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204.
D. D. KOSAMBI
smộti (Sacred Books of The East, xxv, preface, pp. cvi f.) believed the work to have been completed between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. Secondly, the merchant is to be taxed (Ms. 7.127) with due regard to the prices of purchase and sale, depreciation and expenses of the trip, length of the road to the market and expenses for protection against thieves etc. on the way. This shows a consideration entirely foreign to the Arthaśāstra, where the merchant was in fact a competitor of the royal monopolies, and treated as a natural criminal of sorts. Cash transactions are so low that royal menials are paid only 1 to 6 copper paņas a day, a droņa of grain monthly, and clothes every six months (Ms. 7.126). According to A 2.24, the sitādhyaksa (of a janapada) is to cultivate all the best (most-ploughed) land under his own direct supervision, with free (karmakara) labour or forced labour including the royal dāsas and the prisoners who work out their fine. What is left over, however, allows private enterprise to enter; the half share cultivators (ardhasītikas) may be allowed to work such surplus land, or the quarter or fifth sharers, the difference between the two being that the latter have nothing except their own bodily effort to put into the land. It follows that even in the sītā those who owned oxen and implements of their own had a certain interest. The essential is that this did not develop into permanent tenure or private property during the time of the Arthaśāstra; when it did by the period of the Manusmrti, the sītā would cease to exist, becoming indistinguishable from the răstra.
8. TERMINATION OF THE ARTHASASTRA SYSTEM The foregoing section expresses a definite opinion, that the essential features of the Arthaśāstra do characterize the government described by Megasthenes ; while it does not follow that the whole of the document must be authentic, the work is not entirely theoretical, it has a sound basis in reality, and the bulk thereof must belong to the time of Candragupta Maurya, though reporting upon older theory and tradition.
That the book may contain later additions or revision is not denied; still less, that the author was a brahmin pedant. But the book is unusually consistent as compared to the Mahābhārata or the Manusmộti. The brahmin and ksatriya are allowed legitimate heirs (savarna) from women of one caste lower each. Differences between the four-caste theory (A 1.3) and practice appear with the vaidehaka, synonymous with trader throughout the book, but in A 3.7 the offspring of a ksatriya woman by a vaisya father; in A1.6, a Vaideha king Karāla is held up as bad example. This corresponds to the historical development of a tribe into a guild and then a caste. The mixture of castes is frowned upon, as in all brahminical works, but it is really the fault of the king, who won't go to heaven if he tolerates it. For other transgressions, the Arthaśāstra relies upon a complete system of standardized cash fines, the separate items filling nine columns in the index to Shamasastry's translation.
