Author Name: TANMAYI MAHARANA Date: 24-04-2026
Abstract:- This paper explores the historical paradox of female agency within the Mauryan Empire by contrasting the prescriptive Brahminical traditions of Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra with the administrative reality captured in the Ashokan inscriptions. While theoretical texts sought to confine women to the domestic sphere, epigraphic evidence—specifically the Queen’s Edict, the Schism Edicts, and Major Rock Edicts IX and XII—reveals a highly dynamic public reality. Through an epigraphic and biopolitical analysis, this study argues that Mauryan women, such as Queen Kāruvākī and the Buddhist Bhikkhunis, wielded undeniable economic and institutional Śakti (power/agency). In response, the fiercely pragmatic Mauryan state deployed an expansive bureaucracy, including the appointment of Superintendents of Women, to institutionalize patriarchal surveillance. Ultimately, these inscriptions serve as a surviving feminist archive, highlighting an ancient state that simultaneously needed and feared female power—a dialectic of empowerment and containment that strongly prefigures modern governmental gender policies.
Keywords: Mauryan Empire, Epigraphy, Gender Surveillance, Ashokan Edicts, Śakti, Biopolitics, Women in Early India.
