State and Government in Ancient India c20.196

c20.196

State property consisted of crown lands, waste lands, forests, mines, treasure-troves, natural tanks and reservoirs and it yielded considerable income. As shown already, the ownership in arable lands was vested in private owners in historic times, but their lands would often lapse to the state on account of the absence of heirs, or the non-payment of state taxes or the commission of heinous crimes involving forfeiture of property. In most villages, the states in ancient times, as in modern days, possessed their own detached pieces of arable land, which they cultivated either through temporary labourers or by leasing them out to private tenants. To supervise over the administrative arrangements of the state lands was the work of a special officer called *sītādhyaksha* in the *Arthaśāstra*. What his designation was in later times we do not know.