The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.61

c11.61

Besides the taxes, there were certain privileges of the king which he could use for filling his treasury. The principle mentioned in the lawbooks,¹ that unclaimed property belonged to the king, is seen also in the Jâtakas. If anybody dies without heirs, then his succession devolves upon the king. "Seven days and seven nights"—so we read in the introduction to the Mahyaka Jâtaka (III. 299)—"the army of the king took to bring the goods of people dying without heirs to the palace." Even cases where whole families leave their possessions, when, on renouncing the world, they pass into the homeless condition, occur in the Jâtakas, and this custom might, at a time when through the prevalence of pessimistic views the impulse to renounce the world was widespread, become a source of great income to the king. Still we have grounds for thinking that it was opposed to the moral principles of that age when the king made use of this right. In the Haṭṭhipâla Jâtaka it is narrated that the purohita and his wife after renouncing their entire worldly possessions go to the forest to join their sons who had already been in the homeless condition. The king hears this and resolves, "Unclaimed wealth comes to us" (*assámikadhanam amhákam pâpuṇáti* IV. 485),¹ and fetches the money from the house of the *purohita*. The queen, however, explains to him, with the help of a parable, the wrong done by him.