Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/98

96 was the mainstay of the Treasury. All agricultural land was regarded as Crown property, and the normal theoretical share of the State was either one-fourth or one-sixth of the produce, in addition to water rate, if any, and a host of other dues and cesses. People who grumble at modern assessments will find if they study history that their ancestors often were much more severely fleeced. Chânakya, without the slightest regard for moral principles, explains the methods of more than Machiavellian wickedness by which needy kings may replenish their coffers, and many instances of the lesson being well learned are on record. Official misdoings were as common in ancient as in modern times. The textbook writer, with the characteristic Hindu love for categories, explains that 'there are about forty ways of embezzlement,' which he enumerates with painstaking exactness. He sagely observes that 'just as it is impossible not to taste the honey or the poison that finds itself at the tip of the tongue, so it is impossible for a Government servant not to eat up at least a bit of the king's revenue .' The Kalinga Provincials’ Edict shows how Asoka was worried by negligent or disobedient officers, and expresses in singularly vivid language, evidently the actual words of the sovereign, his displeasure at the neglect of his commands. 'You must,' he declares, 'see to your duty and be told to remember:—"See to my commands, such and such are the instructions (if his Sacred