The Rashtrakutas and their Times c18.s1.63

c18.s1.63

Kautalya recommends (35) a remission of land tax in case of the failure of crops due to famines, pestilences, and wars. We get no evidence about the practice in this respect from the epigraphical records of our period, probably because there was no reason to enunciate such a principle in documents creating rent-free tenures. The case of a revision survey rendered necessary by the drying up of a village canal, referred to in the last para, would suggest that the principle of remission, recommended by Kautalya, may have been acted upon by some states. It may be further pointed out that when the land tax was collected in kind, as was usually the case in our period, and was fixed as a certain share of the actual crop that was produced in the field for the year in question, detailed rules about remissions were not necessary; if on any account whatsoever the yield was less, the share of the government also would automatically diminish. (36) Ukkal inscription No. 9(37) shows that if under normal circumstances the land tax was not paid for three years the lands were sold by the village communities to the exclusion of the defaulting landholders.