Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity (Based on the Arthashastra of Kautilya), Vol. I c9.s1.1

c9.s1.1

CONSIDERING the vast extent of the empire of Chandra Gupta, embracing as it did the whole of Northern India from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea, an area wider even than that of British India, it is evident that the machinery of government by which the administration of this mighty empire was carried on was highly elaborate and developed, the product of evolution through centuries. It implied the existence of all the principal factors on which depends the efficiency of such governments, viz., a well-disciplined army of sufficient strength, a well-organized system of administration, and a well-developed system of communication by which the heart of the empire was brought into constant and vital connexion with its distant and various parts. We shall have occasion to speak in another place of the organization of Chandra Gupta’s army and administration. In the present chapter we shall confine ourselves to an account of the means of communication that existed in Chandra Gupta’s time, the network of roads, trade routes and water routes, etc., that, radiating from the centre at Pāṭaliputra towards the four quarters of the empire, covered up the entire territory embraced by it. Among the principal agencies of transport, we shall have to refer to vehicles and conveyances as also to ships and boats which established and carried on the intercourse not only between the different parts of the country along the recognized water routes, but also the intercourse of the empire with the outside world across the seas.