Other important portfolios

In this post I am going to summarize the rest of the chapters of book II - adhyaksha pracAraH.

nAvAdhyaksha - Controller of shipping - chapter 28 - deals with civilian shipping and water ways for transporting the goods within the territory. There are guidelines to provide transport of goods, animals and people at various charges. Pregnant women, children, senior citizens, sannyasis and brahmaNas are given special free permit to use the services.

gOdhyaksha - Director for cattle welfare - chapter 29 - deals with dividing the cows into groups of 100 and assigning the caretakers for each group. For different kinds of cattle different routines apply. In each group 4 to 6 vRshas (bulls) need to be there to help reproduction. Different uses of produce from the cattle explained in detail in this chapter. Never a cow should be killed. All the death of cattle need to be recorded along with the reason for death by the gOdhyaksha.

Chapter 30 deals with the Superintend of horses - asvAdhyaksha - His responsibilities include taking care of horses that are naturally within kingdom, those who have been gifted by other kings etc., During various phases of horse's life, the amount of feed and treatment for different conditions have to be understood and attended for.

Hasti adhyakshaH, hasti pracAraH (Chapter 31 and 32) deals with Superintend of Elephants and the activity of Elephants. It is interesting to read about various activities of elephants of four classes: damyam is the one which is under training. sAmnAhyam is the one used for military purposes in the wars. One used as vAhana (for riding) is aupavAhyam. One which can't be trained is vyAlam.  The adhyaksha should take care of training, treatment for various conditions, capturing new elephants etc.,

Chapter 33 deals with commanders of different forces - of tanks (rathas), of foot-soldiers and army. The rathAdhyaksha works very closely with the asvAdhyaksha. The sEnApati is the one who is well versed in all sorts of war techniques and supported by individual adhyakshas. He is responsible for training the whole army and establishing the signals using various musical instruments and banners on their course of action.

mudrAdhyaksha takes care of issuing the passports to the people wishing to leave to other countries and visas to those who are entering the kingdom. vivItAdhyaksha takes care of pasture lands that are in between the janapadAs.

Most important system of kauTilya's state is samAharta. It is like today's police force and revenue force together. Each janapada is divided into four parts and each part has one divisional officer responsible for knowing the number of villages, number of households in each village based on their demographics and professions. So, complete census, the income and expenditure of each village, how many soldiers are in the army from each village is also tracked. They are also responsible to appoint informers across the villages to regularly report all administrative and home safety related changes in their own patches depending on the changes that take place. (This is chapter 35)

nAgarika praNidhi is the chapter 36 and last topic of adhyaksha pracAraH. - This highlight is the administration and police vigilance comes all the way down to at the maximum 40 households.This officer called as gOpaH who takes care of 10, 20 or 40 households. As the gOpaH is responsible for welfare of the households he has complete idea of the number of members, their characters etc.,

Rules are given for running the nagara or the city. Special events, utsavas have different set of rules. Times should be followed by all the citizens for various activities. Any unsocial behaviour attracts punishment almost immediately. Each house owner has the responsibility to report any irregularities observed to the gOpa. This applies strictly to the doctors as they treat anyone unknown to them they need to report.

In my honest feeling, what we are missing is this strong social bonding in the modern world. With so much of new technology and methods to establish identity, we are still failing due to not having this level of distributed administration / governance in the modern day. It is not difficult to achieve. But there is no will in today's governments to achieve this.

With this post, we complete touching all 36 chapters of the book II of artha SAstra which started with http://sastra-artha.blogspot.in/2013/06/adhyaksha-pracarah-centralising.html

A total of 57 chapters are covered or rather "touched upon" in this blog in 40 posts.