Legal registration of the powers of government in the Mauryan Empire

The challenges existing in the modern geopolitical world, the probability of the destruction of political standards, alliances, redistribution of spheres of political influence established over decades and, as a prospect, the formation of a new system of political blocs, encourage us to once again turn to the origins of the formation of statehood, political power, and the development of rules for interstate relations. The process of the decomposition of the potestas organization and the formation of political power began in the East, it was there that states were formed the earliest, the characteristic and distinctive features of which were the signs outlined by the concept of “Eastern despotism”, which includes such characteristics as the absolute power of the ruler; the sacralization of the ruler’s power; an extensive bureaucratic apparatus that ensured total control over the entire population of a particular state. Much later and in completely different circumstances, the formation of political power and the formation of states took place in the West. The ancient Western political systems included, among other things, such concepts as citizenship, citizens’ rights, and finally, in Ancient Greece, the phenomenon of anthropocentrism, etc., which were not only unknown in the East, but were also directly opposite to the political foundations of Eastern despotisms. Thus, the formation of the modern world political organization took place over millennia through the interaction of these two specific political systems. Today’s political processes are increasingly influenced by the Eastern world. As we can see, democratic values are experiencing a crisis, while regimes based on totalitarian and despotic principles are becoming dominant. The above encourages us to delve into the past in order to find out the circumstances of the formation of political systems of the East, to determine their features and characteristic features. Ancient India was a place where a specific political organization was formed at one time, which differed from the political systems of other Eastern regions. For a long time, the region remained politically fragmented, and only in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BC did the Mauryan state form here, whose rulers managed to unite most of the small political entities. The article, based on sources, attempts to show the formation of the legislative framework and reveal the features of the legal regulation of political power in the empire.