¹

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¹ Synonymously with *amacca* the word *mahāmatta* is obviously used in the passage of the Vinaya Piṭaka quoted above. The inscriptions also use the word in this sense. *Cf.* “Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenl. Ges.,” Vol. 37, pp. 267, 275.

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¹ *Râjabhogga* is explained in the Suttavibhaṅga, Nissaggiya 10-2-1 (Vinaya Piṭaka ed. Oldenburg, Vol. 3, p. 222) as “one who receives livelihood and money” (*yo koci rañño bhattavetaṇahâro*). A similar idea is expressed by *râjabhata* (Mahavagga, I. 40. 3 sq.; 66. 1; 76. 1), only *râjabhata* seems to me to have a narrower meaning and to denote especially a mercenary soldier in the king’s army.

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² Ed. Pischel, p. 1389: *Khattiyakulâ brâhmaṇakulâ râjaññakulâ uppannâ*.

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¹ The etymology of *rájañña* speaks no doubt against this view. In Sanskrit *rájanya* means "princely, royal" and "one belonging to the royal family," and if *rájañña* in Pali preserved this meaning, the word *rájaññakula* must, as it is done in Pischel's translation, be translated by 'royal family.' But, as is well-known, Pali words have very often deviated from the Sanskrit etymology and that *rájañña*, at least in this passage of the Assalâyana Sutta, cannot have the meaning of the Sanskrit *rájanya* seems to me beyond doubt, because otherwise, the concept 'princely, royal' would be repeated twice, once through khattiya and a second time through *rájañña*. To describe Khattiyakula, as "warrior family" and to look upon the scale, khattiyakula, brâhmaṇakula, *rájaññakula*, as an ascending one, is opposed to the terminology of Pali texts of that time and that found in the Assalâyana Sutta, which was to understand by khattiyas the princely or royal families and to give in an enumeration of castes, the highest rank, the first and foremost position to the khattiya.

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Perhaps it will be objected against me that I have attached too much importance to this passage of the Assalâyana Sutta and that probably the word *rájañña* is an error. This I cannot accept, for the same enumeration of the three *kulas* is repeated in exactly the same form three times and because the Buddhistic writers were particularly careful about their terminology.

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By his profession, the "produce-measurer" stands next to the *rajjúgáhaka*; as befits his name *doṇamápaka*,¹ lit., "one who measures with a dry measure," the task devolves upon him of measuring the produce given by the owners of land (*gahapatis*) as the portion of the king (*rájabhága*). He is thus the proper tax officer of the king, whilst the *rajjuka* in my view had no direct connection with the collection of taxes. Whether or not his work as described above, can be called difficult or specially honourable, he must have been one of the important personages in the Court, for to him also the title *mahámatta*, "of great weight, esteem," is given (II. 378). It is probable that even this narrative, like the account of the work of the surveyor, purposely describes the primitive conditions of former times, of which the people had only a faint memory, and that in reality, probably, in Buddha's time, only the title *doṇamápaka* remained and not the work denoted by it, namely, measuring corn with one's own hands. This was probably assigned to an army of subordinate officers in which category we must also include the tax-collectors, and supervision of their work was only allotted to the high official.

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¹ Abbreviated also in the form doṇa (II. 367).

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A well-known figure in the epics and the classical Sanskrit literature, the chariot-driver (sârathi) of the king, meets us also in the Jâtakas (II. 377), but is pushed somewhat into the background, as compared with the other followers of the king at that time.

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Likewise only occasionally do we find the keeper of the king’s purse, the heraññika, (III. 193) and the superintendent of the king’s storehouse, bhaṇḍágárika (IV. 43; V. 123) mentioned. The rare mention of these two officers does not, however, justify the supposition that they held an unimportant position in the Court; the bhaṇḍágárika, at least, seems, according to the Nigrodha Jâtaka, where Pottika, the tailor’s son, predicts to his friends that on the next day, one of them would be king, another senápati, he himself bhaṇḍágárika, to have played no unimportant part in public life, especially, in trade matters; for it is said at the end that the king makes Pottika who refuses to accept the office of senápati, a superintendent of stores and that the latter “is worthy of the regard of all guilds” (sabbaseṇīnam vicáraṇáraham bhaṇḍágárikaṭṭhánam, IV. 43).

