DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

220 REGISTRATION ; CASH PAYMENT [7.5
(ajiva), income (aya) and expenditure (vyaya) ...” Spies were to check
this, to investigate the causes of emigration and immigration, and note all
movements of undesirable persons. Similarly, the city registrar. With
such registry (noted by Meg.) went another feature unusual in India though
not to the Greeks. Cash* payment was made to every (Arth. 5.3) official,
according to the service. The high priest, army commander, heir-apparent,
mother of the king and his (chief) queen each received 48,000 panas per
year. This explains Asoka’s proclamation about his queen’s separate
charities. Fields and villages were not to be given away ; only the
neediest king would thus donate the very basis of state economy. This
seems to account for Pasenadi’s gifts to brahmins and the comparatively
poorer Kosalan punch-marked coins. The scale of payment to the trained
foot-soldier was 500; Megasthenes reports that they lived very well on
that in peacetime. Of course their accoutrements and weapons were
supplied by the king, the latter having to be surrendered whenever the
soldier entered the city. Special menials looked after elephants horses,
equipment. The drudges for unskilled work, counted as one of the
necessary resources both for army and kingdom, were also paid, at the
very lowest rate of 60 panas per year. This is the more remarkable as the
word used visit also means forced labour, and later indicated the unpaid
feudal corvee. In Arth. 2.15, the chief of the (local) state storehouses is
* The only suggestion that Arth. payments could be in kind is in Shamu S-astry’s
translation, p. 278 : “Substituting one adhaka for the salary of 60 papas, payment in gold
may be commuted for that in kin:!”. This hm been repeated by V. S. Agrawala (p. 237 of his
India as known to PCnunl. Luck now 1963). The salary of 60 panas (a year) being the
lowest, for vi$ti drudges, one would expect that a man could feed himself for a year on one
adhaka of cereals, here presumably rice. Now the largest adhaka Knmvn u of about 164
pounds, but that was in use many centuries after Canakya; even this could not feed a manual
labourer for a whole year, apart from the fact that he would have nothing else to make the rice
palatable. The Arth. adhaka seems to have been just under 8 pounds, which makes things
much worse. Actually, the context of the passage (also Ganapati Saftri’s commentary) shows
that the question is not of commutation, but of a bonus for retainers with long service or
increased skill. The rate of one adhaka per 60 panas of salary is a norm for showing royal
appreciation by reward or increments, without disturbing the actual pay-scales.