DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

222 SPECIAL LEVIES [7.5
taken. Besides, the chief revenue collector was to solicit voluntary
contributions. He would be helped by secret agents who would come
forward in the guise of enthusiastic private persons to make heavy pseudocontributions,
on the same principle as seeding a collection-plate today.
Titles and insignia (umbrella, turban, etc.) would be sold - but without
any other privileges, office, or state property. Property of temples,
religious institutions, and monastic orders was to be carried off by the
proper minister (devatadhyaksa) under guise of -ale-keeping; so also the
property of deceased persons. Miracles were to be invented for mulcting
the credulous, new cult objects set up by disguised spies in state pay. This
is jemirmed by a statement of Patanjali (on Pan 5.3.99) that “the Mauryans
had set up cult images (arcah) for the sake of cash gam (hiranyarthibhihy.
Spies were to trade with genuine merchants and then cause themselves to
be robbed by other colleagues as soon as a certain amount of cash had
been collected in the transaction. The merchant’s wares and cash might
be taken away while he was drunk at a samaja. Quarrels would be fomented
between two parties, both suspected of harbouring ideas dangerous to the
state; one would be poisoned by spies, the other accused, property of
both confiscated for the treasury. False accusations “only against the
seditious and the wicked, never against others”, robbery, murder could
also be special measures when the treasury was in need. There is no
mention of a state loan or national debt. The clearest proof that the need
arose for revenue beyond the normal taxes is the progressive debasement
and cruder minting (fig. 33) of Mauryan punch-marked coins. Canakya
was himself credited by the medieval Ceylonese Buddhist commentator
Dhammapala wHh having added enough copper to make eight harsapanas
out of one; Asoka’s coins are 2/3 or more copper, according to modern
chemical analysis. The karsaana means a copper coin to Pali
commentators and to brahmin scriptures like the smrtis of Manu and
Yajnavalkya ; this incidentally proves that those sacred works are later
than the ‘Arthasastra which is supposed to have borrowed from them.
The Arthasastra economy was practicable only in a period of expanding
trade and production, hence doomed to fail with the cessation of such
expansion into paying territory. We have seen that even the generous and