Steel Frame of the State

Serious studies of ancient imperial bureaucracies were neglected by scholars for a long time and considered to be irrelevant in relation to modern public administration. Indirectly Max Webber and Karl Marx promoted this attitude. Interest was generated later on with the rise of nationalism in Asian countries. Historians of India, Pakistan and Persia unravelled the structure and process of their ancient political institutions and administrative machinery initiating comparative studies later on. But this field is still not free from lingering prejudices and misinterpretations. This book focusses on the relevance of studying the imperial bureaucracy of the Gupta period(A.D. 320 to 550) for a deeper understanding of public administration. Greater part of northern India was under the political supremacy of a single Gupta dynasty. India during this period was divided into a large number of small kingdoms ruled by semi-autonomous or autonomous kings. Though their kingdoms were separate geo-political entities (dominions), their records show that their bureaucratic structures were on the whole of the same pattern or replica of the imperial bureaucracy.