The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c15.20

c15.20

Details of the duties and functions connected with this office we cannot obtain from our source. Possibly the king required him in order to exercise supervision over trade in accordance with the prescriptions of the lawbooks¹ and for the purpose of controlling through him the administration² of the laws relating to trade societies and guilds. Perhaps, along with this, he required of him personal service, management of money affairs, superintendence of the king’s treasury; in any case, he seems by virtue of his immense wealth to have become indispensable to the king, as we find him constantly in his retinue. Out of the daily intercourse friendship sometimes grew between the king and his seṭṭhi, and just as was the case with the purohita, the fact of the office being hereditary in the same seṭṭhi family may have contributed towards making this family intimately connected with the ruling house. In the Aṭṭhâna Jâtaka (III. 475) the heir presumptive and the son of the seṭṭhi of Benares are playmates and are taught and educated in the house of the same teacher. Also after the prince has succeeded to the throne, the son of the seṭṭhi lives in his neighbourhood and later, after the death of his father, when he himself becomes seṭṭhi, he goes three times daily to the palace of the king and talks with him until nightfall. “Where is my friend?”, cries the king as one day he misses the seṭṭhi.