Local Government in Ancient India c9.122

c9.122

Thus the guilds in their capacity as banks served to stimulate spiritual benefactions and pious gifts in the community. Their religious uses indeed seem to have been universally appreciated and taken advantage of. We have several inscriptions in Northern India to prove this. No. 12 of the Nāsik Cave inscriptions, assigned by Burgess to the time of the last Mauryas or the earliest Śuṅgas (about second century B.C.), records how Uṣavadāta, son-in-law of king Nahapāna, 'has bestowed this cave on the *saṅgha* generally; he has also given a perpetual endowment, three thousand—3,000—*kāhāpaṇas*, which, for the members of the *saṅgha* of any sect and any origin dwelling in this cave, will serve as cloth money and money for outside life (*kuśaṇa*); and those *kāhāpaṇas* have been invested in guilds dwelling at Govadhana, 2,000 in a weavers' guild, interest one *pratika* (monthly) for the hundred (and) 1,000 in another weavers' guild, interest three-quarters of a *paḍika* (monthly) for the hundred; and those *kāhāpaṇas* are not to be repaid, their interest only to be enjoyed ...' (*Ep. Ind.*, vol. VIII, p. 82). Here we have a reference to two guilds of weavers which, like banks, received permanent deposits which they held as trust-funds, the principal of which they were to keep intact and be responsible for, and might invest in their own way subject to that responsibility, as banks do with their deposits, but for the use of that money they had to pay interest at certain stipulated rates to the beneficiary named in the grant. The interest was to be paid to the monks for the purchase of new robes for them at the ceremony of robing held in the month of Śrāvaṇa and for their pocket-money. As the inscription puts it, 'Out of them, the two thousand—2,000—at one *pratika* per cent. are the cloth money; out of them to every one of the twenty monks who keep the *vassa* in my cave, a cloth money of twelve (*kāhāpaṇas*). As to the thousand which has been invested at an interest of three-quarters of a *pratika* (*paḍika*) per cent., out of them the money for *kuśaṇa* (very probably some kind of pocket-money)'. The rates of interest which these guild-banks paid on their fixed deposits were in the one case 12 per cent. per annum and in the other case 9 per cent. which, considering the prevailing rates charged by money-lenders in modern times, especially in rural areas, are not by any means exorbitant. The low rate of the interest in fact is an index at once of the security and stability of the banks, their efficiency, permanence, and prosperity, which attracted to them even royal deposits and benefactions.