History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c12.1

v1.c12.1

The kingdoms of India of the 7th century A. D., notwithstanding their despotic or autocratic nature, were usually well-governed and happy and were probably better off in this respect than the kingdoms contemporary with them in the West. The Indo-Aryans, while they acquiesced in or rather preached the divine nature of the kingly authority, at the same time sought to impose a check on the autocracy of kings by holding that laws were also divine and incapable of being changed. In fact in the Indian kingdoms every thing from the life and conduct of the king down to the taxes and punishments was fixed by the divine ordinance of the Smritis. In the West the king is believed to be the source of all laws. In India the source of law is the Śruti and the Smriti and no human agency can change it. The kings with even the consent of the people had thus no legislative power. Their duty was simply to administer justice according to the divinely ordained law and to keep peace and order by punishing robbers and other evil-doers. They were to receive taxes from the produce of land and trade and handicraft for performing this service and the amount was fixed at one sixth of the former and one-fiftieth of the value of the latter. The former amount in case of necessity might be increased to one-fourth. The expenses of government, as Hiuen Tsang has noted, were very limited and the kings probably never found it necessary to levy taxes beyond what were sanctioned by the Smritis. The people again with their highly religious nature were generally free from crime and thus was caused that usually happy condition of the ancient kingdoms of India which so favourably impressed impartial foreigners like Hiuen Tsang who themselves lived under widely different conditions in the imperial kingdom of China.* With these preliminary remarks we shall try to describe in detail the administrative condition of the 7th century from the evidence of the Harsha-Charita and of epigraphic records of that time. The provisions of the Smritis also will assist us in this inquiry to a considerable extent.