Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s1.8

v2.c27.s1.8

The antiquary, who has dipped into the records of the dark period in European church history, can have ocular illustration in Rajasthan of traditions which may in Europe appear questionable. The vision of the Bishop of Orleans,² who saw Charles Martel in the depths of hell, undergoing the tortures of the damned, for having stripped the churches of their possessions, “ thereby rendering himself guilty of the sins of all those who had endowed them,” would receive implicit credence from every Hindu, whose ecclesiastical economy might both yield and derive illustration from a comparison, not only with that of Europe, but with the more ancient Egyptian and Jewish systems, whose endowments, as explained by Moses and Ezekiel, bear a strong analogy to his own. The disposition of landed property in Egypt, as amongst the ancient Hindus, was immemorially vested in the cultivator; and it was only through Joseph’s ministry in the famine that “ the land became Pharaoh’s, as the Egyptians sold every man his field.”¹ And the coincidence is manifest even in the tax imposed on them as occupants of their inheritance, being one-fifth of the crops to the king, while the maximum rate among the Hindus is a sixth.² The Hindus also, in visitations such as that which occasioned the dispossession of the ryots of Egypt, can mortgage or sell their patrimony (bapota). Joseph did not attempt to infringe the privileges of the sacred order when the whole of Egypt became crown-land, “ except the lands of the priests, which became not Pharaoh’s ”; and these priests, according to Diodorus, held for themselves and the sacrifices no less than one-third of the lands of Egypt. But we learn from [510] Herodotus, that Sesostris, who ruled after Joseph’s ministry, restored the lands to the people, reserving the customary tax or tribute.³