A History of India, Third Edition

THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES

private person is permitted to own land. In addition to this general rent
they give one quarter of their produce to the state’. Megasthenes then
named the herdsmen who lived outside the villages, then the traders and
artisans ‘who get their food from the royal storage’. The fifth estate were
the soldiers who, like the war horses and war elephants, also got their food
from the royal storage. The sixth estate was that of the inspectors and spies
who reported everything to the emperor. The seventh estate was that of the
advisors and officers of the king who looked after the administration, the
law courts, etc., of the empire.
Although these seven social strata were not listed in any Indian text in
this fashion (which does not seem to pay attention to any hierarchical
order), there are references to each of them in Indian texts, too. The
general impression we get from Megasthenes’ report is that of a centrally
administered, well-organised state. Of special interest are his categorical
assertions that all land belonged to the emperor, that artisans and soldiers
were supported directly by the state and that spies reported on everything
that went on in the empire. Perhaps these observations were applicable
only to the capital and its immediate hinterland which was the area which
Megasthenes knew well. But Kautalya’s famous account of the proper
organisation of an empire also talks about espionage.

The political system of the Arthashastra

The Arthashastra which is attributed to Kautalya, the Prime Minister and
chief advisor of Chandragupta, provides an even more coherent picture of
a centrally administered empire in which public life and the economy are
controlled by the ruler. Ever since this ancient text was rediscovered and
published in the year 1909 scholars have tried to interpret this text as an
accurate description of Chandragupta’s system of government. There is a
consensus that Kautalya was the main author of this famous text and that
he lived around 300 BC, but it is also accepted that parts of this text are
later additions and revisions, some of which may have been made as late as
AD 300.
Kautalya depicts a situation in which several small rival kingdoms each
have a chance of gaining supremacy over the others if the respective ruler
follows the instructions given by Kautalya. In ancient Indian history the
period which corresponds most closely to Kautalya’s description is that of
the mahajanapadas before Magadha attained supremacy. Thus it seems
more likely that Kautalya related in normative terms what he had come to
know about this earlier period than that his account actually reflected the
structure of the Mauryan empire during Chandragupta’s reign. Thus the
Arthashastra should not be regarded as a source for the study of the
history of the empire only but also for the history of state formation in the
immediately preceding period. The relevance of the Arthashastra for