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So in the lowest rank of the courtiers the doorkeeper, dovárika, seems to have been; we meet him, in the list of persons mentioned in the Kurudhamma Jâtaka as those of which the king's Court consists, as occupying the last place but one, being above the public women (gaṇikás). And in the Mahâpiṅgala Jâtaka, the doorkeepers are mentioned after the "subjects in general" (amaccá ca bráhmaṇagahapatiraṭṭhikadovárikádayo ca) (II. 241). It is true that he is called in the Sonaka Jâtaka "noble gatekeeper" (ayyadovárika, V. 250), but he might, as here, appear a noble and important personage to a poor woodgatherer who wanted an audience of the king. According to the Mâtaṅga Jâtaka, his duty was to thrash Caṇḍâlas or similar vagabonds who wanted to peep at the palace, with sticks or bamboo posts, catch them by the throat and fling them on the ground (IV. 382). Also the treatment which the doorkeeper in the Mahâpiṅgala Jâtaka received during the lifetime of the cruel king does not indicate that he held a specially high rank. Whilst all people expressed jubilation and held festivities at the death of Mahâpiṅgala, one of the doorkeepers moaned loudly. On being asked by the new king why he alone moaned, whilst all else were making merry, and whether probably his father was good and kind to him, he replied, "I don't weep because Piṅgala is dead. For my head his death is a real happiness. For the King Piṅgala used, every time he went away from or came to the palace, to strike eight blows upon my head with his fists as with the hammer of a blacksmith. So he will also, when he goes to the Beyond, oppress in hell the doorkeepers of Yama with blows from his fists, in the belief that he bestows them upon me, and then they will cry out, "He gives us much trouble," and send him back here. He will, I fear, come back and strike blows, as before, with his fists upon my head; it is for this reason that I weep."

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Obviously, the *dovārika* had for his duty the closing of the gate of the city at night. According to the Kurudhamma Jātaka, he announces thrice at the time of shutting the gate the closing of the city gate (probably, by blowing upon a horn); a poor man who had gone to the forest with his sister to collect wood and had thereby been late, he addresses as follows, "Do you not know that the king is in the city and that the gate of the city is closed at the right time?" (II. 379). Foreigners, who did not know their way about the city, he had to direct. In the Mahāssaroha Jātaka the king promises the *dovārika* 1,000 gold pieces if he can take him to a man living in the frontier who would cause enquiry to be made about the house of Mahāssaroha.

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Possibly, the person who closed the city gate was different from the palace door-keeper and was to be counted among the officers who had to look after safety and discipline in the city; still these also belonged probably to the class of *rájabhoggas*, the royal officers, as they were appointed and paid by the king and had to obey his orders. If a dangerous robber made the city unsafe, then the residents, as narrated in the Kaṇavera Jātaka (III. 59), went to the king with the request that he would arrest the "great robber," upon which the king charged the *nagaraguttika* with the arrest and execution of this man. That he was appointed by the king is evident from the conversation between the king and the Caṇḍāla; jokingly, the king calls here the *nagaraguttika* the "king at night." Judging from the insecurity which on account of the frequent mention of robbers and thieves in the Jātakas and other folk-literature must have existed in the Indian cities in ancient times, he was no small personage.

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As the last of the royal officers who occupied a public office, the executioner, the *coraghātaka*, must be mentioned¹ who came close to the *nagaraguttika* and who sometimes represented him. According to the lawbooks¹ the office of the executioner was exclusively in the hands of the people belonging to the despised classes, Candâlas and Śvapacas; thus even in ancient India—at certain times and in certain places—this profession had the same contemptuous odour about it which it had in the Middle Ages when one pointed out the executioner among the "unholy people". The Jâtakas know nothing of such a contempt attaching to the position of the coraghâtaka; rather, parades and ceremonial processions in which he appeared in front of the king, point to a certain respect which the executor of the king's commands enjoyed. When summoned, he comes, a hatchet and a thorny rope in his hand, dressed in a yellow garment and adorned with a cross of red flowers, salutes the king and asks for his commands (III. 41; so also III. 179).

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¹ Other persons of that time employed in the king's court whose work was of a private nature are treated in the eleventh chapter.

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¹ Manu, X. 56; Viṣṇu, XVI, 11.

