CDS (II) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 65 of 120

Correct — B, 1, 3 and 4 only. The one broken pair is number 2. Dauvarika comes from dvara, a door, and the dauvarika was the chief door-keeper — the officer in charge of the palace gate establishment, not of the army. The army was the senapati's charge. The other three hold up against the Arthashastra's own arrangement of Book II, which gives a separate chapter to each of these offices: Chapter V is ‘The Duties of the Chamberlain’, the sannidhata who kept the treasury and the state granaries, which is pair 4; Chapter VI is ‘The Business of Collection of Revenue by the Collector-General’, the samaharta who gathered the income of the whole realm, which is pair 1; and Chapter VII is ‘The Business of Keeping up Accounts in the Office of Accountants’, the akshapatala where the registers were written up and audited, which is pair 3. Read that way the item is not four separate facts but one structure — who brings the money in, who keeps it, who writes it down, and one intruder from the palace gate.

• (a)1 and 2 only — Keeps the one broken pair and drops two sound ones. Dauvarika is the door-keeper; the akshapatala and the samnidhatri pairings are both right.
• (c)3 and 4 only — Throws out the collector of revenue, which is the least doubtful pair in the list — samaharta is the office the Arthashastra names as the collector-general of revenue.
• (d)1, 2, 3 and 4 — The tempting all-of-them pick. It fails on pair 2 alone: the army answered to the senapati, and the dauvarika's post was at the palace door.

Most of what is written about Mauryan administration comes from Kautilya's Arthashastra, a Sanskrit manual of statecraft, read alongside Megasthenes as quoted by later Greek writers and the Ashokan inscriptions. The Arthashastra's Book II is a catalogue of superintendents, each with a defined charge — the treasury, revenue, accounts, mines, forests, weaving, shipping, the mint. The finance offices form a chain: the samaharta assessed and gathered revenue, the sannidhata received and stored it, and the akshapatala kept the registers against which both could be checked. The text also sets out how embezzlement by officials was to be detected, which tells you the audit function was taken seriously.

The way in is etymology, not memory. Dvara means door, so dauvarika is a door-keeper — no reading of the word gets you to an army command. Samaharta carries the sense of gathering together, which fits a revenue collector; sannidhata carries the sense of depositing, which fits a treasurer; aksha-patala is literally the place of the record-sheets. On the paper's own spellings: it prints Samahartri and Samnidhatri where most translations give Samaharta and Sannidhata, and prints Dauvarika as the Sanskrit has it. Transliteration of these titles varies from one translation to another, so treat the spelling as noise and the function as the tested point. One honest caution about the Arthashastra as a source — its date is disputed and much of the received text may be later than the Mauryas, so it is safer to describe it as the classical Indian manual of statecraft than as a Mauryan administrative record.

• Book II of the Arthashastra devotes separate chapters to the Chamberlain, to collection of revenue by the Collector-General, and to keeping accounts in the office of accountants.
• Samaharta is the collector-general of revenue; sannidhata the chamberlain who held the treasury and the state granaries; akshapatala the office of accounts and audit.
• Dauvarika derives from dvara, door, and denotes the chief door-keeper of the palace; military command lay with the senapati.
• The same book of the Arthashastra has chapters on detecting embezzlement by government servants and on examining their conduct.
• The Arthashastra is a manual of statecraft rather than a record of any one reign, and scholars disagree about how much of the surviving text is of Mauryan date.

• Reading dauvarika as a military title; the word is built on dvara, a door.
• Merging the samaharta and the sannidhata into one finance officer. Collection and custody were separate charges.
• Treating the Arthashastra as a straightforward description of Ashoka's administration rather than a normative manual of uncertain date.

Almost always as a pairs item matching a Sanskrit office-name to a department, with one deliberately mismatched pair.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Arthashastra, which officer was in charge of the treasury and the state granaries?

  • (a)Samaharta
  • (b)Sannidhata
  • (c)Akshapatala
  • (d)Dauvarika

  Answer(b) Sannidhata — the chamberlain, whose duties fill a chapter of Book II; the samaharta collected revenue while the akshapatala kept accounts.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Military command in the administrative scheme of the Arthashastra rested with which officer?

  • (a)Senapati
  • (b)Dauvarika
  • (c)Samaharta
  • (d)Akshapataladhyaksha

  Answer(a) Senapati — the commander of the army; the dauvarika was the chief door-keeper of the palace.