In the Shanti Parva, when Yudhishthira seeks Bhishma’s guidance on building the right kind of city, Bhishma goes into great detail on the various aspects of what we call today as urban security planning.
Designing the Kings City
Six types of citadels should protect the city where the king dwells namely: water-citadels, earth-citadels, hill-citadels, human-citadels, mud-citadels, and forest-citadels. The main area should be protected with impenetrable walls. Large squares should be created where shops can be set up. The supply of rice and other supplies like fuel, iron, chaff, charcoal, timber, horns, bones, bamboos, marrow, oils and ghee, fat, honey, medicines, flax, resinous exudations, weapons, shafts, leather catgut (for bow-strings), caries, and strings and cords made of munja grass and other plants and creepers should always be stocked for emergency situations. A number of tanks, containing large amount of water, have to be built. This indicated a flourishing irrigation system.
Rural and Urban Governance
Every village or Grama should have a headman. For every 10 headmen, there will be a superintendent who took care of 10 villages grouped together as das-gramini. For every 2 superintendents, there would an officer who took care of 20 villages-vimsatipa. The person above the officer will manage a hundred villages (sat-gramini) and above this is the one who manages thousand villages. This person manages a town and every town has an officer who handles the daily affairs and protection during war. Bottom up support is offered in this organizational structure. The designated officers had to maintain account of all the income and expenditure and personalized taxation systems were designed. If we have to compare it with the scales of today, the whole of Tamil Nadu has only a little over 200 taluks. So the scales spoken of in the Mahabharata are magnificent.
So what was the duty of these top officials?
Bhishma elucidates the various duties performed by the officials:
Designing the Kings City
Six types of citadels should protect the city where the king dwells namely: water-citadels, earth-citadels, hill-citadels, human-citadels, mud-citadels, and forest-citadels. The main area should be protected with impenetrable walls. Large squares should be created where shops can be set up. The supply of rice and other supplies like fuel, iron, chaff, charcoal, timber, horns, bones, bamboos, marrow, oils and ghee, fat, honey, medicines, flax, resinous exudations, weapons, shafts, leather catgut (for bow-strings), caries, and strings and cords made of munja grass and other plants and creepers should always be stocked for emergency situations. A number of tanks, containing large amount of water, have to be built. This indicated a flourishing irrigation system.
Rural and Urban Governance
Every village or Grama should have a headman. For every 10 headmen, there will be a superintendent who took care of 10 villages grouped together as das-gramini. For every 2 superintendents, there would an officer who took care of 20 villages-vimsatipa. The person above the officer will manage a hundred villages (sat-gramini) and above this is the one who manages thousand villages. This person manages a town and every town has an officer who handles the daily affairs and protection during war. Bottom up support is offered in this organizational structure. The designated officers had to maintain account of all the income and expenditure and personalized taxation systems were designed. If we have to compare it with the scales of today, the whole of Tamil Nadu has only a little over 200 taluks. So the scales spoken of in the Mahabharata are magnificent.
So what was the duty of these top officials?
Bhishma elucidates the various duties performed by the officials:
- The key responsibility is to protect the people in his jurisdiction. This official is taking care of 1000 villages and hence would be responsible for a huge population. Offering protection to all of these would mean a solid protection force like the police forces of today that would man the various villages.
- Keeping account of sales and purchases. This indicates a well-functioning accounting system that compiled data from various regions
- Management of roads, food and clothing. This mechanism ensured that all had access to basic needs of food, shelter and clothing
- Profits earned by business communities and levying tax on them. This again indicates a personalized and robust taxation system. Bhishma mentions that the tax should be in proportion to the profits as well as the amount of labor that goes into producing the goods.
- Winning the goodwill of people through a fair system of justice
- These complex organizational structures require meticulous planning and execution. This also requires knowledge of ecology, architecture, precision science, labor laws, economics and weapons engineering.
