Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t5.65

c4.t5.65

Land-tax or the king's share of the land produce (raññobhāga) had become the law of the land. This was signified by the title of ‘bali’, though differing in its significance from the Vedic one.¹ The ‘bali’ was usually, though not always, paid in kind.² What was the amount of this share of the king, the Jātakas never give out.³ It may however be presumed to have been, as a general rule, the traditional one-sixth, as even the Buddhist Mahāvastu⁴ agrees. Probably the rate varied according to the amount of the produce, the cost of cultivation, the condition of the market and the nature of the soil. This, when the king was just and equitable. Otherwise, it, in a great measure, depended on his whim and pleasure. For at his descretion the bali was liable to enhancement⁵ or remission.⁶ And with what of exhortations to establish bali justly,⁷ we find, not rarely, instances of oppressive imposition of bali by the king,⁸ not to speak of the exactions by, and tyrannies of, the tax-collectors (balisādhakas or niggāhakas) ‘whose name passed into a synonym for importunate demand.’⁹ Of this oppression, we shall speak later on. What we want to notice at present is, that the rate of land-produced-revenue is not given in the stories.