DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

AUTONOMOUS JANAPADAS 195
anywhere in the scheme described by Megasthenes, it is in class 4. The
statement that all land belonged to the king or the free cities, with a
tribute not less than a quarter of the total crop paid by these
seemingly idyllic georgoi to the officials or city magistrates, bears out
completely this equation to the sudra. There is no statement in the
Alexander story about, the land belonging to anyone. On the other hand,
Plutarch’s Alexander also mentions the free cities. These were simply
the headquarters of former or current tribal settlements, whose citizens
appear as the pawa-janapada in the epics and the Arthasastra. They
vanished from the country before the Gupta period, though the
compound still occurs in Rudradaman’s Girnar inscription (A. D. 150). It
may be suggested that the homo-sign coinages of the Mauryan period
(fig. 32) belong to the tribal ‘ free cities’
Fig. 32. Punch-marks on
janapada coins under
suzerainty of Bindusara and
Asoka.
under the emperor. The paura-janapadas had not the right, or perhaps
not the wealth, to issue such coins in pre-Mauryan days, when the
Magadhan kings systematically carried out the reduction of cities and
destruction of tribal armies. Much the same demolition was
accomplished by Alexander. This left the progress of class society
unimpeded by tribal rights and tribal obligations (beyond some
outward forms), with the brahmins now free to find new tribes or to
take up new occupations. They did both, as the record shows.
Patna was the greatest city in the world at the time of
Megasthenes, far beyond anything the Greeks had built, or