the name of Samba, a kumara (royal prince), in charge of Manemadesa. This
is not only new information, but it also prompted a fresh look at the structure
of the empire.
Revised Views about Provincial Administration The previous notion
that it had a neat organisation of four provincial centres in almost four
cardinal directions, viz. Takshasila (north), Ujjaiyni (west), Tosali (east) and
Suvarnagiri (south) under kumaras or provincial governors of Maurya
descent (known from Asoka’s edicts from Dhauli and Jaugada in Orissa) has
been replaced with that of a larger number of provinces. It has also been
argued that the image of constant control and intervention of the central
authority in the affairs of provincial and local level administration has to be
revised in terms of a less centralised polity, with considerable autonomy to
provincial administrators. The central authority’s presence is said to have
been strongly felt in the newly conquered Kalinga area and the provisions in
the two sets of REs (so-called Kalinga edicts), according to this view, were
not applicable to the entire area of the empire.
                 IMPORTANCE OF SANNATI EDICT
  The newly discovered edicts and fresh studies of the existing edicts have,
  in short, encouraged the stance that the Maurya empire was not a unitary
  state as it had earlier been argued for. This new perception of the structure
  of the Maurya state, however exhilarating, has again been questioned with
  the discovery of an edict of Asoka from Sannathi in the Gulbarga district
  of Karnataka. The important point is that this edict is the same as the edict
  from ancient Kalinga (i.e. Dhauli and Jaugada). It was generally believed
  that the edicts from Kalinga were of special nature, meant specifically for
  Kalinga, where Asoka deliberately did not issue REXIII, as it gave a vivid
  account of the massacre in Kalinga. This explains the use of the
  expressions such as Separate Rock Edicts, Kalinga Edicts, etc. The
  discovery of the record from Sannathi now puts beyond controversy that
  the statements made and certain measures taken by Asoka were not merely
  applicable to Kalinga, but were meant for the realm in general.