The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.53

c11.53

Only the fact that of the corn reaped a fixed portion fell to the king’s share, appears from several passages. An over-conscientious seṭṭhi who has plucked from his rice field a handful of blades, in order to make out of them something with which to bind the twigs, has scruples about his conduct and reflects, “From this field I must give the king his portion (rañño-bhága II. 378) and I have taken a handful of corn without making over this portion.” In the same passage of the Kurudhamma Jâtaka it is narrated how the tax-collecting official of the king (*doṇamápaka*, properly, “measuring with the *doṇa*, a certain dry-measure”) measures at the door of the royal granary the rice paid to the king (*rájabháge víhim minápento*) and proceeds in this way, that he takes a grain out of the unmeasured heaps of rice and employs it as a marker. At that moment, it begins to rain. The official counts the markers and sweeps away with the words, “So much measured rice is there,” the grains which have served him as markers and throws them over the measured heap. Then he rushes indoors and stands on the doorway. Here the thought occurs to him: “Have I thrown the markers over the heaps that have been measured or over those that have not been measured? If I have placed them over the heaps that have been measured, I have without any reason increased the king’s share and diminished that of the owner (*gahapatika*).”¹