Local Government in Ancient India c14.13

c14.13

(7) The Deśi-merchants of the Kubera lineage referred to in nos. 15, 16 of 1916, App. C, ‘whose sole delight was distribution of food to the needy, the orphans, and the suppliant beggars’. To the temple of Deśīśvara they made a communal gift of a fixed fee on all the articles in which they traded, such as musk, saffron, yak-tails, cuscus, cotton, cotton-thread, beads, sealing-wax, areca, rocksalt, wax, resin, hemp, wool, camphor, sandal, silk-thread, tiger-skins, women’s cloths, lead, and tin. The form of this remarkable gift points not only to the efficiency of the machinery for the collection of these taxes on the profits of trade in a variety of articles, but also to commercial progress and economic prosperity, as implied in the very volume of that trade supporting taxation on its profits.