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With the offices enumerated above, the great class of rájabhoggas is in no way exhausted; apart from the fact that even the Jâtakas do not touch all the circumstances of public life—they speak, for example, almost nothing of the gradations of rank in the army—it is to be reflected that the apparatus of government, although all threads of the centralised State government were spun round this one point, was not confined in the great monarchies within the capital of the kingdom; in order to hold such a vast territory, as the Magadha kingdom, under the sway of a single ruler, the king's power must have been represented by officers everywhere in the small towns and in the villages.

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If the circumstances narrated in the Kharas-sara Jātaka can be held typical, the superintendent of the village, the *gāmabhojaka*, was an *amacca* of the king; he collected the taxes for him (*rājabalim labhitvā* I. 354) and was punished by the king appropriately, as he with his own people went to the forest, leaving the villagers at the mercy of robbers.¹ Other narratives make the official character of the village superintendent still less (or not at all) clear. In the Kulāvaka Jātaka (I. 198 sq.), the *gāmabhojaka* spoke ill of the villagers to the king; as, however, their innocence was proved, the king gave them the whole of the possessions of the slanderer, made him their slave and turned him out of the village. Of the appointment of a new superintendent, nothing is mentioned, rather the further course of the story seems to bring out that the villagers henceforth looked after their own affairs. Also when we read in other passages that the *gâmabhojaka* exercises judicial powers in the village, inasmuch as he settles quarrels and makes the guilty pay a fine (I. 483), that he issues prohibitions, for example, against the slaughter of animals (*mâghâtam kârâpesi*, IV. 115) and against the sale of intoxicating liquors (*majjavikkayam vâretvâ*, IV. 115), that when through defective growth or flood, the crops fail and famine appears, he distributes meat to the villagers, whilst they on their part, have to promise him a portion of their next crops (II. 135), all these statements seem, indeed, to point to the position of the *gâmabhojaka* being one of power and honour¹ among the villagers but do not oblige us to see in him a king's officer. They rather seem to indicate an elected chief, to whom the village community itself gave the direction of the common affairs—a kind of self-government in the village communities. That self-government prevailed in India in villages is extremely probable and in particular localities of India it may have continued up to the period described in the Jâtakas.¹ As the royal power grew, this, with the rest of self-government, was more and more reduced; in the Magadha kingdom, the village superintendent remained under the personal supervision of the king, as appears from a passage of the Vinaya Piṭaka (Mahâvagga, V. I. 1 sq.): to the King Bimbisâra, a contemporary of Buddha, the overlordship of 80,000 villages is ascribed (asítiyâ gámasahassesu issarádhipaccam rajjam káreti); he collects together the chiefs (gámikas) of these villages and gives them instruction in worldly things (diṭṭhadhammike atthe anusási-tvá). About two hundred years later, King Asoka arranged a system of inspection tours for supervising the work of the administrative officers. "For this purpose"—so it is said in the first edict ²—"in accordance with the law (dhammate) I shall send every fifth year (an officer) who is neither harsh nor impetuous, but mild in his acts." This arrangement of Asoka agrees, as he probably himself wanted to indicate by the expression dhammate,³ with the prescriptions of the lawbooks: in Manu it is said (VII. 120 sq.), after the gradations of rank among the administrative officers¹ are pointed out: “The business of these (officers), who are concerned with village matters and their special obligations, another officer (saciva) of the king will examine who is mild and extremely industrious. And in every city he should appoint as a supervisor to look after all affairs, a magnanimous, highly esteemed person who is like a planet among the stars. The latter should visit these officers serially; he should examine their work in their districts through spies specially selected (for this purpose).”

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¹ In the introductory explanation, the king removes him and sends another *gāmabhojaka*.

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¹ This honour however, was not always shown, as the Gahapati Jâtaka shows: the *gâmabhojaka* who has committed adultery, is held by the hair by the husband, flung upon the floor of the house, and while he protests loudly against this, crying "I am the village superintendent" (*gâmabhojako'mhi* II. 135) is beaten to a jelly and driven out of the house.

Linked texts (9)

Jātaka — Pāli
Mānava Dharmaśāstra — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit
Mahāvagga — Pāli
Mahāvibhaṅga — Pāli
Cullavagga — Pāli
Vaiṣṇava Dharmaśāstra — Viṣṇu, Sanskrit
Assalāyanasutta — Pāli
Vinayapiṭaka — Pāli
Pātimokkha — Pāli