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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

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…

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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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