Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
The Greek gave a pleasant, perhaps a lenient, account, of Hindu life in his time. Concerning the condition and organization of the vast Maurya empire the Greeks have provided us with a considerable body of valuable information : and, as the Arthashastra furnishes the means of describing the complete polity existing at the time, its land system, its fiscal system, its administrative system, its law, its social system, with some view of literature and religion.
Chandragupta’s capital, Pataliputra
The oldest of the two thousand cities of northern India in Chandragupta’s time was Taxila, twenty miles northwest of the modern Rawalpindi. The imperial capital Pataliputra or Kusumapura, the Palibothra of the Greeks, which was situated on the south side of the Ganges, to the east of its confluence with the Sun, is described by Megasthenes. Its ruins lie for the most part under the modern city of Patna-Bankipore; and part of its ancient rampart has been found in situ. Arrian describes it as “a large and prosperous city”; Strabo saysRoads were constructed by the royal officers, and at intervals of ‘ten stades’ were sign-boards noting turnings and distances. The Greeks make special mention of the ‘royal route’ from the N.W. frontier to Pataliputra. Communications were maintained by couriers, while in the woods roamed trappers and forest-rangers. Towns were numerous, in so much that the Greeks report as many as two thousand placed under the rule of Porus, and Megasthenes ascribes some thirty to the Andhra country alone. They ranged from the market town (samgrahana), serving the uses of ten villages, through the county towns (kharvataka and dronamukha at a river’s mouth) for 200 or 400 villages, the provincial capital (sthaniya, or Thana), the great city (nagara, pura) or port (pattana) to the royal capital (rajadhani), all provided with defences of varying solidity. There were also forts on the frontiers or in special situations, such as in the middle of lakes or swamps, hidden in forests, or perched on heights.
Megasthenes describes Chandragupta’s capital, Pataliputra, as nine miles in length and almost two miles in width. The palace of the King was of timber, but the Greek ambassador ranked it as excelling the royal residences of Susa and Ecbatana, being surpassed only by those at Persepolis. Its pillars were plated with gold, and ornamented with designs of bird- life and foliage; its interior was sumptuously furnished and adorned with precious metals and stones. There was a certain Oriental ostentation in this culture, as in the use of gold vessels six feet in diameter;” but an
English historian concludes, from the testimony of the literary, pictorial and material remains, that “in the fourth and third centuries before Christ the command of the Maurya monarch over luxuries of all kinds and skilled craftsmanship in all the manual arts was not inferior to that enjoyed by the Mogul emperors eighteen centuries later.”
It was both a military and a university town, strategically situated on the main road to Western Asia, and containing the most famous of the several universities possessed by India at that time. Students flocked to Taxila as in the Middle Ages they flocked to Paris; there all the arts and sciences could be studied under eminent professors, and the medical school especially was held in high repute throughout the Oriental world.( The excavations of Sir John Marshall on the site of Taxila have unearthed delicately carved stones, highly polished statuary, coins as old as 600 B.C., and glassware of a fine quality never bettered in later India. ”It is manifest,” says Vincent Smith, “that a high degree of material civilization had been attained, and that all the arts and crafts incident to the life of a wealthy, cultured city were familiar.’)
The Palace of Chandragupta
The palace is a walled building, with the women’s apartments, gardens, and tanks in the rear. In front of these is the innermost court, where the king on awakening is saluted by the various domestic officials, and, according to Aelian also by an elephant. The next is the station of a sham body-guard of dwarfs, hunchbacks, wild men, etc.; while the outermost of all, communicating with the exterior, is occupied by an armed retinue, and by ministers and connexions.
Everything bespeaks precaution. The structure of the palace itself includes mazes, secret and underground passages, hollow pillars, hidden staircases, collapsible floors. Against fire, poisonous animals, and other poisons there is diverse provision, including trees which snakes avoid, parrots and sharika birds which cry out on seeing a serpent, other birds which are variously affected by the sight of poison. Everyone has his own apartments, and none of the interior officials are allowed to communicate with the outside. The women are carefully watched by attendants, male and female; not even their relatives are admitted to them, except in time of childbirth or illness. All employees coming from without, such as nautch women, undergo bath and massage and change their dress before admission. Material objects, as they pass in and out, are placed on record and under seal. According to Megasthenes, the king changes his apartment every night.
The kitchen is in a secret place, and there is a multitude of tasters. The signs of poison in the viands and in the demeanour of the persons are carefully noted. Medicaments must pass similar tests. The instruments of the shampooer and others must be handled by the body-guard, and the persons themselves bathed, etc.: articles of ornament and apparel are inspected by female slaves; cosmetics, etc., are first tried on those who apply them. If actors are admitted, the orchestra and other appurtenances separate them from the spectator. The king rides or drives in the company of high officials. When he embarks upon a ship, the same is the case; no other vessel must be near, and troops are stationed on the shore. Similar precautions attend the hunt. Foreign emissaries are received in durbar, and the king inspects his troops armed and mounted on elephant or horse. In his progresses the roads are lined on both sides by police who keep away all armed persons, ascetics, and cripples: he never enters a crowd. Should he take part in a procession, banquet, festival, or wedding, it is in full retinue.
A day in the life of Chandragupta
In this palace Chandragupta, having won the throne by violence, lived for twenty-four years as in a gilded jail. Occasionally he appeared in public, clad in fine muslin embroidered with purple and gold, and carried in a golden palanquin or on a gorgeously accoutred elephant. Except when he rode out to the hunt, or otherwise amused himself, he found his time crowded with the business of his growing realm. His days were divided into sixteen periods of ninety minutes each. In the first he arose, and prepared himself by meditation; in the second he studied the reports of his agents, and issued secret instructions; the third he spent with his councillors in the Hall of Private Audience; in the fourth he attended to state finances and national defence; in the fifth he heard the petitions and suits of his subjects; in the sixth he bathed and dined, and read religious literature; in the seventh he received taxes and tribute, and made official appointments; in the eighth he again met his Council, and heard the reports of his spies, including the courtesans whom he used for this purpose; the ninth he devoted to relaxation and prayer, the tenth and eleventh to military matters, the twelfth again to secret reports, the thirteenth to the evening bath and repast, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth to sleep. Perhaps the historian tells us what Chandragupta might have been, or how Kautilya wished the people to picture him, rather than what he really was. Truth does not often escape from palaces.
Administration
The actual direction of government was in the hands of the crafty vizier. Kautilya was a Brahman who knew the political value of religion, but took no moral guidance from it; like our modern dictators he believed that every means was justifiable if used in the service of the state. He was unscrupulous and treacherous, but never to his King; he served Chandragupta through exile, defeat, adventure, intrigue, murder and victory, and by his wily wisdom made the empire of his master the greatest that India had ever known. Like the author of The Prince, Kautilya saw fit to preserve in writing his formulas for warfare and diplomacy; tradition ascribes to him the Arthashastra, the oldest book in extant Sanskrit literature.” As an example of its delicate realism we may take its list of means for capturing a fort: “Intrigue, spies, winning over the enemy’s people, siege, and assault” a wise economy of physical effort.
In principle the towns were of rectangular shape and divided into four regions, each under a special official and composed of wards. The houses were generally of wood, and of two or three storeys, the more splendid ones including several courts, one behind the other. There were royal palaces, workshops, storehouses, arsenals, and prisons. The streets were provided with watercourses draining the houses and issuing into the moat : against misuse of them, or of the cemeteries outside, by deposit of rubbish or dead bodies, by loosing animals, by conveyances not under proper charge, by funerals conducted through irregular ways or at unlawful hours, penalties are laid down. The houses were forbidden to have windows overlooking each other, except across the street. The precautions against fire included the provision of vessels of water ‘in thousands’ in the streets : every householder must sleep in the forepart of his dwelling, and he is under the obligation of rendering assistance in case of fire, while arson is punished by burning alive. The trumpet sounds the beginning and end of the nocturnal interval, during which, except on special occasions, none must stir abroad. Approach to the guard-houses and palaces is prohibited, as also is music at unseasonable times. The city chief reports all incidents, and takes charge of lost and ownerless property.
Transport and roads
The Department of Navigation regulated water transport, and protected travellers on rivers and seas; it maintained bridges and harbours, and provided government ferries in addition to those that were privately managed and owned ” an admirable arrangement whereby public competition could check private plunder, and private competition could discourage official extravagance. The Department of Communications built and repaired roads throughout the empire, from the narrow wagon-tracks of the villages to trade routes thirty-two feet, and royal roads sixty-four feet, wide. One of these imperial highways extended twelve hundred miles from Pataliputra to the north-western frontier a distance equal to half the transcontinental spread of the United States. At approximately every mile, says Alegasthenes, these roads were marked with pillars indicating directions and distances to various destinations.” Shade-trees, wells, police-stations and hotels were provided at regular intervals along the route. Transport was by chariots, palanquins, bullock-carts, horses, camels, elephants, asses and men.
The Army
Coming now to the army, we find that the native Indian accounts present a view of the case rather less simple than does Megasthenes. According to these accounts the army might consist of troops of different kinds, namely hereditary or feudatory troops, hired troops, gild levies, and forest tribes. In the first named, which were regarded as the most trustworthy, we may doubtless recognize the old Kshatriya division of society, connected by caste, and ultimately by race, with the king himself, such as in later times we find them in the quasi-feudal states of Rajputana.
In the second class also the Kshatriya element would probably predominate, though here there would be, no doubt, a career for any bold adventurer with a strong arm and a soldierly bent As concerns the gild troops, which are plainly regarded as having a chiefly defensive character, there is some room for doubt : were they merely the ordinary trade gilds, as an organization for calling out the people for service in time of invasion, a sort of militia or landler? Or were they quasi-military corporations, such as the modern Brinjaras, whose business was to supply merchants and others with armed protection of a quasi-professional character? While refraining from a decisive pronunciation, we cannot but incline in the circumstances to the former alternative, for which the gilds of medieval Europe supply a fair analogy, and which is supported by the defensive character of the force. In any case the gild troops were regarded as in military value inferior to the men-at-arms.
The main divisions of the army were the elephant corps, the cavalry, and the foot : to which should be added the foragers and camp-followers. There was a scientific distinction of vanguard, centre, rear, wings, reserve, and camp, with elaborate discussions of formations on the march and in battle, attack and defence, and the value and employment of the several arms. Equipment was in considerable variety, including fixed and mobile engines, such as ‘hundred-slayers’. Such instruments were, of course, familiar even to the early nations of Mesopotamia, as were also the construction and siege of forts.
The art of fortification was well understood. As we can learn from the Greek and native descriptions, and as we can see depicted on the monuments of Sanchi and Bharhut, the great cities were provided with ditches, ramparts, and walls of earth, wood or brick, having battlements, towers, covered ways, salient angles, water-gates, and portcullises, with a wide street running round the interior face. There were guard-houses for troops (gulma) in the different quarters. The Indian forts were, as we have seen, systematically designed, with ditches, ramparts, battlements, covered ways, portcullises, and water-gates; and in the assault the arts of mining, countermining, flooding mines were employed no less than the devices of diplomacy. In short, the Indians possessed the art of war. If all their science failed them against invaders, we may conjecture, in accordance with other aspects of Indian thought, the reason that there was too much of it. In the formation adopted by Porus, the elephants and chariots in front and the infantry in the rear, we may perhaps detect an agreement with the precepts of the books. As regards the ethics of fighting, the Greeks received an impression of something not un-chivalrous; and here too we may recall the written precepts as to fair fighting, not attacking the wounded or those already engaged or the disarmed, and sparing those who surrendered.
