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ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
211
(though they occur as Nigaņķhas in R 13) simply because their shift to the south must have taken place before this, (presumably in the face of local Magadhan competition) not later than the great migration under Bhadrabāhu; incidentally, this implies that the south had been penetrated by Magadhan traders before the armies marched there, so that the classical routine of imperialism : traders, missionaries, armies, is well established even in so long a past. Then there is the Jain tradition of Candragupta himself (Tiloyapannatti 71) having been converted, to die in the faith. So, this passage is impossible for the later Mauryans, say after Bindusāra; we may recall that the Asokan district officer rajjuka is not mentioned in the Arthaśāstra, which has, however, a rajju tax. It is even further out of place for the Kuşāņas, the Sātavähanas, and the Guptas, all of whom preserved and increased the great Buddhist foundations. Even the Sungas, supposedly hostile to the religion, dedicated structures at Sāñci. On the other hand, for a real persecutor like Saśānka, such a ban would be much too mild, for the advice would then be to exterminate the heretics. Kautalya knows nothing of monasteries like Nālandā, saying merely that (A 3.16) ascetics should live together without mutual contact, in places set apart ; earlier comers are to make room for the later, on pain of ejection. Any ascetic is punished in full for serious crimes, fined for lesser offences; if unpropertied he may pay the fine by specially painful prayers or fasts for the king, which implies merely that he was not to work them off as a prisoner or slave.
Asoka's conversion is not only a cause but even more a symptom of decline of the Arthasāstra21 system, which was inadequate to maintain a stable empire. After conversion of the emperor, it would no longer be possible to keep the monks out of the villages, and indeed Asoka found a far greater use for the monks than spying: they were an integral part of his new system of administration, by conversion of the people to gentler ways, by new relations between king and subject which must correspond quite well to new relations of production. The final move towards feudalism of a priest-ridden type is obvious only from the Manusmrti, but an immediate change is also to be discerned in Asoka's edicts. Though Asoka had suppressed two revolts at Taxila as viceroy (Divyāvadāna 19 ), the bloody Kalinga campaign was the final turning point (R. 13). Thereafter the army was obsolete; he is proud of using it for spectacles and religious processions only, not for war (R. 4). There should be no further killing of animals (R. 1), though criminals are still to be executed —with a special grace of three days after the sentence (P. 4). The king makes a new departure in administrative routine by travelling constantly, and visit
21 Asoka suppressed the samāja by edict (R. 1). This appears in A1.21 as some sort of saturnalia ; in A 2.21, it meant freedom to drink for three days. In A 5.2, it provides occasion for some royal spy in disguise as a merchant to allow himself to be 'robbed', so as to swell the treasury with a real merchant's goods; at the end of A 10.1 the samija is forbidden altogether in the army. This is one of the few direct contacts between the Arthaśāstra and Asoka. The taxes remitted in the Rummindei edict occur in the rästra list.
