Indian Epigraphy c16.s5.1

c16.s5.1

While creating rent-free holdings in favour of gods, Brāhmaṇas, etc., the king usually surrendered some of his prerogatives in respect of the gift land. Such surrendered rights are more or less clearly stated in a large number of charters. It may be pointed out that some of the privileges were enjoyed by the king not directly but only indirectly. Thus according to the *Manusmṛti* (VII. 115-19), the heads of one thousand, one hundred, and ten villages enjoyed respectively a town, a village and five *Kulas* of land while ‘the headman of a village (*Grāmika*) should get all of what is daily payable by the villagers to the king in the shape of food-stuff, drinks, fuel and other things’. As will be seen below, some of the exemptions allowed to be enjoyed by the donees of rent-free holdings relate to the free supply of articles that the villagers had to make to the royal officials when the latter visited their villages on tour.