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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

How would you characterize the nature of Mauryan state on the basis of Kautilya’s Arthashastra?

  • UPSC 2021
  • Mauryan Empire

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Read literally, the Arthashastra describes a state of almost totalitarian reach — one that fixes wages, monopolises mines, breeds spies into every household, and marches a standing army recruited across the four varnas. The real question is not whether Kautilya imagined such a state — he plainly did — but whether that imagined apparatus is…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Saptanga: Kautilya's Anatomy of the State
  • An Interventionist, All-Encompassing Economy
  • Surveillance, Law, and the Idiom of Danda
  • Defence: The Fourth Limb in Practice
  • The Case Against Reading This as Literal Centralization
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