The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s9.326

v1.c19.s9.326

At the same time custom may very well have settled price to a great extent. ‘My wife is sometimes as meek as a 100-piece slave-girl’¹⁰ reveals a customary price. For the royal household, at least, prices were fixed without appeal by the court valuer (*agghakāraka*), who stood between the two fires of offending the king if he valued the goods submitted at their full cost, or price as demanded, and of driving away tradesmen if he refused bribes and cheapened the wares¹. On the other hand the king might disgust him by too niggardly a bonus². It may also have been the duty of this official to assess the duty of one twentieth on each consignment of native merchandise imported into a city, and of one-tenth, *plus* a sample, on each foreign import, as stated in the law-books of Manu³, Gautama⁴, and Baudhāyana⁵. Such octrois are alluded to in one Jātaka, where the king remits to a subject the duty collected at the gates of his capital⁶. Finally, it may have been his to assess merchants for their specific commutation of the *rājakāriya*, namely, one article sold per month to the king at a discount (*arghāpacayena*⁷).