The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Of the other categories a different term is used for the herdsmen, who are listed as tribes, presumably pastoralists still adhering to clan identities. Pastoralists were sufficiently visible to constitute a distinct social group. They may well have included some hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators, apart from horticulturalists who had come within the purview of the administration. These could be the people of the forest referred to as atavikas in Indian texts, since pastoralists frequently grazed their animals in forests and doubtless were familiar with the people who lived there.

  The status of the artisan would depend on his particular craft. Metalworkers, for instance, making armour and other expensive items, were accorded a higher status than weavers and potters; itinerant smiths, catering to the needs of households, had a low status despite the importance of their work. Wealthy artisans were counted among the gahapatis, householders, in Buddhist texts. Those with small incomes would have been among the shudras. Curiously, there is no mention of merchants, except that one of the Greek terms used for artisans suggests townsmen who could have been petty traders. Magistrates and councillors were obviously part of the administrative system and would tend to be either brahmans or kshatriyas, although exceptions are on record.

  The picture of Indian society presented by Megasthenes would suggest a more flexible society than has been assumed by modern scholars, and the differentiation between the upper and lower castes was derived from both economic and social status. A useful aspect of the description given by Megasthenes is that it depicts the range of societies that the Mauryan system was attempting to integrate. The distinctive characteristics of these probably changed only in areas where agriculture and commerce enveloped more simple and localized economies.

  Caste society need not have worked in the smooth manner envisaged by the brahman theoreticians. It assumed the validity of the principle of social inequality. The first three castes, the dvija or twice-born, were theoretically more privileged than the shudras and the outcastes. But vaishyas, though technically dvijas or twice-born, did not benefit recognizably from their privileged position, since they had an ambiguous relationship with the first two. Yet traders and merchants were by now economically powerful, because of the opening up of commerce. Confrontations between them and the socially superior castes would have been inevitable. Guild leaders in urban centres had a significant role in urban institutions, yet the social code denied them a position of prestige. However, narratives of urban life in Buddhist texts are not too troubled by brahmanical norms, although if taken literally the norms of the Dharmasutras would have been resented by the less privileged groups. A partial expression of such resentment would have been their support for the heterodox sects, Buddhism in particular. Buddhist texts, unlike the brahmanical, are respectful towards the setthis - the financiers and the merchants – who were often their patrons, as they also were of the other sects. This may well have caused friction between the brahmans and the heterodox sects. Ashoka’s emphatic plea for social harmony and repeated calls for equal respect towards brahmans and shramanas would suggest that there were social tensions.

  Activity related to women takes a variety of forms. There is a curious reference to the king’s bodyguard consisting of women archers who also accompanied him on hunts. This statement echoes some from other societies with similar royal bodyguards, presumably regarded as impeccably reliable. In addition, women were liable to be employed by the state as spies and performers. Women of the upper castes who had become impoverished or widowed, wives who had been deserted, or ageing prostitutes could get work from the state, such as spinning yarn, but their movements had to be circumspect. Should a peasant fall into debt his wife was required to continue farming his land if he still held it, so that the debt could be cleared. This was not required of women of the upper class. Yet, if a slave woman gave birth to her master’s child, both she and the child were immediately manumitted. Female ascetics were known, but were few and far between, and more frequently were found moving around as part of the palace scene in literary works. Kautilya has no qualms about insisting that prostitutes also be taxed on their takings. This would suggest that they were of a sufficient number to bring in a worthwhile amount in tax. That the state should be concerned about their welfare is evident from the punishments to be imposed on those who harmed them. Women camp-followers probably came from the same profession. As in many texts the discussion on women assumes that, other than these few groups, the majority of women followed the wishes of the men in their family.

  Surprisingly, there is no mention of either varna or jati in the Ashokan edicts, which may suggest that they were not yet so prominent as social categories. Social distinctions were, however, evident, and among the markers are the ways in which sculptural representations are used. The capitals surmounting the stone pillars that carried the edicts of Ashoka had animal motifs, and their representation seems to combine both a Buddhist and an imperial ideology. As a contrast to these, the small but extensive terracotta figures of animals and humans were more suggestive of a popular form drawing on religious ideas and decorative functions.

  Administration and Empire

  The economic conditions of the time and the requirements of the Mauryan period have tended to give the form of a centralized bureaucracy to the Mauryan administration, which has been imprinted with the structure envisaged in the Arthashastra. If this text can be presumed to reflect the changes of this period, then it can be argued that it was projecting the potentialities of a centralized administration. But the degree to which it was actually so, and the manner in which this administration was practised, may require a closer look at other texts claiming to be descriptive. The earlier assumption of a uniform and centralized administration needs modification. Nevertheless, some degree of centralization is suggested from other sources and this would have provided leads to the system as constructed in the Arthashastra. It might be more useful, therefore, to look at the variations within the system.

