History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.409.6

v4.c62.409.6

(prakīrṇaka 48) and others say, as has been already stated, that taxation is meant for the protection of the subjects and that it is the king's wages (*vetana*) for the protection he affords. Manu IX. 305 compares the king taking taxes to the sun that produces vapour from the seas (in order to return it in the form of rain, as the Raghuvaṁśa I. 18 very happily puts it). Kām. (V. 78-79) enumerates eight principal sources (called *aṣṭavarga*) of filling the treasury through the action of the heads of the departments viz. agriculture, trade-routes (both on land and water), the capital, water embankments, catching of elephants, working mines and collecting gold &c., levying wealth (from the rich), founding towns and villages in uninhabited spots. The Mānasollāsa (II. 4 verses 539-540 p. 77) advises the king to spend ordinarily three-fourths of the yearly revenues and save one-fourth. Śukra (I. 315-317) prescribes that the king should save 1/6 of his total annual income and should spend 1/2 of the whole on the army and one-twelfth each on charity (to the learned, the poor and helpless &c.), ministers, inferior officials, and his private purse or expenses. Śukra IV. 2. 26 requires the king to have as much stock of grain as would be required for three years' consumption in his country. In IV. 2.