The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t13: 4. Roads and National Unification
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t13
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4. Roads and National Unification
c11.t13.1
Census and cadastral survey were thus normal processes in the Hindu machinery of imperial nationalism. Among the agencies by which the civil service contributed to the establishment of *pax sârva-bhaumica* (peace of the world-empire) we must also mention the roads, both strategic and commercial. These were deliberately laid out by the bureaucracy in order to bring the different parts of the empire within easy reach of one another. One such imperial thoroughfare was the grand trunk road all along the Coromandel coast (Eastern) covering about 1200 miles from the banks of the Mahânadî in Orissa to Kottaru near Cape Comorin at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula.² It was constructed by Kulot-tûnga (1070—1118) specifically for the extensive campaigns that he undertook in the north and the south. As bulwarks of his vast empire he, moreover, planted agricultural colonies along this road. Really of a military character were these plantations, as the territories were allotted to the army officers who occupied the settlements at the head of the forces at their command.³
c11.t13.2
² *Ibid*, 188—189.
c11.t13.3
³ *Ibid*, 143.
c11.t13.4
It is evident that in the annals of imperial Rome nobody was a greater administrative genius than the Châlukya-Chola monarch of the early twelfth century. And Kulot-tûnga, "the highest in the family", was but continuing the tradition of the first *sârva-bhaumas* of India, the Mauryas, whose civil engineers had constructed a magnificent highway from Pâtali-putra to the Afghan frontier, a distance of 10,000 *stadia* (over 1,100 miles).⁴ Besides, in an account of the achievements of the Hindu civil service we must not omit to mention the monumental irrigation works that signalized the "developmental functions" of Indian states from at least the time of Megasthenes' observations, — in Kashmir as in Ceylon, in Gujarat as in Madras.)
c11.t13.5
⁴ Arrian's *Indika*, III.
Linked texts (1)
- Ἰνδική — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek