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ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
197
the river against their Koliyan neighbours has come to fruition like a maturing debt, and must be paid, so does not intervene. But the Buddha himself died in his eightieth year, while travelling slowly on foot from Rājagļha on the great trade route. He did not get as far north as Kapilavastu, dying at Kusinārā on the way. Moreover, he passed the rains near the Licchavi headquarters, which would give no time for a meeting with Pasenadi, and makes the triple saving of the Sakyans a pure miracle. Even the commentators are not clear about Buddha's meeting with Sāriputta in the Mahāpariņibbāņa-sutta, for Sāriputta was supposed to have died before this period. Some of these details may undoubtedly be clarified by discarding the miraculous and fabulous element-not always simple with Buddhist or any other ancient Indian works—but it seems to me that the precise chronology we need cannot be worked out by these methods.
7. MeGASTHENESE AND THE ARTHASASTRA
The account of 12 Megasthenes, properly evaluated, enables us to date the highest development of one particular and hitherto unrecognized form of production in India.
Seven distinct classes (meros, Diodorus and Strabo; genea, Arrian) of people are reported which amount to castes, seeing that custom and law forbid intermarriage, change of profession, or transition between groups. That Megasthenes actually said this is not to be doubted, from the accord among the quotations (Diodorus 2.40-41=M 38-41; Strabo 15.1.39-48=M 83-86; Arrian 10-12=M 214-8). The confusion arises from modern scholars' attempt to reconcile the seven classes with the traditional four Indian castes. The classes are: 1) brahmins and ascetics; 2) husbandmen; 3) herdsmen-hunters; 4) artizans and retail merchants; 5) fighting men; 6) overseers who report to the king or the magistrates of free cities, 7) the great councillors who determine policy, officer the armed forces, and regulate all affairs of state. It is denied by modern scholars that these seven major castes could have existed, because the sūdra is absent, the husbandman and merchant should both be members of the vaiśya caste, and there could not possibly have been enough overseers nor courtcillors to form two separate castes by themselves. Of course, the Arthaśāstra sticks to the theoretical four castes in its preamble, and is simultaneously condemned as a later document, making no mention of Pāțaliputra, or Candragupta, or any other king, city, or empire; nor showing acquaintance with imperial affairs such as must have concerned the ministers of Candragupta Maurya.
1. Text fragments collected by E.A. Schwanbeck, Bonn 1846 ; for Diodorus Siculus and Arrian text and Latin translation by Carl Müller, Paris (Firmin Didot) 1878. The English translation by J. W. McCrindle, Calcutta 1926 (reprinted from the Indian Antiquary 1876-77) is cited as M with page number. The two Kautaliya-Studien of E. Breloer (Bonn 192-6, 1928) are useless.
