Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity (Based on the Arthashastra of Kautilya), Vol. I c11.30

c11.30

stock, slaves and freedmen. The main object was to ensure accurate division of the people into the six main classes and their respective centuries, which was based upon considerations of combined numbers and wealth. With the increase of the city the operation grew in importance, and was followed by an official *lustrum*, or purification sacrifice, offered on behalf of the people by the censors or functionaries in charge of the classification. Hence the name of *lustrum* came to denote the intercensal term, or a period of five years. The word *census*, too, came to mean the property qualification of the class, as well as the process of registering the resources of the individual. Later it was used in the sense of the imposition itself, in which it has survived in the contracted form of *cess*."