Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/90

88 the official stamp. The rules about Weights and measures were laid down in minute detail. The ﬁfth Board had similar duties in respect of manufactured goods. Traders were required to keep old and new goods separate, and careful distinctions were drawn between merchandise from foreign parts, that from the country, and that produced or made inside the city. The sixth Board collected the tax on sales, which is said by Megasthenes to have been one-tenth ad valorem, but, as a matter of fact, was levied at various rates. Evasion of this tax was punishable with death, according to Megasthenes as reported by Strabo. Chânakya lays down that 'those who utter a lie shall be punished as thieves ,' that is to say, by mutilation or death.

The documents do not supply similar details concerning the municipal government of the other cities of the empire, but the edicts refer more than once to the ofﬁcers in charge of particular towns, and it is probable that the greater cities were administered on the same lines as the capital.

The court was characterized by semi-barbaric magnificence which Quintus Curtius considered to be carried to 'a vicious excess without a parallel in the world.' The stories about the king's golden palanqnin and other articles of ostentatious luxury