Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s2.17

v1.c10.s2.17

In another connection we have the following list of items that provide the State with revenue: *śulka* or duty, both customs and excise, land revenue, royalty on mining, grasses, timber and forest produce in general, animal husbandry or cattle rearing, working and compulsory labour, money lender or employer of loan capital, taxes on houses and dwellings, on the site for stalls used by the shopkeepers, and road cess to be paid for the preservation and repair of streets.³ "By these ten heads of income, the state is in a position to tap every resource of the people. No species of property is left untaxed. Land in every form, including forests, and mines, houses and stalls for residence or for business, labor, sales and purchase, as well as capital,—no conceivable source of the citizen's income is to get scot-free. To these we should probably have to add an eleventh item, viz., fines inflicted by the courts of Justice. . .In addition to the normal sources of income, we have some sort of an emergency collection in Sukra's thought. For war purposes, or for other extraordinary contingencies, we are told, the usual rates may be enhanced all along the line. Even holy places and properties consecrated to the gods, which are untouchable in peace times, may be conscripted under the war budget. . Possibly, in order to make assurance doubly sure, state-hoarding is regarded by philosophers' who, like German and Japanese statesmen, are obsessed by the notion of self-defence against foreign aggression, as a second string to the bow of sound war-finance".²