History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c15.13

c15.13

as none of the large number of records that have come down to us were intended to set forth exhaustively the financial machinery for the enlightenment of the modern scholar; we can however infer from the list of exemptions stated in the various records of lands and other grants at our disposal what taxes and dues a village was ordinarily subjected to if it was other than a land gifted to Brahmans or a temple in which case the exemptions were secured to the donee. First may be noted some of the seignorial rights mentioned in the earliest Pallava copper-plate charters. The Hirahadagalli plates already mentioned are very interesting in this respect. This record states that the garden Chillerakoḍuṁkā the object of the grant is to be free from the taking of sweet and sour milk and sugar . . . from taxes . . . forced labour free from the payment of the oxen in succession, free from the taking of grass and the wood . . . from the taking of vegetables and flowers. . . . It also mentions the important particular towards the close of the grant where it says that with these and other immunities of the eighteen kinds it must be exempted. It is thus clear from this early Pallava record that about the first quarter of the third century Pallava kings had laid claim to not less than eighteen¹ kinds of dues from the villagers (*Aṣṭādaśaparihāras*) which they ordinarily could claim except in cases of gifted lands. The Mayiḍavolu plates of the Pallava king Śivaskandavarman² mentions among the immunities secured to the village of Viripara which was the object of the grant, freedom for the diggings of salt which shows that salt-manufacture was a royal monopoly, from the supply of bullocks in succession, the entrance of soldiers, the supply of boiled rice, etc. As we do not come across with some of these rights in the later records of the Pallavas it is probable that some of these rights fell out of use.