[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922) › v1.c19.s3.3 # The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s3.3 The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s3.3 - **Language:** English ### [v1.c19.s3.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3.3) One or two of the technical terms in use to describe such powers have survived. \*Rāja-bhogga\* for example is the expression for a form of tenure peculiar to India. The holder of such a tenure, the \*rāja-bhoggo\*, was empowered to exact all dues accruing to the government within the boundaries of the district or estate granted to him. But he had not to render to government any account of the dues thus received by him. They were his perquisite. He could hold his own courts, and occupied in many ways the position of a baron, or lord of the manor. But there was a striking difference. He could draw no rent. The peasantry had to pay him the tithe of the rice grown; and though the amount was not always strictly a tithe, and by royal decree could be varied in different localities, the grantee could not vary it. So with the import, or ferry, or octroi duties. The rate of payment, and the places at which the levy could be made, were fixed by the government. We have not enough cases of this tenure to be able to interpret with certainty the meaning of all the details, and limits of space prevent a discussion of them here. But the general principle is quite clear¹. It shows how easy would be the grant to local notabilities of local government to this extent, and how narrow was the line of distinction between the collection of dues by civil servants or farmers of the taxes and their collection by a grantee in this way. This custom, thus traced back to so early a period in the history of India, seems never to have fallen into abeyance. It certainly, in the period under discussion, was of manifest advantage. But it must be admitted that it is, to English ideas, very strange—so strange that our civilians made the mistake, in Bengal, of regarding all such persons legally empowered to collect the land-tax as landlords, and of endowing them accordingly with the much greater privileges and powers of the English landlord. In the Buddhist period there is no evidence of the existence, in North India, of landlords in our sense of that term. - [Previous: v1.c19.s3.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3.2) - [Next: v1.c19.s3.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3.4) - [Up: v1.c19.s3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c19.s3.3) · Pramāṇa