The government made no pretence to democracy, and was probably the most efficient that India has ever had.” Akbar, greatest of the Moguls, “had nothing like it, and it may be doubted if any of the ancient Greek cities were better organized.” ” It was based frankly upon military power. Chandragupta, if we may trust Megasthenes (who should be as suspect as any foreign correspondent) kept an army of 600,000 foot, 30,000 horse, 9,000 elephants, and an unnamed number of chariots.” The peasantry and the Brahmans were exempt from military service; and Strabo describes the farmers tilling the soil in peace and security in the midst of war. The power of the King was theoretically unlimited, but in practice it was restricted by a Council which sometimes with the King, sometimes in his absence initiated legislation, regulated national finances and foreign affairs, and appointed all the more important officers of state. Megasthenes testifies to the “high character and wisdom” of Chandragupta’s councillors, and to their effective power.”
Municipal government
The same method of departmental administration was applied to the government of the cities. Pataliputra was ruled by a commission of thirty men, divided into six groups. One group regulated industry; another supervised strangers, assigning to them lodgings and attendants, and watching their movements; another kept a record of births and deaths; another licensed merchants, regulated the sale of produce, and tested measures and weights; another controlled the sale of manufactured articles; another collected a tax of ten per cent on all sales. “In short,” says Havcll, “Pataliputra in the fourth century B.C. seems to have been a thoroughly well-organized city, and administered according to the best principles of social science.” “The perfection of the arrangements thus indicated,” says Vincent Smith, “is astonishing, even when exhibited in outline. Examination of the depart- mental details increases our wonder that such an organization could have been planned and efficiently operated in India in 300 B.c.”
The government was organized into departments with well-defined duties and a carefully graded hierarchy of officials, managing respectively revenue, customs, frontiers, passports,communications, excise, mines, agriculture, cattle, commerce, warehouses, navigation, forests, public games, prostitution, and the mint. The Superintendent of Excise controlled the sale of drugs and intoxicating drinks, restricted the number and location of taverns, and the quantity of liquors which they might sell. The Superintendent of Mines leased mining areas to private persons, who paid a fixed rent and a share of the profits to the government; a similar system applied to agriculture, for all the land was owned by the state. The Superintendent of Public Games supervised the gambling halls, supplied dice, charged a fee for their use, and gathered in for the treasury five per cent of all money taken in by the “bank.” The Superintendent of Prostitution looked after public women, con- trolled their charges and expenditures, appropriated their earnings for two days of each month, and kept two of them in the royal palace for entertainment and intelligence service. Taxes fell upon every profession, occupation and industry; and in addition rich men were from time to time persuaded to make “benevolences” to the King. The government regulated prices and periodically assayed weights and measures; it carried on some manufactures in state factories, sold vegetables, and kept a monopoly of mines, salt, timber, fine fabrics, horses and elephants.
“This is a great thing in India,” says Arrian, “that all the inhabitants are free, not a single Indian being a slave.” It struck him as a favorable contrast with his own nation that there was no slavery in India;tIn totally denying slavery Megasthenes went too far : in fact seven kinds of slaves are enumerated : but it is laid down that no Arya (‘freeman’, here including the Shudra) could be enslaved. A man might sell himself into slavery, and in times of distress children might be so provided for : also there were captives in war. In all cases the slave may purchase his freedom by any earnings acquired irrespective of his master’s service, and ransom from outside cannot be refused. The slave woman who is taken to her master’s bed thereby acquires freedom, as also do her children.
It is to this period, no doubt, that we must ascribe the great complexity of the caste system, and the beginning of the association of caste with craft. Though the population was divided into castes according to occupations, it accepted these divisions as natural and tolerable. “They live happily enough,” the ambassador reported, being simple in their manners, and frugal. In another respect the old system of caste had received a shock. To the contemporaries of Buddha and Mahavira the conception of a king who was not of the Kshatriya order would have seemed preposterous. But the Mauryas were of low extraction, as were the Nandas whom they succeeded. Henceforth the spectacle of the low-born man in power was never a rarity in India; and soon it was the foreigner. The vast empire, with its army of officials and spies, introduced a bureaucratic rule in place of the old quasi-feudal system.
