As it is difficult for one man to govern a great kingdom the book advises the king to choose seven or eight ministers from men whose fathers have already been in the service of the crown, persons of good family, of knowledge of the law, bold and skilful in the use of weapons.[266] He is to secure their fidelity by an oath. With them he is to consider all affairs, first with each singly, then with all together; after this he may do what seems to him best. On matters of great importance the king must always ask the advice of one Brahman of eminence, and consider the affair with him as his first minister.[267] The sutras of the Buddhists as well as the epic poems show us the court of the king arranged according to these rules; in the Ramayana, king Daçaratha of Ayodhya has eight ministers together with his Parohita and Ritvij.[268] The plan presented by the law for the management of the state is very simple. The king is to place officers (_pati_, lords) over every village, and again over every ten or twenty villages (_grama_), so that these places with their acreage formed together a district. Five or ten such districts form a canton, which contains a hundred communities, and over this in turn the king places a higher magistrate. Ten of these cantons form a region, which thus comprised a thousand villages, and this is administered by a governor.[269] The overseers of districts are to have divisions of soldiers at their disposal to maintain order in their districts. Thefts and robbery which they are unable to prevent with their own forces they must report to the overseers of cantons.[270] Thus the states of India were governed by a complicated series of royal magistrates subordinated to each other, which is of itself evidence of an advanced stage of administration. Whether the kings of India adopted this or some other plan for the management of their states, which in the first instance were of no great extent, experience must have taught, before Manu's laws received their present form, that these magistrates did not always discharge their duties faithfully, but were guilty of caprice and oppression. The subordination of the magistrates is intended to supply a means of control; but the law also requires regular payment of officers. "Those whom the king employs for the security of the land," we are told, "are as a rule knaves, who gladly appropriate the property of the subjects."[271] In order to prevent this as far as possible regular payment is absolutely necessary. The fourth class (the overseers of the villages) is to receive what the village has to contribute to the king in rice, wood, and drink; the third class (the overseers of districts) must receive as pay the produce of an estate, which requires twelve steers to cultivate it; the second class must receive the produce of a plot five times as large, &c.[272] Moreover, in every great city the king must nominate a head overseer, and must from time to time cause