Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c14.82

c14.82

Then there are “the hunters and herdsmen who neither settle in towns nor in villages but live in tents and lead a wandering life. They alone are allowed to hunt and to keep cattle and to sell draught animals and lend them to hire. By hunting and trapping, they clear the country of wild beasts and fowls, and of the pests with which it abounds, those wild beasts and birds which devour the seeds sown in the fields by the husbandmen. In return for their services they receive an allowance of grain from the king.”