The people
As regards daily life, we find the public side of it sufficiently gay. The people were frugal in their diet, and sober, except on occasion of festivals. The chief display of luxury was in dress. The inns, hostelries, eating-houses, serais, and gaming-houses are evidently numerous; sects and crafts have perhaps their meeting places and the latter their public dinners. The business of entertainment provides a livelihood for various classes of dancers, singers, and actors. Even the villages are visited by them, and the author of the Arthashastra is inclined to discourage the existence of a common hall used for their shows as too great a distraction from the life of the home and the fields. At the same time there are penalties for refusal to assist in organising public entertainment. The king provides in amphitheatres constructed for the occasion dramatic, boxing, and other contests of men and animals, and also spectacles with displays of pictured objects of curiosity no doubt the private showman with his pictures of Hades, etc., was also active; and not seldom the streets were lighted up for festivals and it was not penal to stir abroad. Then there were also the royal processions, when His Majesty went forth to view his city or to hunt. They never drink wine except at sacrifice. . . . The simplicity of their laws and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom go to law. They have no suits about pledges and deposits, nor do they require either seals or witnesses, but make their deposits and confide in each other. . . .
Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem. . . . The greater part of the soil is under irrigation, and consequently bears two crops in the course of the year. … It is accordingly affirmed that famine has never visited India, and that there has never been a general scarcity in the supply of nourishing food.
The bulk of the population consisted of actual cultivators, and Megasthenes remarks that their avocation was to such a degree defined (by the rule of caste) that they might be seen peacefully pursuing it in the sight of contending armies. The higher classes in the country had not a landowning, but an official, qualification, being entitled for their maintenance to a defined portion of the revenue. This corresponds to the jagir system of Musalman times. The assignment might be the revenue of an estate, a village, a town, or according to circumstances. On a minor scale the same principle was applied to the ranching class, which received for maintenance a proportion of the stock.
The domestic life
In domestic life the joint-family system prevails : but it can be dissolved. Boy and girl attain their majority at the age of sixteen and of twelve respectively. Adoption legitimated by the king is common. There are the four regular and four irregular forms of marriage, which is dissoluble by mutual consent or prolonged absence. The wife has her dowry and her ornaments, sometimes also her bride-gift, which are her private property and to a certain extent at her disposal in case of widowhood. Ill-usage on either side is punishable. Upon failure of male issue the husband may after a certain period take other wives (of any class); but he is required to render justice to all : on the other hand, a widow is at liberty to marry again. Orphans are under the guardianship of their relatives. The poor and helpless old, and in particular the families of soldiers and workmen dyingduring their employment, are regarded as deserving the king’s care. Concerning the ganikas, or public women, who were the king’s servants, and whose practice and rights were subject to minute regulation, the Greek writers- have told us enough. Offences against women of all kinds are severely visited, including the actions of officials in charge of workshops and prisons; and their various imprudences and lapses are subject to a gradation of fines and penalties. Refractory wives may be beaten (Manu, vin, 299).Elephants were a luxury usually confined to royalty and officialdom, and so highly valued that a woman’s virtue was thought a moderate price to pay for one of them. (“Their women, who arc very chaste, and would not go astray for any other reason, on the receipt of an elephant have communion with the donor. The Indians do not think it disgraceful to prostitute themselves for an elephant, and to the women it even seems a honor that their beauty should appear equal in value to an elephant.” Arrian, Indica, xvii.)
Law and public health
Law was administered in the village by local headmen, or by pancbayats village councils of five men; in towns, districts and provinces by inferior and superior courts; at the capital by the royal council as a supreme court, and by the King as a court of last appeal. Penalties were severe, and included mutilation, torture and death, usually on the principle of equivalent retaliation. But the government was no mere engine of repression; it attended to sanitation and public health, maintained hospitals and poor-relief stations, distributed in famine years the food kept in state ware- houses for such emergencies, forced the rich to contribute to the assistance of the destitute, and organized great public works to care for the unemployed in depression years.
