Local Government in Ancient India c13.172

c13.172

The relations between the local and the central government have been very systematically dealt with in the *Artha śāstra* of Kauṭilya, in which has been well worked out the delimitation of the boundaries of the two administrative authorities. The province in Kauṭilya's system was made up of four divisions or districts each of which was placed under a *sthānika* (a term which, curiously enough, is found in the South Indian inscriptions already referred to). Groups of five or ten villages were placed under the royal agent called Gopa. The duty of this agent seems to have been to supervise the working of the rural administrative machinery under the self-governing villages. The point of connexion between the village and the central government was the taxation imposed upon the former by the latter. This implied the execution of an elaborate land survey under a variety of items enumerated by Kauṭilya, some of which are similar to those mentioned in the inscriptions relating to the land survey of the Cola emperors. The taxable capacity of each village was accurately ascertained by the officers of the central government with reference to the following data, namely:
(1) The number of houses or holdings which were tax paying and non-tax paying.
(2) The number of inhabitants in each household of each of the four castes.
(3) The number of cultivators, cow-herds, traders, artisans, and serfs.