  The nucleus of the Mauryan system was the king, whose powers had by now increased tremendously. Ashoka interpreted these as paternal kingship, whose rallying call was ‘All men are my children’. He travelled extensively throughout the empire to be in touch with his subjects. Legislation was largely a matter of confirming social usage and in this the king had a fairly free hand, but was expected to consult with his ministers. The ministerial council had no well-defined political status, its power depending on the personality of the king. Ashoka’s edicts mention frequent consultations between him and his ministers, the latter being free to advise him on his regulations. However, the final decision lay with the monarch.

  If the Arthashastra can be taken as a guide to the kind of administration adopted by the Mauryas, then the two key offices controlled by the central administration were those of the treasurer and the chief collector. The treasurer was responsible for keeping an account of the income in cash and for storing the income in kind. The chief collector, assisted by a body of clerks, kept records of the taxes that came in from various parts of the empire. The accounts of every administrative department, properly kept, were to be presented jointly by all the ministers to the king, perhaps to avoid fraud and embezzlement. Each department had a large staff of superintendents and subordinate officers, linked to local administration and the central government. Those specifically listed in the Arthashastra are the superintendents of gold and goldsmiths, and of the storehouse, commerce, forest produce, the armoury, weights and measures, tolls, weaving, agriculture, liquor, slaughterhouses, prostitutes, ships, cows, horses, elephants, chariots, infantry, passports and the city.

  Salaries of officials and expenditure on public works constituted a sizeable portion of public expenses, one-quarter of the total revenue being reserved for these. The figures given for the salaries of those running the administration come from a section of the text that is believed to be post-Mauryan. The hierarchy that emerges is of some interest in explaining where the emphasis lay in administration. T
he higher officials were extremely well paid according to this scheme and such salaries could have been a drain on the treasury. The chief minister, the purohita, and the army commander received 48,000 panas, the treasurer and the chief collector 24,000; the accountants, clerks and soldiers received 500 panas, whereas the ministers were paid 12,000; and artisans received 120 panas. The value of the pana is not indicated, nor the interval at which salaries were paid, assuming that they were paid in money. Some comparison can be made with other sources, mentioning that a pair of oxen cost 24 panas and a slave could be bought for 100 panas. These may not have been the actual salaries but the implicit ratios in these amounts are of interest. Thus, the ratio of the clerk’s salary to that of the chief minister or of the soldier to that of the commander of the army works out at i: 96.

  The upper levels of the bureaucracy would have been extraordinarily well paid if these ratios are even reasonably correct. Public works covered a wide range of activity: building and maintaining roads, wells and rest-houses, and planting orchards, as stated by Ashoka in his edicts; irrigation projects such as the Sudarshana lake; maintaining the army; running the mines; financing certain kinds of items in which the state had a monopoly, such as armour; the grants of the royal family to religious institutions and individuals, for example where Ashoka refers to the gifts made by his queen; and the maintenance of the royal family itself.

  Administration doubtless attempted to follow some of the prevailing precepts, but also had to adjust to the political and economic reality. The Arthashastra endorsed a highly centralized system where the king’s control over the entire exercise remained taut. This would have been difficult for an area as vast as that of the Mauryan Empire, economically and culturally so diverse, although it could have been possible in a smaller area such as Magadha, the governance of which seems closer to what Kautilya envisaged. It may be more realistic to suggest that the administration was adjusted to the socio-economic patterns and differentiations. Seen from this perspective, three variants in the administrative pattern can be suggested which would be appropriate for distinctly different conditions, but which would all the same underlie the emphasis on revenue collection and redistribution.

  At the hub was the metropolitan state of Magadha, an area with long experience of functioning as a state. The Ganges Plain was doubtless part of the same system. This is broadly the area of the distribution of the Pillar Edicts of Ashoka, many of which are his retrospective on his reign. Although the location of the pillars doubtless had to do with access to transportation by river, it would have been an interesting coincidence if this was the area of maximum centralized administration which probably functioned more closely to the Kautilyan system than elsewhere. The metropolitan state was the pivot of the empire, controlling the income and its redistribution. It extended its hegemony by conquering areas of strategic importance and of agrarian and commercial potential, the revenue from which would enrich it. Such areas could be regarded as core areas, scattered throughout the subcontinent and constituting a second category that was distinct from the metropolitan state.

  The core areas were less directly under central control and more effectively under the control of governors and senior officials. As areas brought into the ambit of the Mauryan system they experienced state formation at second remove. The state was foisted on them through conquest and they subsequently accommodated themselves to the new situation, being incorporated into the state system. The imperial administration would have attempted to restructure the economy of these areas to bring them into some conformity with the metropolitan state. Core areas seem to coincide with closer clusters of Ashokan edicts and the Major Rock Edicts, such as those in Gandhara, in the Raichur doab and southern Karnataka, in Kalinga and in Saurashtra. The importance of Gandhara was that it controlled access to the Hellenistic kingdoms of west Asia and was an obvious area for commercial exchange. In Karnataka the locations of the inscriptions seem to have been determined by the potential for mining gold and the activities of chalcolithic and megalithic people. Urban centres were probably initially limited to Mauryan administrative centres, such as Suvarnagiri, perhaps so named because of its proximity to gold-mining areas. Mining was an important source of wealth and, apart from the availability of gold in Karnataka, there was copper in Rajasthan and iron in south Bihar. Some of the core areas would have included the peoples mentioned in the edicts, such as the Kambojas, Yonas, Bhojas, Pitinikas and Andhras, all of which were located in the imperial domain.

