The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c12.20

c12.20

The government of the country was despotic. The king not only reigned but ruled from day to day. Curtius, in his History of Alexander the Great, notes that the Indian king’s palace “is open to all comers even when the king is having his hair combed and dressed. It is then that he gives audience to ambassadors, and administers justice to his subjects.”² Strabo says that the king never slept during the day-time and that the hearing of cases occupied him the whole day.³ All the same he lived in the greatest luxury and pomp. The splendour and magnificence of the palace far surpassed that of Susa and Ekbatana. “In the parks,” continues Aelian on the basis of Megasthenes, “tame