The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c12.70

c12.70

There are a few statements in Megasthenes which seem to indicate that the Mauryan dominions included some protectorates, monarchical or oligarchical. The overseers, as a class, are said to "make report to the king, or where the state is without a king, to the magistrates."³ According to Arrian, cultivators pay tribute to the king and the independent states.⁴ Since the fact of Mauryan overlordship over the whole of North India is well-established, the only probable explanation of these passages is that there were some autonomous principalities within its bounds. It seems that the Western oligarchies, noticed by the Greeks, passed into the orbit of the Mauryan empire without changing their constitution or relinquishing their internal self-government.