The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c12.32

c12.32

regular functionaries others were sometimes consulted. According to Strabo, the king employed messengers to obtain the advice of sages who lived in the jungles.¹ Megasthenes makes it clear that the king's government was carried on by a bureaucracy. From Strabo's version of Megasthenes, there appear to have been three classes of officers—the rural, urban and military. The first class was concerned with land revenue, irrigation which had been very remarkably developed, forests, communications and general supervision. To quote Strabo, “some superintend the rivers, measure the land, as is done in Egypt, and inspect the sluices, by which water is let out from the main channels into their branches, so that every one may have an equal supply of it. The same persons have charge also of the huntsmen, and are entrusted with the power of rewarding or punishing them according to their deserts. They collect the taxes and superintend the occupations connected with land, as those of the wood-cutters, the carpenters, the blacksmiths and the miners. They construct roads, and, at every ten stadia, set up a pillar to show the by-roads and distances.”