The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c15.s3.t7.14

v2.c15.s3.t7.14

Śuṅkamu is a term of broad import. It is used in inscriptions to denote taxes on garden lands, duties on exports and imports, customs duties collected on articles of merchandise brought to and taken from the pēṭas or market-towns or places, and excise duties. These tolls, either customs, duties, or others, collected on articles of trade, including salt, were farmed out to merchant-guilds or associations comprising members of the trading community like the Vīrabalañja-samaya or the Ayyāvaḷi guild of merchants, on payment of a fixed sum to the government. It is not known whether the right of collecting taxes was sold by auction, nor have we any information as to the exact length of the period during which the bidders were empowered to collect. These tax-farmers had their own branches in different localities, and their own officials, office establishments, and accountants to keep records of their transactions, receipts, and remissions in the course of the collection of tolls and duties. The tax-collectors were called śuṅkarulu and their accountants śuṅka-karaṇālu. Probably with the common consent of the members of the local branch, the money collected as duty on certain articles of trade in the locality was sometimes bestowed as a gift for charitable or religious purposes such as the setting up of lights before gods in temples, &c. The duty collected on sales effected in the pēṭa, market-town or marketplace, on articles of trade, was called pēṭa-śuṅkamu or magama.¹ These tax-collectors' guilds were held responsible only for the amount to be paid to the government, being allowed full freedom to manage their own affairs without any interference by the government or its officials. The extent of autonomy allowed to these trade guilds in managing their own affairs, and the limits to which the policy of non-intervention was followed by the government during the Kākatīya period, are revealed to us by two very interesting copper-plate records of the period dated in Śaka 1244, corresponding to A.D. 1322, and in Śaka 1225, corresponding to A.D. 1304, respectively. The inscription of A.D. 1322 mentions the Kākatīya monarch Pratāparudra of Warangal and records the grant of a privilege to trade in certain articles without paying duty, to a certain Attena, son of Lōkiśeṭṭi, by the merchants of the Eighteen Samayās of all countries residing in the Nandyāla sthala, as a reward for having killed Annamarāja and Siṅgarāja, the Śuṅka-karaṇas of Cherunūru in the Peḍakaṇṭidēśa.² The other grant dated in Śaka 1225 is similar in its general terms to the above; but it does not mention King Pratāparudra. This document too records the grant of the same kind of privilege by the same body of merchants to a certain Puliyamaseṭṭi for having killed Kārapākala Kāṭināyaka who had shown himself a traitor to the *samayās*.¹ These two records—if they are genuine as is generally supposed, and there is nothing to disprove this supposition—throw considerable light on these trade guilds. Even retail dealers were not exempted from paying these duties. It was left to the merchants of the Eighteen *Samayās* of all countries, who were the toll-farmers, to exempt any dealer from paying the stipulated duty or to grant such exemption to him as a privilege for some important service which he might have done for the guild organization.