India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c9.s1.12

c9.s1.12

MEASUREMENT AND SURVEY—The distribution of plots among individual peasants must have depended on some kind of land survey which took note of the area and boundaries of fields. Pāṇini gives an indication of this when he prescribes the rule for expressing the area of a field in terms of a measure known as *kāṇḍa*. The *sūtra Kāṇḍāntāt kshetre* (IV.1.23) states that the word *kāṇḍa* preceded by a numeral takes the feminine affix *ṭāp*, if the derivative word relates to a field. The word denoting the area of a cultivated field (*kshetra-bhakti*) must have been the object of the present *sūtra*. The *Kāśikā* cites *dvi-kāṇḍa* to denote a field measuring two *kāṇḍas*. Similarly, *tri-kāṇḍa* etc. with other numerals. *Kāṇḍa* is later interpreted as 16 cubits (*shoḍaś-āratny-āyāmo daṇḍaḥ kāṇḍam*; *Bālamanoramā*). Thus 1 sq. *kāṇḍa*=24×24 sq. ft. *KSHETRAKARA* (III.2.21), 'maker of a field'—This term denoted an officer who divided the cultivable area into plots by survey and measurement. (Megasthenes also refers to officers whose duty was to measure lands for purposes of the assessment of revenue (Frag. 34). They might be the *Rajjugrāhakas* of the Jātakas who measured the land with a rope. He had the rank of an *amātya*, surveyed the fields and measured them with a rope tied to pegs, of which one end was held by him and the other by the owner of the field (*Kurudhamna Jāt.*, III.276). The *halya* measure of land is explained by Pāṇini as *halasya karshaḥ*, *i.e.* the area cultivated by one plough (IV. 4.97). Multiples of the *halya* land measure were expressed as *dvi-halya*, *tri-halya*.) Manu refers to a measure of land called *kula* equivalent to two plough-lands (*Manu*, VII.119, *Kullūka*), same as *dohalikā* of land-grants.