  The third form was that of the peripheral areas, which have been called areas of relative isolation rather than attraction, and where extensive settlements were more limited. The imperial administration did not attempt to restructure the economy of these areas but limited its activities to tapping the existing resources. Peripheral areas were probably controlled more by fiat than by conquest and direct administration. Such territories were often viewed as buffer zones. These were generally forested areas providing a wealth of resources in timber, elephants and semi-precious stones. It would not be surprising if the people living in the forests tapped these resources more effectively than the Mauryan administration, and the administration would have had working relations with them in order to obtain the resources. Some who were brought within the ambit of the Mauryan administration, the atavikas or forest-dwellers, were referred to in the Ashokan edicts.

  These references to the forest-people are in a tone that is both cajoling and threatening. The threat may have resulted from a resistance by forest-dwellers to encroachments. These were not always related to a control over the area by the army or the administration, but could also arise from hermitages or settlements of graziers and cultivators that often acted as the vanguard of a more determined intrusion. To the forest-dwellers they were alien and invasive, since the norms of the forest-dwellers were different from those of the settlers. For the latter, the former were without norms and unpredictable, and therefore often mythologized into the demons of the forest.

  In the peninsula the societies of the megalithic settlements, cultivating rice, using iron artefacts and with elaborate burials, were more complex compared to the forest-dwellers who coexisted with them. A Mauryan presence is not registered in any striking way among the artefacts in the megalithic remains, although Ashokan inscriptions are located in these areas and refer to Mauryan administration. Possibly, resources were tapped by the administration through local channels without any extensive restructuring of the economy in these areas. There is a cluster of Ashokan inscriptions in the gold-bearing region of Karnataka and it is likely that the ore was mined. It is otherwise difficult to explain why there should have been so much administrative activity in the area, even though gold objects from Mauryan levels are rare.

  The suggestion that Mauryan administration and economy be viewed in terms of the metropolitan state, together with core and peripheral areas, should not be confused with what has been described as the segmentary state. Terms such as centre, core and periphery have been used in historical models other than the segmentary state, for example in the analyses of commerce relating to the function of markets and production. The Mauryan system suggested here had little to do with ritual status, ritual hierarchies or the separation of the political from the ritual. Mauryan control over administration and revenue collection did not vary, but rather there were variant mechanisms and forms in this control. Thus, it is possible that the chiefs among the forest-dwellers collected the forest produce demanded by the Mauryan administration and were the channels by which the administration obtained this tax in kind. Ashoka’s admonition to the people of the forests does not suggest a dilution of Mauryan control.

  The edicts make it evident that the empire was not viewed as consisting of uniform units of administration and they acknowledge the presence of diverse peoples. The variants suggested here accommodated these diversities without detracting from the general, overall control exercised by the imperial administration, or from the recognition that the metropolitan sta
te was at the heart of the Mauryan system however uniform it was. This is made clear by the King’s statement to the forest-dwellers which was conciliatory but accompanied by the threat that the state could be severe. The Arthashastra also warns that the forest-dwellers, although at some levels marginal, can be a danger when kings are campaigning in the area and should therefore be treated with suspicion and, if possible, appeased. They are a political reality and have to be treated tactfully. Mention is also made of the presence of pastoralists, in addition to cultivators, and the archaeology of this period points to a variety of settlements. The coexistence of such diversity required a focus, but also required diverse ways of administrative handling. Acknowledging diversity requires more than a single pattern of administration, and these patterns have to be flexible since the diversities were to be found in various parts of the empire.

  Apart from the metropolitan area, which was directly governed, the empire was divided into provinces, each one apparently under a prince or member of the royal family. Centres of provincial administration were located at Taxila, Ujjain, Dhauli, Suvarnagiri and possibly Girnar. Governors administering smaller units were selected from among the local people, such as the Iranian Tushaspa associated with Saurashtra, or Romo-dote at Taxila. Senior officers – pradesbikas – toured every five years for an additional audit and check on provincial administration. There were specially appointed judicial officers – rajukas – both in the cities and rural areas, and they combined their judicial functions with assessment work. Among the duties of the yukta was the recording of information from varied sources. Fines served as punishments in most cases. But certain crimes were considered too serious to be punished by fines alone and Ashoka, despite his propagation of non-violence, retained capital punishment.