The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.s1.37

c13.s1.37

The problem is further complicated in that this land system implies a low degree of monetization. In order to realize a modicum of centralized power, the king would have to remunerate his officers in the neutral medium of cash and to concentrate the superior rights in the soil (and the political rights that go with it) in his own hands. Or, in other words, he would have to transform the body of cosharers, of “givers and takers of the realm,” into a corps of salaried officers. Indeed, Kauṭilya does give us pay scales for the different grades of mahāmātras. However, as it was, the king had to remain content with the diffusion of rights throughout the community, or at least throughout the ranks of the mahāmātras—a circumstance that Kauṭilya apparently acknowledges. The pay scales therefore seem a simplified conventional formula for status differences rather than real salaries.