Religion
Among the Brahman deities the greatest share of popular adoration accrued to Shiva and Vishnu (under the form of Krishna), whom the Greeks report to us as Dionysus and Heracles respectively. With the former was associated Skanda or Vishakha, the god of war. The Buddhist books and sculptures, which give the preference to Brahma and Indra, are in this respect archaizing.
Shiva was specially worshipped in the hill regions; of the Vishnu cult the great centre was Mathura, the second home of the Krishna legend, which first arose in Western India. The Jains were probably still mostly to be found in Bihar and Ujjain, while the Buddhist expansion had perhaps even in the lifetime of the founder attained a far wider range.
Of law the bases are defined as, in ascending order of validity, sacred precept (dharma), agreement (vyavahara), custom (charitra), and royal edicts (rajashasana), and the subject is expounded rationally, not theologically. Civil law is treated under the heads of marriage and dowry, inheritance, housing and neighborhood (including trespass), debt, deposit, slaves, labor and contract, sale, violence and abuse, gaming, and miscellanea.
Cases were heard in the morning before a triad of officials together with three Brahman exponents of law; and there were rules as to the circumstances in which agreements were valid, and as to procedure in court, with plea, counterplea, and rejoinder. We learn from various sources that cases were commonly disposed of locally by reference to a body of arbitrators (pañchayat), permanent or constituted ad hoc, or by the officials of various grades; and there was a system of appeals as far as the king, who was regularly present in court or represented by a minister (pradvivaka). Offences against caste or religion were tried by committees entitled parishads. Trials by wager or ordeal were also common. The penalties, reasonably graduated and executed by royal authority, include fines (these, and also debts, often cornmutable for forced labor), whipping, mutilation, and death with or without torture. In cases of assault the principle familiar in the modern proverb ‘first at the Thana’ is already known, but disputed.
Industry/ Trade
The crafts are numerous, especially those dealing with the precious metals and with textiles. The professions include the doctor, the actor, singer and rhapsodist, the dancer, and the soothsayer. The traders are partly state officials in charge of royal merchandise, or in superintendence of matters connected with prices and sales, partly actual shopkeepers or travelling merchants; and not rare among both classes was the rich shreshthin, or seth, who was an important social factor, and, if a leader in his guild, received official recognition. In the workshops and the prisons (the latter periodically emptied) artisans were engaged on contract or in penal tasks; and there is a ‘spinning house’ for the labour of widows and other helpless or unfortunate women.
Permanent associations in civil life include trader and merchant guilds (shreni) and clubs (puga). I but there were also temporary combinations of workmen and others engaged under corporate responsibility for the execution of contracts. Collective obstruction was known and penalised.
Trade was active, various, and minutely regulated. The precious wares comprise many species of gold, silver, spices, and cosmetics from all parts of India; jewels, including pearls from Southern India, Ceylon, and beyond the sea; skins from Central Asia and China; muslin, cotton, and silk from China and Further India. The best horses came, as now, from the Indus countries and beyond. The merchant was mulcted in dues at the frontier, by road-taxes and tolls, and by octroi at the gates of the cities, where the royal officials maintained a douane and watch-house : he was required to be armed with a passport, and severe penalties were attached to malpractices in connection therewith. The officials record in writing ‘who the merchants are, whence they come, with what merchandise, and where it has been vised’. The country produce also was subject to octroi upon entry, and, to ensure that nothing might escape, there were prohibitions of purchase in part or in bulk at the place of origin in farms, orchards, and gardens. The amount and price of all goods was declared, and the sale was by auction, any enhancement accruing to the treasury. Combinations to affect prices were punishable; an army of spies was engaged on the routes in order to detect false declarations. The prices of ordinary goods were fixed and proclaimed daily by the officials. Similarly all weights and measures were subject to inspection. There were export, as well as import duties and octrois, and certain classes of goods were forbidden to be introduced or sent abroad respectively. The king himself was a great trader, disposing of the output of his factories, workshops, and prisons, and the produce of his lands, forests, and mines, for which he maintained store-houses (koshthdgdra) through the country. In particular he reserved the right of coining and other work in silver and gold, which was executed by his officials on behalf of those who brought their raw metal.
