History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c12.10

v1.c12.10

The chief requirements of Indian villagers for their material well-being are salt, fuel and grass or grazing. The villagers appear to have had a free and sufficient supply of these things, though these when taken for sale to the market were subject to the tax of 1/6. We have already seen that inam villages are often expressly stated to be free from tax on salt both dry and wet and on grass. It seem there was then no monopoly of salt-manufacture by government. In many villages there were wells of salt water and in some places salt was dug out from hills. Such quantities were of course limited and salt manufactured on a large scale for sale was an important commodity for taxation which even the ancient governments did not disregard. As for grass and grazing, there were apparently common grazing grounds in every village. Pasture-plots enclosed and giving valuable grass are noticed in Smritis and are called *vivita*. When grass was taken from these for sale to the market it paid the government the usual tax. Lastly, fuel was obtainable by the villagers for their own use in the forests of their own villages. Each village had its own forest. And there were forests on the borders of kingdoms invariably. These forests are treated by the Smritis as ownerless. However portions of forests called *Nāgavana* where elephants abounded were preserved. But other forests and village forests were open free for villagers. Bāṇa describes tracts bordering on forests and forest villages and the forests themselves with that love of interesting detail which constitutes the singular charm of the Harsha Charita. Some of these details are worth quoting here. Unrestrained forest guards often seized the hatchets of wood cutters of *other* villages going to cut wood in forests (अनियंत्रितवनपालह्रियमाणपरग्रामीणकपि्रककुठारै: H. C. page 304). There were small fields in these forests tilled not by ploughs and bullocks but by hand spades. There were *prapas* or water-providing huts at the entrance of waterless forests. In some places great heat was created by the burning of wood for charcoal. At some places you would meet with bands of wood-cutters with bodies exercised with the constant cutting of wood, having long hatchets on their shoulders to which were slung their breakfast baskets. At others you would meet with people carrying loads of honey, *mākshika*, feathers of peacocks, honey-combs, barks of khadira tree, &c. as also women of forest tribes having on their heads basketfuls of forest flowers and fruit, going to villages to sell them. These and other details show that people had free access to forests for jungle produce and jungle tribes freely took forest produce for sale to the bordering separate villages.