The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t4.9

c10.s1.t4.9

These instances give us an insight into the amount of centralization and administrative unification achieved in Hindu India under efficient and masterful rulers. More comprehensive and far-reaching had certainly been the nationalizing consolidation brought about by the Maurya emperors, if we can depend on the financial and land measures described in the *Artha-śâstra*.¹ Nay, it is difficult to believe that the *gopa* (village officer), the lowest grade member of the imperial civil service under Chandra-gupta or Asoka, left any important executive work to be administered by the rural *sabhâ* through any of its committees. Too thorough and exacting were the supervision and control imposed on the *panchâyats* by the Supreme Government. The village *sva-râjes*, those primary units of self-rule, must then have been reduced, generally speaking, to an atrophied state, the moribund condition, say, of the French rural communes under the *ancien régime* of Richelieu.² To cite a modern analogue, the *de facto* initiative and responsibility of the Maurya rural assemblies were not more real than is the sham "local self-government" enjoyed by the municipalities and district boards of British India at the beck and call of the District Magistrate.³ It is surprising and significant, at any rate, that Kautilya does not mention even by name these local nuclei of public life, although of course his silence does not argue their total annihilation.⁴