The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t15: 6. Pax Sârva-bhaumica and Pax Romana
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t15
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6. Pax Sârva-bhaumica and Pax Romana
c11.t15.1
The administrative history of the Ândhra, Kuṣân, Pâla, Châlukya and other Empires still awaits the minute scrutiny of epigraphists. The stray notice about the Sudarśana tank in the fifth century proves that the Gupta Empire at any rate was no less efficiently governed than had been that of the Mauryas. And what was their system of national government? The Hindu *chakravartis*, *châturantas*, *sârva-bhaumas* or world-rulers of the third and fourth centuries B. C., dictated duties to the governors of provincal capitals at Taxila on the Afghan frontier, Tosalî in Orissa, Ujjayinî in the west and probably Suvarṇa-giri in the Deccan south of the Narmadâ. They knew how to command a net-work of fortresses situated at mathematically-calculated strategic points. They built up a bureaucratic hierarchy, which emanated from Pâtali-putra and filtering through the “district” jurisdictions administered by *sthânikas* came down to the village-nuclei under the *gopas*. Their financial organization embraced in its all-seizing sweep, as we shall see later on, the destination of every material resource and the destiny of every animal and human being. Evidently the Hindus of Maurya India were past masters in the art of nation-making i. e. centralized and unified rule.
c11.t15.2
The Oriental student of comparative politics may therefore legitimately ask: “What more was achieved by European imperialism, by the *pax Romana* of Diocletian and Constantine,² for instance? Were the efficiency and thoroughness of Maurya statesmen surpassed in any epoch of occidental polity?”
c11.t15.3
² Frank’s *Roman Imperialism*, 353; Abbott’s *Roman Political Institutions*, 334—340; Arnold, pp. 158—162, 188, 191.
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The evidences of the Tamil inscriptions of Southern India, the Sanskrit inscription of Rudra-dâmana, Asoka’s Edicts, Megasthenes, and the *Artha-śâstra* in regard to Hindu imperial nationalism and provincial administration can be borne out by the accounts of empire-states given in epics like the *Mahâbhârata*,³ and suggested in law-books like those of Gautama, Âpastamba, and Manu. The picture of nationalities that these literary sources exhibit is that of a centripetal tendency and homo-
c11.t15.5
³ *J. A. O. S.*, 1889, p. 84. geneous compacture of the kind systematically promoted by the Bourbons from Louis IX to Louis XIV.
Linked texts (6)
- Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
- Mānava Dharmaśāstra — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit
- Āpastambadharmasūtra — Āpastamba, Sanskrit
- Gautamadharmasūtra — Gautama (dharmasūtrakāra), Sanskrit
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Ἰνδικά — Μεγασθένης, Ancient Greek