________________ ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA 213 had been united, and settled in a new path of development for which a strong centralized mechanism of violence was not essential. It is a reasonable guess that the end of the empire was caused, or marked, by local officials turning into feudal landholders, in what had been the seta. On the other hand, Buddhism spread to other lands as an adjunct to unity and auxiliary of the state mechanism in Ceylon, Burma, China ; in Tibet, and much later Mongolia, it replaces the state mechanism altogether. This is not the original Buddhism of 5th century Magadha, but its continuity of function in new forms * adapted to new types of society is striking. Conquest to the natural fron tier, poor transport, vast distances made it inevitable that the absolute central administration should be replaced by a dispersed feudal structure, both in India and China. In India, however, Buddhism staved off the feudal period till the change from the sita to the rastra was completed ; in China the new religion was welcomed even by the warring feudal landowners, to promote internal peace. In both places, it performed the minor economic task of returning to circulation-in the construction of pious works--the wealth accumulated by prince, landlord, and merchant. Espionage is necessarily directed against enemies of the state, whether they be foes from without or internal class-enemies that threaten the state which is itself the manifestation of some particular class. The universal espionage of the Arthasastra state proves that its essence, the king, had virtually no friends; it was not at that period the tool of any important class though warrior and trader profited during expansion; the old tribal basis for kingship had vanished. The Asokan change found such friends for the king and for his state. It also found new forms of expression in architecture and sculpture, for which the technique came from woodworking, the themes from popular legends, and the taste perhaps from Asoka's holiday spectacles. The court poet (or for that matter any professional secular poet) is not mentioned in the Arthasastra, nor apparently in Pali literature; the change made it possible for him to come into existence. Just as the new Magadhan religions had been developed by members of a class in decay, ksatriyas of the older free tribes, the new literature at its brightest (in the Gupta period) would develop from brahmin myths, in the brahmin language, by brahmin writers. This means that the older priesthood also had to undergo a change when there arose a new type of kingship, based upon private ownership rather than state enterprise and monopoly.
