Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c8.156

c8.156

Various gifts for religious and charitable purposes are seen even to this day; in Behar³ they are called Saṃkalp=Saṃkalpa “the introductory part of the ritual of gift which proclaims the intentions of the donor,” the given land is everywhere called Devotar, Devasthān “the land belonging to a god” (the latter term is found even in the inscriptions). The management of these Devotars, according to the statement in the document of the gift, is either retained in the family of the donor or it may devolve on the chief of the temple priests or of the community after whose death it goes down to his successors. Interesting statements about the magnitude of the Devotar in Rajputana at the beginning of this [nineteenth] century may be found in Tod’s Rājasthān; thus at that time a great part of the state of Mewar (Udaipur) belonged to the mendicant orders. In the monasteries the board of directors is either elective or it is fixed by its predecessor or it is either appointed by the government or by the donor and his family. The freedom from taxation is observed even to this day in the case of lands given away for religious purposes before 1765 ¹.