The Rashtrakutas and their Times c18.s1.t3.2

c18.s1.t3.2

The tax on persons having no son or dying without a son seems at first sight a strange one. Some might imagine that it was levied by the Hindu state in its desire to see that its subjects discharged the religious duty of procreating a son. The tax, however, was due to no such desire, nor could it have appeared to our age as an unjust imposition. Its imposition as a matter of fact marked a great concession to the subjects. To understand its genesis, we shall have to cast a glance at the history of the widow's right to inherit her husband's property. This right was recognised late in the history of the Hindu society, as was also the case elsewhere. S'atapatha Brāhmaṇa, (69) Maitrāyaṇīya Saṃhitā, (70) Āpastamba, (71) Baudhāyana (72) and Vasiṣṭha (73) Dharmasūtras do not recognise this right, which Yājñavalkya seems to have been the first writer to advocate vigorously. He was later followed by Nārada, Kātyāyana and S'ankha.⁷⁴ When the widow was not recognised as an heir, at the death of her husband living separately from other collaterals, the property would have either escheated to the crown as heirless or devolved upon distant collaterals, who it may have been thought, ought to pay to the state a portion of the wealth they had got as wind-fall. Some of the states seem to have continued the tax even when the widow was recognised as her husband's heir as a partial compensation for the loss they had to sustain by the new theory that the property could devolve upon the widow as well. This tax in the Deccan will have to be pronounced as humane, when compared to the practice of some of the earlier and contemporary states of confiscating all the property of a person dying without a son on the plea that it was heirless, even when the widow was surviving. We shall discuss this theory in detail under the item 'Income from government properties.'