The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.92

c21.92

It is only the Persian empire which lends itself to ready comparison with the ancient Hindu system. The Roman Empire was built on different principles and in several respects was the antithesis of the Hindu system. Rome stood for centralisation, uniformity, rigidity, efficiency at all costs. The Hindu system made for localism, variety, flexibility. Only a few court and palace officers are common to the two. After the fall of 'the city on the Tiber,' the Byzantine Empire or the later Roman Empire as Bury prefers to call it, partly received Oriental influences and thus came slightly nearer the contemporary Hindu state. Even here, the difference is striking enough. The Byzantine Empire was "mainly an aggregate of cities which were originally independent states, and which still were allowed to retain enough of independence and of their municipal government to stand in their old relation of exclusiveness to one another."' The Hindu system had never known the city-state and treated the city almost as an accident. Again, while the aristocracy of the Roman Empire was an aristocracy of officials,² the Hindu aristocracy was based on birth as well as partly on office. None the less a few of the officers remind one of India. In the Roman Empire, "the grand chamberlain was a functionary rendered necessary by the oriental tincture, given to the imperial surroundings by the policy of Diocletian. He issued commands to all the officers connected with the palace and the emperor's person, including the count of the wardrobe, the count of the residence, the officer of the bed-room, and also to the officers of the palace bodyguard, called Silentiarii. His constant attendance on the emperor gave this minister an opportunity of exercising a vast influence for good or evil, especially if the emperor happened, like Arcadius, to be of a weak and pliable disposition." Again, "the count of the sacred bounties was the lord-treasurer or chancellor of the exchequer, for the public treasury and the imperial fisc had come to be identical; while the count of the private estates managed the imperial demesnes and the Privy purse." The magister officiorum, the master of the offices, performed some miscellaneous duties. "He had control over the bureaus of imperial correspondence, over messengers despatched on imperial orders, over the soldiers on guard at the palace, over manufactories of arms . . . ."¹ These arrangements recall ancient India. For the rest, the Roman and Hindu systems were so utterly divergent that chance analogies hardly count for anything.