History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c41.s22.12

v3.c41.s22.12

The details of the rights given to donees in the villages are explicit and are very interesting, showing that in non-inam villages such rights belonged to the state or the villagers themselves. In U. P. grants under the Gāhadavālas, the right to the iron and salt found in the village was very important. Iron and steel were necessary for carpenters and soldiers while the sea being distant and means of conveyance difficult, salt was a precious thing in U. P. and the inamdar was entitled to all the salt that could be produced from saltish wells in the village. Very probably as stated in Vol. I, salt was taxed by the state and there was a special officer who superintended the income from salt-tax. The ditches and the unculturable land, garta and ushara, were also valuable and belonged to the donee in khalsa villages; such land belonged to the state or the villagers conjointly. The details of things granted in inam villages are interesting and discover the nature of revenue administration in these mediæval kingdoms. Thus in Gāhadavāla grants the detailed list of items granted are water, land, waste-land, stones, hills, river, forest patches, mango and madhūka (Mahua) trees, iron, salt sources, "whatever is above and below". The mango and Mahua trees were important trees in U. P. and unless specially owned, they belonged to the state in khalsa villages. So also were stone quarries and iron mines and salt wells, hills and forest patches.* But with regard to the last we have further to remember that there were certain portions of state forests which were open to the villagers for cutting firewood (see Vol. I p. 135). The further description in almost all grant deeds that the village is granted upto (including) Tṛiṇayūti and Gochara which may be translated as grass meadow and cow-grazing-land, shows that every village had its pasture and cow-grazing-land and hence the supply of cow's milk and of bullocks for ploughs was always assured. Grass meadows and cow-grazing-lands to which the cattle of the village had free access, are apparently not now reserved in villages. A grant of Paramardin dated 1166 (Appendix) mentions even sugarcane, cotton and saṇa (jute) plants along with mango and Madhūka trees. Apparently these were important products in Bundelkhand and are, therefore, specially mentioned. It does not, however, mean that in khalsa villages government had any rights in them.