Local Government in Ancient India c14.14

c14.14

Like the merchant-guilds noticed above, there were also some important organizations of craft-guilds. No. 261 of 1909, already noticed, refers to the guild of oil-mongers of Kāñci and its suburbs, and also those of twenty-four Nagaras, who met in a temple of Kāñcimānagar, and decided that the usual tax on oil-mills in the temple premises at Tirukkacchūr should be paid to the temple together with a specified quantity of oil and a voluntary fee of one *kāśu* per oil-mill. This decision they agreed to observe as *jātidharma*, i. e. duty which every member owed to his caste. The taxes which were thus assigned by the assembly of oil-mongers in favour of the Tirukkacchūr temple were not what they had ordinarily to pay to government, but what their spontaneous offerings diverted for application to communal purposes.