The Rashtrakutas and their Times c18.s2.20

c18.s2.20

Stray plots of cultivable lands in several villages, waste lands, lands awaiting cultivation, forests and some specific trees formed government property. The Rāshṭrakūṭa administration did not claim proprietary right in all the land under cultivation within its jurisdiction. The numerous copperplate grants, giving villages to temples and Brahmanas, assign to the donees the government's right to the taxes derived from the land and other sources; there is not a single case where the proprietary right in the entire land under cultivation in any village has been transferred to a donee. The plate uses a long series of expressions specifying the rights accruing to the donees, but not a single expression is used in any of our grants, suggesting that the donees acquired the proprietary rights in the cultivable lands in the village. Even the right of ejection is nowhere mentioned. It is, therefore, clear that in our period the state did not lay any claim to the ownership of the entire soil situated in the realm. Nay, there are actual cases of previous purchase when land, and not the revenue rights, were assigned to the donees. Tirukkoyalur inscription (88) of the 21st year of the reign of Kṛṣṇa III (c. 961 A.D.) states how a Vaidumba king purchased about 3 velis of land from the local assembly in order to assign it to a temple in the village. Some of the Chola records, granting land and not the right to the revenue, expressly refer to the previous purchase of the rights of the former owners and hereditary proprietors. (89) It is further worth noting that when the proprietary right in the soil is given to the donee, the grant is usually of a few acres and not of an entire village. In this connection the Konnur inscription of Amoghavarsha I (90) is very important. The record states that, at the request of his favourite general, Bankeya, Amoghavarsha I gave to a Jain temple