The Age of the Imperial Guptas c6.62

c6.62

Very little reliable data is available about the land revenue system of the early Gupta Empire. Literary evidence is altogether absent. The only sources of information are the inscriptions on copper plates of the period discovered at Dhanaidaha in the Rajshahi district and at Damodarpur in the Dinajpur district of Bengal. From the Damodarpur plates we learn that in the Puṇḍravardhana *bhukti* there was much fallow or waste land. The division of land is into (1) *Nāla* (cultivated), (2) *Khila* (fallow, waste), and (3) *Vāstu* (homestead). Applications were made for the sale of such waste lands for religious purposes. In the Damodarpur plate of G.E. 124 such waste land is called *Apradā* and *Aprahata*. These terms have been translated by the learned decipherer as "as yet unploughed and not already given." The term *Aprahata* cannot be translated as "not already given." The natural meaning is "that which is not barred in the case of transfer." So also *Apradā* means "unproductive." The Second term is used once more in the second plate of G.E. 129. Prof. Basak translates it "land of which no previous gift (*pradā*) has been made. In the light of the expression *apradā-dharmeṇa* in plate No. 5 (in the place of *Nīvī-dharmeṇa*) the phrase *apradā-kshaya* may here be explained, as in the case of *nīvī-dharma-kshaya*, thus—land could not, unless so conditioned, be alienated or transferred without state-permission, after being once sold for the purpose of a gift to a Brāhmaṇa or a god. We might equally well read the phrase as *aprad-āksh*- aya.”¹ To me it seems that *apradā-dharma* should be taken to be “the law or rules governing unproductive lands.” All over the United provinces special rules and regulations govern the transfer and the income from such lands, called *Nuzul*. *Apradā kṣaya* should mean the disposal of unproductive lands. From the fifth Damodarpur plate we learn that there was a large amount of forest-land in the Koṭivarṣa district of the Puṇḍravardhana Division, because in his application Amṛtadeva, the nobleman of Ayodhyā, states that the temple of the god Śveta-Varāha-svāmin was situated “in this forest.”²