Consider the following statements about the Mauryan State and the forest people : 1. The forest people were subjected to new forms of political and economic dominance and the necessity to subordinate and assimilate them led to a change in the earlier attitude of excluding these people from imperial territory. 2. The State recognised that the forest produce was the sole monopoly of the forest people. 3. The State was concerned with the conservation of forests and to this end the burning of forests was prohibited. 4. The forest people could be harnessed to serve the State and could be used as troops, spies and assassins. How many of the above statements is/are correct?
- (a)1
- (b)2
- (c)3
- (d)4
Correct — C, 3. Three of the four statements hold and statement 2 is the one that fails. Statement 1 describes the shift accurately — as Mauryan agrarian settlement pushed outward, forest peoples stopped being outsiders to be kept beyond the frontier and became populations to be subordinated, taxed and absorbed. Statement 3 is on the record twice over: Ashoka's fifth Major Pillar Edict states that 'Forests must not be burnt either uselessly or in order to destroy (living beings)', and the Arthashastra keeps forests under official care. Statement 4 is also supported — the Arthashastra says 'The interior of the kingdom shall be watched by trap-keepers (vagurika), archers (sabara), hunters (pulinda), chandalas, and wild tribes (aranyachara)', which is exactly forest people put to work as the state's eyes, and forest levies appear among the kinds of troops a king could call on. Statement 2 reverses the direction of everything else in the item. Far from conceding forest produce to the forest people, the Arthashastra places it under a state officer: 'The superintendent of forests with his retinue of forest guards shall not only maintain the up-keep of the forests, but also acquaint himself with all passages for entrance into, or exit from such of them as are mountainous or boggy or contain rivers or lakes.' Elephants, timber and other forest produce were state assets, not a tribal monopoly.
- (a)1 — Far too few. Only one statement in the set is false; three stand on the evidence of the Arthashastra and Ashoka's edicts.
- (b)2 — Undercounts by one. Statements 1, 3 and 4 are all supported, so the total cannot stop at two.
- (d)4 — Counts statement 2 as true. The texts give control of forest produce to a state superintendent with forest guards, not to the forest people as a monopoly.
The Mauryan state's relationship with forest peoples ran along two lines at once — coercion and use. Kautilya's Arthashastra treats forests as a resource to be administered: superintendents and forest guards manage them, elephant forests are protected because war elephants come from them, and the wild tribes of the interior are enrolled as watchers. Ashoka's edicts add a further layer, protecting animals and forbidding forests from being burnt.
The reliable way through a 'how many are correct' item is to look for the statement whose direction differs from the rest. Statements 1, 3 and 4 all describe the state acting on the forest and its people — dominating them, conserving the forest, employing them. Statement 2 alone runs the other way and hands the forest people a right against the state. That single reversal is what marks it out, and the texts confirm the reading. It is worth being honest that this question format gives no credit for partial knowledge: identifying statement 2 as false is the whole answer, and getting any one of the others wrong changes the count and the mark. It is also worth resisting a modern reading of statement 3 — Ashoka's ban on burning forests sits inside a passage protecting animals, but a Mauryan state that depended on elephants and timber had hard reasons of its own to keep forests standing.
- The Arthashastra places forests under a state officer: 'The superintendent of forests with his retinue of forest guards shall not only maintain the up-keep of the forests, but also acquaint himself with all passages for entrance into, or exit from such of them as are mountainous or boggy or contain rivers or lakes.'
- The same text records that 'The interior of the kingdom shall be watched by trap-keepers (vagurika), archers (sabara), hunters (pulinda), chandalas, and wild tribes (aranyachara)'.
- Ashoka's fifth Major Pillar Edict states that 'Forests must not be burnt either uselessly or in order to destroy (living beings)', in a passage that also lists protected species.
- War elephants came from the forest, which gave the Mauryan state a direct military interest in keeping elephant forests intact and under its own officers.
- Forest levies appear among the kinds of troops an Arthashastra king could draw on, alongside hereditary, hired, guild and allied forces.
- Assuming that a text which protects forests must be protecting the forest people's rights; the Arthashastra protects the state's revenue and its elephants.
- Answering the count without testing every statement — this format gives nothing for spotting three of four if the fourth flips the total.
- Reading Ashoka's ban on burning forests as pure ecological ethics, and forgetting that timber and elephants were state assets.
Asked as a 'how many of the above statements are correct' item, where three statements describe the state acting on forest people and one quietly reverses the direction of control.
Arthashastra, the classical work of Indian political thought, focuses primarily on
- (a) economy
- (b) culture
- (c) statecraft
- (d) monarchy
Answer(c) statecraft
Same source, tested at the level of what kind of book it is. Recognising the Arthashastra as a manual of statecraft is precisely what tells you it would assign forest produce to a state officer rather than to the forest people.
CDS_GK_2022_I_Q822022Which one of the following was not a part of Kautilya's Saptanga Theory of the State?
- (a) Amatya
- (b) Janapada
- (c) Durga
- (d) Dhamma
Answer(d) Dhamma
Same text, tested on its framework rather than its detail. That 2022 CDS item asks what counts among the seven limbs of the Kautilyan state; this one asks what the same text says about the state's reach into the forest.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In Kautilya's Arthashastra, the forests and their produce were placed under the charge of
- (a)The village headman
- (b)A state superintendent with a retinue of forest guards
- (c)The forest tribes themselves
- (d)The commander of the army
Answer(b) A state superintendent with a retinue of forest guards — the text makes forest produce a matter of state administration, not a tribal monopoly.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The instruction that forests must not be burnt uselessly or in order to destroy living beings appears in
- (a)Major Rock Edict XIII
- (b)Major Pillar Edict V
- (c)The Rummindei pillar inscription
- (d)The Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman
Answer(b) Major Pillar Edict V — the edict that also lists species Ashoka declared protected.