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like Diodorus ; cutting off forage and perhaps damaging some crops is a desperate measure for the most extreme cases (A 13.4). It is towards building up the resources for conquest that the whole cumbrous mechanism of the state is directed unscrupulously. An accurate permanent census, Domesday Book account, and register is to be kept at all times of everything and everyone as was noted by Megasthenes : boundaries, wealth taxed and untaxed; males, females, children, servants in each household and their work, if any; the purpose and duration of each voyage undertaken by anyone (A 2.35,36) both in city and countryside. To this end, there are not only registrars (gopa) for every ten to forty houses in the city, five to ten villages in the country, but a system of passes at city gates and a whole army of spies in disguise. These last are distinct from the informers (sūcaka) who discover embezzlement (A 2.8). Spying is the only check upon officials, says Kautalya (A 2:9). Apart from embezzlement, the official who neglects any chance of making revenue for the king, by inattention to the reports of underlings and spies, is to be fined, though collecting more than the amount due is frowned upon. Whoever diminishes the revenue eats up the king's wealth (A 2.9), which he must make good, with a fine if his intentions were evil ; whoever doubles (or more) the king's revenue eats up the land, but is let off with a warning if the whole amount be deposited into the treasury. There is no question of refund, in spite of book-keeping and regular receipts. Similarly for all the special taxes on merchants based on the theory that every one of them cheats on all possible occasions in spite of regulations, checking of balances and measures, and other state control including spies with every caravan (A 2.21); but the taxes go to the king. Even in selling a plot of land, or a holding-which may be bought by relatives, neighbours, creditors in that order, and only in their absence by anyone else (A 3.9), forty other people are invited to be present and to bid up the price; the excess over the predetermined price goes to the treasury along with the sales tax !
This system would become intolerably oppressive except when in a state of expansion, and even then expansion into paying territory. A complete scale of payment for every conceivable state servant is set down in A 5.3. The highest is 48,000 paņas (per year) for the great ministers, royal priest, dowager queen-mother, chief queen, and crown-prince. It descends to 60 for the lowest categories, of stablemen, camp-servants, and drudges for heavy unskilled labour, visti.17
17 There is the usual ambiguity, caused here by the ending of the long compound :vistibandhaka Shamasastry takes this as one unit, the mean the press-gang foreman, but then the pay of 60 panas a year would be disproportionately low, in comparison to the rest. Ganapati Sāstri's interpretation of vişti and bandhaka as two separate categories is proved by two definitions of vişti : A 10. 4 gives the camp-vişti, whose work is to clear the camp, roads, wells, fords, etc., carry fodder, take the oifensive and defensive weapons to and from the battlefield, and carry away the wounded work which would be difficult to entrust to unpaid forced labour, which is Sham usastry's idea of visti. In A 2.15, we have the vişti for the great royal storehouses, consisting of porters, the weightsmen, and so on. Here the category ends-disa-karmakaravargas ca vistih, which is generally taken to include both slaves (bondsmen) and ordinary labourers. It follows that even slaves were paid for such heavy labour; presumably, the money would count, as in A 3.13, towards their ransom and eventual freedom. si
