History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c43.87.2

v3.c43.87.2

The donor of land enjoys bliss in heaven for sixty thousand years and he who destroys (or resumes) it or who abets the destruction dwells in hell for the same period.' In spite of such imprecations it appears that lands donated by former kings were sometimes confiscated by their successors. For example, in an inscription of Indrarāja III dated śake 836 it is stated that the king restored four hundred villages that had been confiscated by former kings (E. I. vol. IX. p. 24 at p. 33 'pūrvapṛthvīpālaviluptāni); in the Talmanchi plates of Cālukya Vikramāditya I (dated 660 A. D.) there is a recital that 'he re-established the endowments of temples and brāhmaṇas that had been lost in the three kingdoms' (E. I. vol. IX. p. 100). The Rājataraṅgiṇī (V. 166-170) states that king Śaṁkaravarman (in the first half of the 10th century), the son of Avantivarman, deprived temples of all their properties for replenishing his treasury emptied by his vices.²⁰²⁶ Parāśara (XII. 51) says that the sin of resuming land already donated cannot be expiated even by performing a hundred Vājapeya sacrifices or by the gift of millions of cows. In the Khoh plates of Parivrājaka Mahārāja Saṁkṣobha (Gupta Inscriptions No. 25 p. 115) dated Gupta *saṁvat* 209 (528-529 A.