Local Government in Ancient India c9.s2.10

c9.s2.10

or villages. Fourthly, the rate of interest allowed on these religious deposits was not at all uniform. In some cases it was 12½ per cent., and in a few others as much as 50 per cent. No. 29 of 1893 records interest at 25 per cent., 179 of 1912 15 per cent., and 224 of 1903 20 per cent. The rate of interest in the northern inscriptions seems to have been slightly lower. It may be further recalled in this connexion that the guilds and assemblies received the gifts of others as trust-properties and made similar gifts themselves. Individual charity vied with the communal and collective charity. As bankers receiving public deposits of cash, and as trustees or administrators of trust-properties in various forms, these guilds and assemblies enjoyed a high degree of public confidence by the faithful discharge of their responsibilities and obligations. There was no abuse of their fiduciary ownership of the public funds accumulating in their hands. The efficiency of their organization is emphatically demonstrated by their longevity. They are trusted to provide for the purposes of gifts in perpetuity. They are made trustees even of royal gifts. Inscription no. 37 mentioned above (p. 108) records Rājarāja the Great depositing money with four bazars of Tanjore to maintain some temple charities of his. No. 26 of 1912 records how a king chooses to deposit 1,400 *kāśus* in trust with sixteen villages. Uṣavadāta, son-in-law of king Nahapāna, of a northern inscription trusts two guilds of weavers with his great gift of gold to be held for the beneficiary nominated by the donor. And, what is still more surprising and significant, the guilds allow themselves perfect freedom of migration as dictated by economic necessities, but this change of place does not affect in the least their distinctive corporate personality or individuality, their internal cohesion, or, what is more important, their *credit*, their legal relations and liabilities entered into in the localities from which they remove.