________________
ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
-203
free lands; the rusticity of the Grhya-sütras is now turned to good account, becoming incurable, if indeed it does not first come into existence at this stage. That my argument is not purely a priori may be seen by comparison of the king's duties in the forgotten (because the productive forms were obsolete) Arthasästra with the later but much more pretentious and sanctified Manusmrti (Ms. 7.111-143; 7.195-196; et. al.). Taxes have fallen below the Arthasästra level because they are mainly levied upon property owners; the sudra though free still has no property, nor can release by any master free him from servitude (Ms. 8.414) to the three Aryan castes. The main revenue of the Arthasästra was the tribute on grain from state lands sitä, which has disappeared altogether; the minor taxable forms called rästra by the Arthaśästra are now synonymous with 'country'. This means that state production no longer exists. Nothing is said about transport, irrigation, or supervision. The villages are grouped in much smaller units, with a chief over every village and unit whose compensation is ownership of a certain amount of land. Local garrisons appear (Ms. 7.114-15) whereas the Arthaśästra wanted only frontiers to be strongly held. The artizan and the sadra labourer of the Manusmrti give the state one day's free labour per month, the corvée in lieu of taxes (Ms. 7.138). Worst of all, the immunity of land and villager that struck Megasthenes has disappeared. The peasant is no longer allowed to witness the ruin of empires while concentrating upon some miserable patch of land, for the royal invader is enjoined to ravage the countryside thoroughly whenever the enemy cannot be directly attacked (Ms. 7. 195-6). At this stage, the Mauryan central administration is unnecessary. The Gupta capital Ujjain was never the world's greatest city, as Patna had been in its prime, though the center of as large and even more prosperous an empire. Patna itself dwindled to a village before the time of Hiuen Tsang. While total production increased, commodity production went down in density if not volume. This was the difference between the land seen by the Greeks and the apparently changeless countryside visited by later foreign travellers. The victory of Manusmrti brahminism means also the absence of common law, each caste, guild, profession and locality being entitled to its own customary legal traditions (Ms. 8.41). The Arthaśästra recognized the need for a legal structure which transcended these barriers, though caste-privilege was, to a certain extent, allowed in its jus gentium, being a primitive form of class privilage.
There are two important points of contrast. The Manusmrti administrator is appointed by the king but not paid a salary; he lives off the country. The village chief has as his perquisites the food, drink, firewood which would be supplied to the king (if in residence). The head of ten villages enjoys the income of a family holding (kulam, Ms. 7.119); the chief of twenty gets five times as much, that of a hundred the revenues of an entire village, and of a thousand the revenues of a whole town. This is clearly the beginning of feudalism, and it may be worth noting that G. Bühler in his translation of the
