(a) Will it be proper to consider the megaliths to represent a single, homogeneous or contemporaneous culture? What kind of…

(a) Megaliths: one culture or many?

It is not proper to treat the megaliths as one, homogeneous or strictly contemporaneous culture. They are burial monuments with large stones, found mainly in peninsular India (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra, Vidarbha) and dated broadly from about 1000 BCE to the early centuries CE, with regional differences in date. Types vary: cists, dolmens, cairn circles, menhirs, capstones and urn burials, as at Brahmagiri, Hallur, Junapani and Adichanallur. Grave goods and ceramics also vary regionally, though black-and-red ware recurs.

The finds show material life and social organisation. Iron tools, weapons and horse equipment point to iron-using farming and herding societies, with tank and well irrigation, paddy and millet, and beads and gold ornaments suggesting craft and exchange. Differences in grave size and goods show social ranking, with chiefs or elites at the top, and Sangam texts of the south describe such chiefdoms. Thus the megalithic cultures form a broad horizon of related burial customs with regional variety.

(b) Mauryan state in Kautilya's Arthashastra

The Arthashastra presents the state as a seven-limbed (saptanga) body: king, ministers, territory, fort, treasury, army and ally. The king is the centre of power and moves under the rule of dandaniti, with duty to protect and promote the welfare of subjects, and the text advises him to consult counsellors, so it describes a powerful but not arbitrary monarchy.

Administration is run by a salaried bureaucracy, with ministers and many superintendents (adhyakshas) overseeing agriculture, trade, mines, weights, forests and prisons. Spies check officials and subjects. The economy is heavily state-directed: crown lands (sita), taxes on land and trade, state mines and monopolies, and regulation of markets and prices. Law distinguishes dharmasthiya and kantakashodhana courts. Foreign policy follows the mandala theory and the four expedients.

The picture combines paternal welfare and strict control. The Arthashastra is a normative text of uncertain date and composite authorship, so it shows the Mauryan state's ideal and probably some practice, to be read together with Ashokan edicts and Megasthenes.

(c) Varnashrama dharma in Gupta and post-Gupta society

From the Gupta age, social change made the varna order more complex. Dharmashastra writers such as Narada and Brihaspati and later Smriti texts restated duties of the four varnas and applied them to a society now of many jatis.

Land grants spread Brahmin settlement and brought tribal groups and new crafts into the fold as new jatis, with endogamy and ranked status. Mixed castes (anuloma and pratiloma) were invented to explain them. Shudras increasingly appear as cultivators, rising in economic status, while the Vaishyas decline in rank as trade shrinks. Untouchability hardened: Faxian notes Chandalas living apart. Scribal and other occupational groups such as Kayasthas appear, and guilds gained a jati-like character. Varnashrama dharma was thus both an ideal and a way to place new groups.