Ancient & Medieval History · Mauryan Administration & Arthashastra
The concept being tested: Mauryan administrative hierarchy - district-level officers (Pradeshika, Rajuka, Yukta).
Ashokan inscriptions suggest that the 'Pradeshika', 'Rajuka' and 'Yukta' were important officers at the
In the Mauryan administrative structure, the empire ran in tiers below the king and the Mantriparishad at the centre: provinces such as Taxila, Ujjain, Suvarnagiri and Tosali were governed by royal princes or kumaras, and below the province sat the district, called an ahara or vishaya, with the village as the smallest unit under a gramika. Ashoka's Pillar Edicts, especially Pillar Edict III and Pillar Edict IV, name the Pradeshika, Rajuka and Yukta together as the functionaries who ran this district-level tier: the Pradeshika (the Arthashastra's pradeshtri) handled district law and order and revenue, the Rajuka was granted independent authority to reward and punish across rural tracts, and the Yukta kept accounts and records under them. The edicts even record their joint five-yearly tour (anusamyana) for justice and dhamma propagation, which is why these three are placed at the district-level administration and not at any other tier.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC uses this trio to test whether aspirants can correctly slot officers into the exact rung of the Mauryan hierarchy, since the provincial viceroy (kumara) is a very close and commonly confused distractor for the district-level Pradeshika-Rajuka-Yukta group named in the Pillar Edicts.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 5 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.