Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c8.56

c8.56

Nothing illustrates the all-absorbing character of the activity of Kautalya's state better than the control prescribed over public amusements and entertainments. The state was to endow academies of dramatic art where actors and actresses would learn reading and writing, music and song, dancing and painting, and where they would master a complete code of deportment and blandishment. Here, too, the sons of prostitutes might be trained to be "chief actors," "stars," as we should say, of the stage. The door was open to public women themselves. If the modern conscience is shocked, it is only fair to surmise that the stage and the music-hall might have served as steps to the elevation of the fallen. Dancers, and rope-dancers, buffoons and jugglers, mimic-players and troubadours, were other members of the class which ministered to public enjoyment. One of the ways in which the state was to patronise them was by levying a fee of five panas on their foreign competitors who came to practise their arts. Natives and foreigners alike, all should present their daily budgets to the authorities, and pay one-fifteenth of their income as taxes. But no amount of taxation seems to have affected their flourishing trade. Tremendous was the popularity they enjoyed. They formed themselves into companies and wandered from place to place. Everywhere they received plenty of remuneration in the form of provisions and drinks, cash and free labour. If they prolonged their sojourns, they tended to impoverish the population. Kautalya decreed that villages should not erect permanent halls for sport and plays. Some of the companies, thanks to their organisation, acquired considerable strength. Kautalya ruled that they might play as they liked, but “they shall strictly avoid giving too much indulgence, or causing too much loss to any one” or “they shall be punished with a fine of twelve paṇas.” During the rains, they were, in their own interest, forbidden to move about. Besides the revenue and the public good, Kautalya seems to have had another motive in advising the state to concern itself with entertainment companies. Actresses and others cultivated foreign languages, learnt code-signalling, secretly served as detective police, watched the doings of foreign spies and themselves acted as spies in foreign lands.¹