Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s6: Section 6. How Revenue was Paid

Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s6

Language: English

Section 6. How Revenue was Paid

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Having seen at some length the nature of the land and revenue administration of Vijayanagara, we may now consider the manner in which it ordered the taxes to be paid. The general belief has been that under the Hindu monarchs the revenue was paid in kind.¹ "There is another peculiarity", writes Ellis in his well known book on the *Mirasi Right*, "which has ever distinguished the Tamil countries, Tondamandalam in particular, from the surrounding nations; it is, that, until the recent innovations enforced by the officers of our own Government, the revenue from all wet lands and very generally from dry field, was through every successive change of dynasty, invariably rendered in kind. Among the neighbouring nations the revenue has been paid at a fixed rate in money from a remote period, the assessment being sometimes on a whole village, or, as in Canara, on every estate (shist) and sometimes on each field (tirvei).

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¹ Firishtah, Briggs, *The Rise*, I, pp. 346-7, n.

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A complete Register (Rāyarēkha) of these assessments, which, as the grant of Immaḍi Sadāśiva Rāyer, the substance of which is noticed after No. II, of the following documents, demonstrates, previously existed, was drawn up during the Vijayanagara government for the whole of the Carnataca and Tuluva countries, constituting what may be called the home provinces of that state, by which, as long as it existed, the demand of revenue was regulated. But money assessments were never extended by those princes, or their dependents, to the Tamil countries, where the immemorial usage of delivering the revenue in kind by fixed vāram or scale of division, regulated originally, by the situation and circumstances of each village, was still continued'.¹

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¹ Ellis, Mirasi Right, App. p. xviii (1818 ed.). ² The inscriptions on which Ellis based his remarks as regards Vijayanagara are these: That which referring to the reign of Immaḍi Sadāśiva Rāya begins with a Jaina invocation, deals with the consecration of the image of Gōmaṭa by Chāmuṇḍa Rāya, refers us to the events of the Vijayanagara king Immaḍi Sadāśiva Rāya and is dated Sālivāhana 927! Ins. No. II. Another inscription (No. III.) speaks of Virūpāksha Pratāpa Bukka Rāyulu in S. 1109! A third one (No. I) is dated S. 1339 and deals with the reign of Dēva Rāya. This last one smacks of some authenticity but it has to be referred to the reign of Vira Vijaya, since it cannot be made to reconcile with the known dates either of Dēva Rāya I, or of Dēva Rāya II. See Ellis, Mirasi Right, App. (1818 ed.). ³ Arthaśāstra, Bk. IV Ch. XV, pp. 112-3. ⁴ S.I.I., II, P. I, pp. 42, 53, 62; P. III, p. 424.

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The conclusion of this admirable treatise deserves, however, to be modified in the light of later research. Apart from the fact that the epigraphs which Ellis utilized in the compilation of his standard work on Mirasi Right, are documents which are historically worthless,² it may be questioned on valid grounds whether the system of realizing revenue in money was really an innovation of modern days. It is admitted that taxes were paid in kind under the ancient Hindu governments. Thus in the Arthaśāstra provision is made for the inclusion of such taxes in kind among those which were to be levied by the Superintendent of the storehouse.³ It is also granted that, as, for example, in the time of Rājarāja I, the revenue was assessed in kind. But the same inscription informs us that it was also realized in money or kāśu.⁴ A record in the seventh year of Sakala-lōka-Chakravartin Rāja-Nārāyaṇa Sambuvarāya states that the king remitted the taxes payable both in money and in kind on lands whose crops had suffered damage in Kalavaiparru in the North Arcot district.¹

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¹ 425 of 1905; Rangachāri, Top. List, I, NA., 624, p. 107. ² 34 of 1919. ³ E.C., X, Mr. 100, p. 176. ⁴ S.I.I., I, p. 80. ⁵ Ep. Report for 1915, pp. 107, 108 op. cit. ⁶ Elliot, Hist. of India, IV, p. 109; Major, India, p. 26. ⁷ E.C., II, No. 229, p. 97, text, p. 96. ⁸ 367 of 1912.

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This ancient custom of levying taxes both in money and kind, as the reader must have gathered from the account of the revenue settlement given in the previous pages, continued under the Vijayanagara government. An order of the minister (*pradhāni*) Sōmaiya Daṇṇāyaka in the reign of Kampaṇa Oḍeyar II, according to an inscription found in the Bhūmīśvarasvāmi temple in the Gingeē tāluka, South Arcot district, dated only in the cyclic year Kilaka, was issued remitting the taxes payable in money by certain classes of people inhabiting the *tirumaḍaivilāgam* of the temple of Tiruppūmīśvaramuḍaiyar.² In A.D. 1301 *dēvadānam*, *tiruviḍaiyāṭṭam*, *maḍapuram* and *pallichchandam* were paid in gifts.³ From a sale deed of the revenue of the village of Veppambaṭṭu and of Siṟu-Kaḍambūr, as recorded in an inscription dated Saka 1328, expired (A.D. 1416-7), we gather that it was assessed both in money and corn.⁴ We have seen from the inscription of Tiruvaigāvūr, relating to the revenue settlement effected in A.D. 1429-30, that the people had to pay taxes in kind as well as in gold.⁵ 'Abdur Razzāq informs us that it was the practice of the country to pay in money. "The usage of the country is that, at a stated period, everyone throughout the whole empire, carries to the mint the revenue (*zar*) which is due from him, and whoever has money due to him from the Exchequer receives an order upon the mint".⁶ A damaged record dated A.D. 1488 deals with a grant of a village with its dry and wet lands and its income in money and grain (*sakala-suvarṇadāya-sakala-davasādāya*).⁷ The trustees of the Bṛhadāmbikā temple at Devakkāpuram, North Arcot district, in the Saka year 1452 (A.D. 1530-31) granted to a certain Ambalaṭṭāḍi the right of cultivating (*ulavu-kāṇi*) the *dēvadāna* village of Kāmākshirāvuttaṅgal and fixed fifteen *paṇam* and twenty *kalam* of paddy to be paid to the temple every year.⁸

Linked texts (1)

Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit