The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c14.100

c14.100

The same three fold motive of regulating life, detecting thieves and spies, and securing some revenue for the state underlies Kauṭalya's excise policy. In town and country, camp and forts, the state should itself establish liquor shops at suitable distances from one another or license private individuals to do so according to the laws of supply and demand. Kauṭalya would furnish public houses with beds and seats and enhance their attractions with scents, garlands of flowers, water and other comforts. Stringent regulations on the sale and use of liquor and other fermentations are given but the code of temperance was to be relaxed for four days on occasions of festivity, fairs and pilgrimages.¹ On the slaughter of animals and the sale of meat, Kauṭalya is equally minute.² According to the Arthaśāstra, all professions and occupations are to be controlled by the state. For instance, physicians should report all cases of grave illness to the government. If death occurred in an unreported case, the physician should be punished with the first amercement. If in any case death was due to his carelessness, he should receive the middlemost amercement, while positive neglect or indifference was to be treated as assault or violence.³ Similarly, rules with an amazing fulness of detail are given for the conduct of goldsmiths, weavers of various descriptions, washermen, and others,⁴ while a series of veritable draft statutes of labourers prescribes, *inter alia*, that artisans must fulfil their engagements as to time, place and form of work and obey the instructions duly given, on pain of forfeiting their ways or paying damages or both.⁵