History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c13.s4.2

v1.c13.s4.2

What does it then represent? That is almost a riddle. Can it be the amount of land produce paid as government share? This question it is very difficult to answer. The amount then collected was in kind and not in coin as now. Moreover the government share then was not what it is now, though I think that the British Government does not now take much more than the ⅙th traditional revenue demand in India. Prices moreover have largely changed and we cannot argue from the revenue in money now derived. Yet the produce of land has not much varied, agriculture still remaining primitive, nor the number of villages in the same tract of the country. Hence an estimate may be made of the share of government then realised in kind. Taking the cultivable average of a village as 1000 acres and the produce of one acre as 10 maunds we may take the government share of one village's produce 10000/6 maunds. Here another difficulty intervenes. The present measures of capacity or weight have been introduced since Mahomedan times; the śer, the maund, the Khaṇḍi are all Mahomedan. The old measures were Prastha, Ādhaka and Droṇa for measures of capacity and also weight. To what an Ādhaka or Droṇas comes as compared with the maund or khandi, cannot possibly be determined with any pretence of exactness. The Manu Smṛiti gives a Droṇa of corn as a month's sustenance wage of a labourer धान्यद्रोणस्तु मासिकः which at present is taken to be 1¼ maund. Placing these data before the curious reader, we remain content and leave this subject unfinished.