The official 'Agronomai' during Mauryan age was related with which of the following field ?
- (a)Weight and measurement
- (b)Administrative management
- (c)Construction of roads
- (d)Revenue management
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.
- (a)Weight and measurement — Regulation of weights and measures fell to the market/city boards (the astynomoi/market officials) that policed trade, not to the rural agronomoi.
- (b)Administrative management — 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 management — 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.
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.
Match the Greek term to the duty the sources single out: the agronomoi are remembered for road construction and setting up distance-markers. Treat 'administrative management' as a deliberately loose distractor and pin the answer to the specific road-building role.
- Source: Megasthenes' Indica (via Strabo/Arrian), c. 300 BCE
- Agronomoi = officials of the countryside/districts
- Duties included constructing roads and putting up milestones marking distances
- City affairs were handled separately by the astynomoi (city boards at Pataliputra)
Answer (c): the agronomoi are the rural officers linked with road construction.
- Picking the vague 'administrative management' over the specific 'roads'
- Mixing up Greek terms — market (agoranomoi) vs city (astynomoi) vs country (agronomoi)
As a term↔function recall from Megasthenes' account, often paired with the Pataliputra city-boards or Arthashastra superintendents.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Our knowledge of Mauryan city administration (the boards governing Pataliputra) comes chiefly from:
- (a)the Arthashastra alone
- (b)Megasthenes' Indica
- (c)the Ashokan rock edicts
- (d)the Junagadh inscription
Answer(b) Megasthenes' Indica (as preserved by later Greek writers).
- practice — not a real PYQ
In Megasthenes' account, the officials called 'astynomoi' were concerned mainly with:
- (a)administration of the countryside
- (b)administration of the city
- (c)the royal treasury
- (d)temple endowments
Answer(b) administration of the city (Pataliputra's boards).