THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRESassume that it was conducted more or less in line with what had been
mentioned by Megasthenes and Kautalya. Then there were four large
provinces governed by princes (kumara or aryaputra) as governors or
viceroys. The viceroy of the Northwest resided at Taxila, the viceroy of the
East at Tosali in Kalinga (near Bhubaneswar, the present capital of Orissa),
the viceroy of the West at Ujjain, and the viceroy of the South at
Suvarnagiri (near Kurnool in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh).
As a newly discovered minor rock inscription at Panguraria in Madhya
Pradesh is addressed by Ashoka to a kumara, this inscription is interpreted
as an indication of the existence of a fifth province. But as the site of this
inscription is only about a hundred kilometres away from Ujjain, the
famous capital of the western province, the kumara addressed in this
inscription may well have been the viceroy of Ujjain.
The large provinces were divided into fairly extensive districts, headed by
mahamatras. The mahamatras were probably the high officers mentioned by
Megasthenes. They were responsible for the relation between the centre and
the provinces. In provincial towns they also were appointed as judges
(nagara-viyohalaka). In addition to the mahamatras the inscriptions mention
the following ranks of officers: pradeshika, rajuka and yukta. The latter
were petty officers, probably scribes and revenue collectors. The pradeshikas
were in charge of administrative units which could be compared to the
divisions of British India which included several districts. Whether the rajuka
was a district officer is not quite clear. The fourth pillar inscription belonging
to the twenty-sixth year of Ashoka’s reign mentions that the rajuka is
‘appointed over many hundred thousands of people’ and was given special
powers of penal jurisdiction, but the same inscription also states that the
rajukas had to obey orders conveyed by royal emissaries (pulisani) who, as
Ashoka emphasised, knew exactly what he wanted done.
References of this kind have often been used to show that Ashoka was
running a highly centralised direct administration of his whole empire. But
the pillar inscriptions which contain these latter references have so far been
found only in central Gangetic region and the Ganga-Yamuna Doab.
Similar inscriptions may still be found at other places, but the pillar
inscriptions discovered so far seem to indicate that this specific type of
administration prevailed only in the central part of the empire, and that the
provinces had a greater degree of administrative autonomy. However,
recently conquered Kalinga may have been an exception. In its rock edict,
the district administration of Samapa (Jaugada) was addressed directly
without reference to the district’s viceroy (kumara) at Tosali.
In modern historical maps Ashoka’s empire is often shown as covering
the whole subcontinent, with the exception of its southern tip. But if we look
at the sites where Ashoka’s inscriptions have been found, we clearly see a
definite regional pattern (see Map 4). These sites demarcate the five parts of
the empire. It is striking that the major rock edicts have so far been found