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The Mauryan Polity c8.s3.t1: Sources of revenue

The Mauryan Polity c8.s3.t1

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Sources of revenue

c8.s3.t1.1

What were, then, the direct sources which tended to swell the king's exchequer? The primary source constituted the different kinds of land-tax, such as sītā or the produce of crown lands,² and bhāga or share of revenue apparently from private owned lands.³ This was invariably the traditional one-sixth of the produce. Bhāga is itself termed in the chapter entitled koṣṭhāgārādhyakṣa, saḍbhāga.⁴ Megasthenes informs us that one-fourth went to the king's share, and mentions another tax which was one-fourth of the produce of the soil, which also the husbandman paid into the treasury. This seems to be entirely wrong. Professor Hopkins is right when he remarks "the fourth part evidently declared by Megasthenes to be the proportion exacted, contradicts the perpetual statement of native authorities, that the proportion on grain is one-sixth, and one-fourth only in emergencies."⁵ Normally and generally the king's share is one-sixth as testified to by the Arthaśāstra. Aśoka who collected a sixth share of the grain harvest made an exception in favour of the village of Lumbini by reducing it to a eighth share. The text of the inscriptions has the term aṭhabhāga. While Bühler took aṭha to mean artha,¹ others took it to mean aṣṭa.² According to Bühler’s interpretation the term aṭhabhāgīya means ‘partaking of riches’. We cannot follow this interpretation. ‘Partaking of riches’ is misleading. We are in the dark as to the ‘riches’ which Lumbini village contained and which the king made use of. Besides if Aśoka meant artha by the term aṭha he could not have added the suffix bhāga. This suffix bhāga itself implies a numerical connotation. Therefore aṭha cannot be artha but only aṣṭa. Aṣṭabhāga means ‘entitled to an eighth share’, as Fleet would have it, or ‘paying a eighth share’, as Thomas³ and Hultzsch⁴ would have it. The latter meaning is more appropriate in the light of the use of the term bhāga in the Kauṭalīya.⁵

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² Bk. II, ch. 15.

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³ Bk. I, ch. 13.

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⁴ Bk. II, ch. 1; cp. Manu, VIII, 304-5.

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⁵ J.A.O.S., XIII p. 88.

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¹ Ep. Ind. V, p. 5. See also Z.D.M.G., 68, pp. 721-22.

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² See, for example, Fleet J.R.A.S., 1908, pp. 479-80.

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³ J.R.A.S., 1914, pp. 391-2.

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⁴ Corpus, p. 165.

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⁵ Bk. II, ch. 24.

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