Literature and language
The progress of literature during the Maurya period is unfortunately for the most part matter for inference. Only three works, all in their way important, can with certainty be dated in or near it : these are the Arthashastra of Chanakya, the Mahabhashya, Patanjali’s commentary on the grammatical Sutras of Panini, and the Pali Kathavatthu. The Vedic period, including the Brahmanas and the early Upanishads, was prior to Buddha, and the same may be said in principle of the Sutras, or manuals of rites, public and domestic, the Vedangas, treatises on grammar, phonetics, prosody, astronomy, etymology, ritual, whatever may be the date of the treatises which have come down to us. Nor can the like be denied regarding the various forms of quasi-secular literature which are named in works of about this period, the Purana, or myth, the Itivritta, or legend, Akhyayika, or tale, Vakovakya, or dialogue. Some form of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the former of which we infer from Megasthenes to have been current during this period, belongs also to an earlier epoch. One philosophical system, the Sankhya, seems to be prior to Buddhism : a second, the Vaiheshika, may have arisen in our period. Finally, the canon of the Pali Buddhism and also that of the Jains, which is said to have been fixed at Pataliputra in 313 (312) BC, and the system of the Lokayatas or Ajivikas, are also in substance pre-Maurya.
If we may conjecturally assign to this period any definite literary forms, these would be theshastra and the artificial poetry, or kavya. The former, the most characteristic product of the Indian mind, is the formal exposition of a particular science in dogmatic enunciations accompanied by a discussion (bhashya). Such are the grammatical work of Patanjali, the Arthashastra of Chanakya, the Kamashastra of Vatsyayana : the Dharma Shastra, or Law, followed an older model, that of the metrical treatise, and the Nyaya Shastra, or Logic, is a later creation. We cannot doubt also that many of the minor sciences (vidyas) and arts (kalas), which were from earlier times a subject of instruction, had already attained some systematic literary form. As regards the artificial epic, it is true that we have no positive evidence of its existence in Maurya times. But the Buddhacharita of Ashvaghosha, which dates from the first century A.D., presents a perfect and stereotyped form, indicating a long preparation.
That writing was in common use not only for literary purposes, but also in public business, the edicts of Ashoka exist to prove. But this is by no means all. Epistolary correspondence was perfectly usual, and written documents were employed in the courts of law : moreover, the administration was versed in bookkeeping and registration on a large scale and systematically arranged. And we have already the beginnings of a study of style and a vocabulary of exegesis.
Sanskrit remained the language of the Brahman schools, of public and private ritual, and also of secular literature, except perhaps in the case of folk poesy. In the life of every day and also in administration, furthermore in the sectarian books of the Buddhists and Jains, a vernacular was employed; and from the Edicts of As oka three such vernaculars are known, one of which, that of Magadha, probably profited by its central position at the headquarters of the empire to encroach upon the others. The Sanskrit was perhaps favored in cultured circles, and especially in the cities; and social ambition, hampered by insufficient training, began to foster a hybrid form of speech, now known as ‘mixed Sanskrit’, which subsequently established itself as a literary medium in certain Buddhist schools, when the canonical vernaculars, themselves by no means dialectically pure, had already become stereotyped.
The one defect of this government was autocracy, and therefore continual dependence upon force and spies. Like every autocrat, Chandragupta held his power precariously, always fearing revolt and assassination. Every night he used a different bedroom, and always he was surrounded by guards. Hindu tradition, accepted by European historians, tells how, when a long famine (pace Megasthenes) came upon his kingdom, Chandragupta, in despair at his helplessness, abdicated his throne, lived for twelve years thereafter as a Jain ascetic, and then starved himself to death. “All things considered,” said Voltaire, “the life of a gondolier is preferable to that of a doge; but I believe the difference is so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining.”
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