CHAPTER IV. taxes, and superintended all the various work-people who were engaged in connection with the land, such as wood-cutters, carpenters, workers in brass, and miners generally. They also superintended the public roads, and placed pillars at intervals of every ten stadia, or about a mile and a quarter, to indicate the by-ways and distances.70

Officers of state.

Administration of the Gangetic empire compared with

The so-called seventh caste, including officers of state, must be dismissed with a bare notice. Megasthenes merely states that the seventh caste consisted of counsellors and assessors of the king; and that to these persons belonged the offices of state, the tribunals of justice, and the whole administration of affairs.71

The administration of the Gangetic empire thus described by Megasthenes, bears a remarkable resemblance to the native administration of the existing kingdom of upper Burma, or Ava. In both cases there is an entire absence of either an aristocratic element, or a popular one. The administration is composed of mere officials, whose title and position wholly depend upon the will of the sovereign. In Burma it is a mere bureaucracy without any hereditary influence or political training. Every official is profoundly obsequious to the reigning sovereign, whether he be the rightful prince or a usurper; and consequently revolutionary attempts to subvert a king are of comparatively frequent occurrence, as, if successful, they neither affect the administration nor the masses of the population."

70 Strabo, India, sect. 50.

71 Ibid. 49.

72 Perhaps the best published account of Burma and its constitution is to be found in Father Sangermano's description of the Burmese empire, printed at Rome, in 1833, for the Oriental Translation Society. The Father spent twenty-six years

It

the administration to the

tion.

But notwithstanding the apparent defects in the CHAPTER IV. administration of the Gangetic empire, it seems to Adaptation or have been adapted to the people of the country. It Hindů popula was an irresponsible despotism, but of a paternal character; and it was feared and obeyed by a population, who have hitherto been supposed to be as unfitted as children for the exercise of any political independence, or share in the administration outside their own village or family community. has already been seen that Megasthenes praises the cultivators, who formed the bulk of the population, as being the most gentle and contented in the world. He even expatiates on the orderly conduct of the camp, and the absence of the crime of theft, in a standing army of four hundred thousand men. Of the people of India generally, he says that they are happy because of the simplicity of their manners and their frugal mode of life. They had but one extravagance, and that was a love of ornament which to this day is a characteristic of all classes of the community. They never drank wine, excepting at sacrifices.73 Their or

in Burma, and the author has been enabled to test his information, and supplement it with additional notes, during a voyage from Rangoon via Ava, Amarapura, and Mandalay, to the remote town of Bhamo, on the frontier of Burma towards China, a distance of some thousand miles up the river Irrawaddy.

The general resemblance between the courts of Patali-putra and Mandalay is so striking that it is easy to conjecture that the court in which king Sandrokottos sat as judge was the Hlot-dau, the Luttó of Sangermano, in which the king occupied the principal seat, and the ministers sat as counsellors or assessors.

The Hlot-dau, or supreme council of Ava, exercises all the powers of a senate, a high court, and a cabinet. Its functions are legislative, judicial, and executive. As a senate, it might veto any act or order of the king. As a high court of civil and criminal justice, it tries all important cases, and is the highest court of appeal. As a cabinet, it exercises all the powers of government; and every order of the king is issued by the Hlot-dau in the name of the ministers of whom the court is composed. In the present day, however, it is the shadow without the substance of a constitution.

73 This wine was probably the soma juice of the Vedic hymns.

CHAPTER IV. dinary beverage was made from rice. Their food consisted of what he calls rice-pottage, which no doubt corresponded to rice and curry. Their laws were so simple that they had few lawsuits, and none whatever in the case of pledges and deposits. They required neither witnesses nor seals, but made their deposits and confided in one another. Even their houses and property were unguarded. Megasthenes adds that they had no written laws, and were even ignorant of writing, and regulated everything by memory. This statement must be accepted with some reservation. The Brahmans certainly possessed a sacred literature, but they would never have produced their books to the Greek ambassador; and if questioned concerning them, would have denied their existence, as the easiest way of escaping from the difficulty. Indeed Nearchos, who accompanied Alexander to the Punjab, distinctly states that the people wrote letters upon cloth, which was smoothed for the purpose by being well beaten.74

Authenticity of the Greek pic

India.

The pictures of ancient India, which are thus tures of ancient furnished by the Greeks, are valuable as much for their realism as for their authenticity. They utterly invalidate the gross exaggerations of the Sanskrit epics, whilst clearing away much of the haze which surrounds the legendary life of Sákya Muni. They do not exhibit an advanced stage of civilization, like that which will hereafter be found reflected in the Hindú drama; and indeed it may be inferred that as yet the Hindú drama had no existence, for no mention is made of theatrical entertainments

74 Nearchos in Strabo, India, sect. 67.

of any kind. Again, the court of Sandrokottos was CHAPTER I not a centre of literary culture, like the courts of the later Hindú sovereigns; for Megasthenes makes no allusion to wits or philosophers, poets or storytellers, displaying their talents or accomplishments under the patronage of a munificent Raja. On the contrary, the royal residence at Patali-putra was a mere fortified palace in which the Raja dwelt in strict seclusion, surrounded only by women; and the chief pleasure in which he indulged outside his palace was that of hunting in the company of armed females. Strabo considered that these royal excursions resembled the joyous processions of the worshippers of Dionysos; but in reality they were simply hunting expeditions, in which the Raja was protected by a body-guard of amazons.

The so

called literati or philosophers of ancient India, are described as mere religious recluses, dwelling in groves outside the cities, where they taught a strange metaphysical religion, and practised still stranger rites and austerities.

Greek accounts

The information supplied by Megasthenes as Review of the regards the agricultural class, who are represented of the Ryots. by the modern Ryots, is more pleasing, but equally realistic. As already seen, the husbandmen were the main support of the government and the vast standing army; but their condition could have been little better than that of serfs, who cultivated the whole area of arable land as the royal domain, and received a share of the harvest for their maintenance.75 They were, however, happy

75 The evidence of the Greek ambassador as to the respective shares of the Raja and the Ryot is deserving of consideration. He says that the share. of the cultivator was only one-fourth; consequently the royal share must have been three-fourths. According to the concurrent testimony of the sacred books of

CHAPTER IV. and contented. It may therefore be inferred that they were not exposed to unnecessary interference, so long as they did their duty to the land. They were simple in their wants, and probably domestic in their lives. They knew nothing of politics; and they took no part in rebellions or revolutions. From time immemorial they had doubtless been brought up in the hereditary belief that all the land belonged to the Raja, that they were his servants, and that their primary duty was to cultivate the soil for his benefit; and this humble status they appear to have accepted with that blind ignorance which often constitutes material happiness. When the harvest was abundant, their share sufficed for all their wants; and in exceptional times of drought or famine, it is only natural to suppose, that as servants of the Raja, they could be supplied with food from the royal granaries, in the same way that the elephants and horses of the Raja received their daily rations. They married wives, and they became fathers of families; and if a great part of their time was devoted to labour in the fields, they doubtless had their times of holiday, and celebrated the same festivals which they still observe. Under such circumstances they would decorate themselves, and indeed the whole village, with garlands of flowers, not forgetting the trees, the temples, and the images of the gods; and then with the aid of some Bráhman they would offer their little sacrifices, and feast on such simple delicacies as their wives could pre

the Brahmans, and the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims Fah-Hian and Hiouen-Thsang, the Raja only received one-sixth of the produce. Perhaps the Raja received three-fourths of the produce from his own special demesnes, which were cultivated by serfs; and one-sixth of the produce of all the lands throughout his empire, which were cultivated by the Ryots.