The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c14.142

c14.142

Portfolios should be occasionally exchanged. Every minister should have a number of assistants and, it seems, should control one or more departments officered by Superintendents. Śâsanas, or Royal commands and decisions should be drawn up by Lekhakas or Secretaries in prescribed form and jargon and duly transmitted to departments.² The precise grouping of the Departments is not stated by Kauṭalya but his work, as a whole, suffices to give an idea of the working of the Departments of Stores, Forest Produce, Agriculture, Pasture lands, Cows, Slaughter-houses, Weights and Measures, the Goldsmith, Commerce, Tolls, Excise, Passports, Ships, etc. On the military side the chief departments are those of Armoury, Elephants, Horses, Chariots and Infantry.³ Every department is provided with a regular secretariat. Messengers formed almost a department by themselves. The Department of Accounts was a remarkable one. It should be located in a building called the Accountant's office with a door facing the north or the east. Seats should be duly arranged for the clerks, and shelves provided for the multitudes of account-books. Kauṭalya seems to divide the office into several sections, pertaining to the various Departments. A record should be kept of all financial dealings with friendly or hostile sovereigns, together with the treaties and ultimatums which determined them. Corporations or guilds were to be dealt with by a different section. So, too, provinces, villages and families whose customs, professions and transactions were to be duly noted. Gems, precious stones, and other things should be registered with meticulous care—"the rate of their price, the rate of their barter, the counterweights used in weighing them, their number, their weight, and their cubical measure." But the most complicated of all branches of accounts seems to have been that relating to government factories. "The description of the work carried on, and of the results realised, in several manufactories; the amount of profit, loss, expenditure, delayed earnings, the amount of Vyâji (premia in kind or cash) realised—the status of government agency employed, the amount of wages paid, the number of free labourers engaged, pertaining to the investment of capital of any work"—all should be accurately given.¹