The system of government was very highly and minutely evolved. "Of the great officers of state, some have charge of the markets, others of the city, others of the soldiers; others superintend the canals, and measure the land, or collect the taxes; some construct roads and set up pillars to show the by-roads and distances from place to place. Those who have charge of the city are divided into six boards of five members apiece: The first looks after industrial art. The second attends to the entertainment of strangers, taking care of them, sound or sick, and in the event of their death, burying them and sending their property to their relatives." The third board registered births and deaths; the fourth, fifth and sixth had supervision of things commercial. Military affairs were as closely organized: there were Boards of Infantry, Cavalry, War Chariots, Elephants, Navy, and Bullock Transport. And behind all these stood Chandragupta himself, the superman, ruthless and terrifically efficient; and Chanakya, his Macchiavellian minister: a combination to hurry the world into greatness. And so indeed they did. Under Asoka, Chandragupta's grandson, the age culminated. H. P. Blavatsky says positively that he was born into Buddhism; this is not the general view; but one finds nothing in his edicts, really, to contradict it. His father Bindusara, of whom we know nothing, may have been a Buddhist. But it would appear that Asoka in his youth was the most capable, and also the most violent and passionate of Bindusara's sons. During his father's lifetime, he held one of the great vice-royalties into which the empire was divided; he succeeded to the throne in 271. His domains at that time included all Aryavarta, with Baluchistan, and as much of Afghanistan as lies south of the Hindoo Koosh; and how much of the Deccan it is difficult to determine. Nine years later he extended this realm still further, by the conquest of the Kalingas, whose country lay along the coast northward from Madras. At the end of that war he was master of all India north of a line drawn from Pondicherry to Cannanore in the south; while the tip of the Deccan and Ceylon lay at least within his sphere of influence. He was easily the strongest monarch of his day. In China--between which country and India there was no communication: they had not discovered each other, or they had lost sight of each other for ages--an old order was breaking to pieces, and all was weakness and decay. In the West, Greek civilization was in decadence, with the successors of Alexander engaged in profitless squabbles. Rome, a power only in Italy, was about to begin her long struggle with Carthage; overseas nobody minded her. The Crest-Wave was in India, the strongest power and most vigorous civilization, so far as we can tell, in the world, and at the head of India stood this Chakravartin, victorious Asoka, flushed with conquest, and a whole world tempting him out to conquer.--