The official 'Agronomai' during Mauryan age was related with which of the following field ?

Question

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Correct — C, Construction of roads. In Megasthenes' account of Mauryan administration (preserved by Strabo and Arrian), the officials who looked after the countryside — the Agronomoi (district/rural officers) — were charged, among other duties, with building and maintaining roads and erecting pillars/milestones that marked distances and by-roads. It is this road-and-milestone responsibility that the question ties to the term.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Regulation of weights and measures fell to the market/city boards (the astynomoi/market officials) that policed trade, not to the rural agronomoi.  (b) Too vague — every official did some 'administration'; the specific field associated with the agronomoi in the sources is roads (and allied rural works), so this general option is the trap.  (d) Revenue/tax assessment in the Mauryan system is linked to officers such as the samaharta and the sitadhyaksha; while agronomoi did collect some dues, the field the term is identified with is road-building.

Concept: Our picture of Mauryan district administration comes largely from Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador at Chandragupta's court, whose Indica survives only in quotations. He grouped urban magistrates (city officials, or astynomoi, organised into boards at Pataliputra) separately from the officials who administered the country districts (agronomoi), whose portfolio included roads, land measurement, irrigation and rural crafts.

State PCS 2020 Q4 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2020 Q4 — History PYQ with Answer