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the king and his feudal lords was very close. After accepting the supremacy even an enemy becomes a friend of the overlord as has been known from the SK. At one place (Bhava eight) even the victor Yuvarāja calls his mutineer feudal as elder brother and asks him not to appologise. Local Organisation
SK throws some light on the local organisation of the state. Village or town was the smallest unit of the province. Nagarmahantaka and Karņika were the officers in charge of the town (Bhava, p. 409). This Nagarmahantaka of SK may be as equal as the Pancāyat president or Nagarapati (i.e. Mayor) of today. Drangswāmi was the head of the village administration. Both Nagaramahantaka and Drangswāmi were free to give judicial decision. This means that they were enjoying legal powers too. They were also entitled to attend the cases of theft or adulteration. SK narrates that the position of Nagarmahantaka was higher than that of Karņika, for we see the usage of the term 'Taddhisthit'. Grāmasabha had a positive say in trifling matters. The Grāmasabhā does send its four members to investigate into the dispute between the two waring groups of the village (Bhava six). These four members were welversed in religion and economics and were very seasoned for their old age. This shows that the experienced and practically wise people might have been elected at the Grāmasabhā. Both Karņika and Pañckula constituted a joint committee to investigate the matters. Here Karņik was the name of an officer, while Pañckula might be a people's representative. A conjecture can be made from this that there might be a system of arbitrator and its decision was acceptable.
From all these information it becomes quite clear that though there was a monarchy, for many matters decentralisation was in force. This means that the king was hardly meddling
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