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ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
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Dunn (loc. cit. p. 3, p. 54) writing in 1936 when wages in Singhbhum had fallen to a miserable 7 annas a day still felt that the obvious and very thorough working of the same mineral deposits in very ancient times could only have been by "an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour-slave labour.” Unfortunately for this piece of imperial British yearning, the saila-khanaka was paid from 500 to 1000 paņas ; the scarcity of metals, great demand, state monopoly, possible payment to the head of a whole family of workers, might be the explanation ; but the Arthaśāstra miner was free. As for the level of prices, Megasthenes reported that the soldiers and their families lived very well ; the Arthaśāstra pay for a soldier is only 500 paņas, though more for veterans, with graded cash bounties on the field of battle (A 10.3). The spy in disguise gets 1000, the ordinary spy 500, intermediary 250 ; spying must have been very well worth the while. There is even a system of pensions for the dependents of those who die in service, and of gratuities. It is incredible that this scheme of cash payments, unparalleled in a country where feudal tenure is not yet forgotten, should be purely imaginary or designed for a mere janapada king. A characteristic suggestion at the end of A 5.3 is that spies disguised as merchants and sutlers should sell to the soldiers in camp at double rates, thus clearing off the king's goods as well as recovering the money paid out in salaries. The best proof of reality is the advice that villages should not be given away, that only a poor king should give land, raw materials, or cattle rather than cash. Contrast Pasenadi's giving whole villages18 to his priests ; the Arthaśāstra gift is merely the trifling brahmadeya lands (A3. 10) and groves (A2.1; M 99) though the author is himself a brahmin. The ruler is to spend only a quarter of his revenues for all such cash payments; when we recall the statement of Megasthenes that a single camp of Candragupta held 400,000 men (M 68), the total revenue in cash must have been enormous though the budget is nowhere given.
Yet the Mauryans changed none of the pre-existing local forms, as in the răstra; a conquered king (and therefore his officials) are to be retained in office (A 7.16). Thus the chief benefit of conquest would come not from direct tribute but rather from promotion of trade, and settling of new lands; the latter is given as one of the main objects of policy in A 7. 11-12, with the advice, strange when coming from a brahmin, that the land predominantly settled by men of the lowest caste is best. That the southern trade routes were richer than the Himalayan in all goods except wool, hides, and horses, is explicitly noted (A 7.12), against the older tradition.
But how far could this go when the territory of a thousand yojanas from the Himalayas to the seas, the cakravarti-kşetram (A 9.1) had actually been
18 This may tally with the comparatively poor Kosalan coinage, and with the Lalita Vistara's otherwise incomprehensible remark that the Kosala royal family was na căparimita-ratna-nidhi-samutthitam. In any case the Magadhans rapidly became by far the richer state, by holding the metals, the trade routes, and the river.
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