The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c15.61

c15.61

Udayagiri Cave Inscription commemorates the excavation of a cave as a Śaiva temple.¹ A high personage, apparently a minister of Samudragupta, erected a Yūpa or sacrificial pillar.² Grants were sometimes made to groups as large as a thousand persons.³ Some of the endowments were permanently beneficial to the community at large. A queen caused a tank to be excavated.⁴ Mayûrâkṣa, a minister, built a temple of Viṣṇu, another of the Divine Mothers, and other temples and halls of the gods, and at the same time supplied the city of his residence with wells for drinking water, pleasure-gardens, irrigation wells, tanks and various kinds of causeways.⁵ A private person built a satra or charity-hall and a pillar.⁶ Other endowments would be mainly ornamental. Mâtriviṣṇu, a Mahârâja and his brother Dhanyaviṣṇu, erected a column called Dhvaja-stambha, flag-staff, of the God Viṣṇu.⁷ All the grants, whether by suzerains or feudatories, are meant to be eternal in duration. The grantor calls upon all his feudatories, officers and people to respect the endowment. He exhorts his descendants and successors to leave it unmolested. A few verses from Vyâsa are almost invariably quoted to consign all disturbers of grants to 60,000 years of hell and to promise their respecters an equal span of bliss in heaven. Every śâsana or charter, as the deed is called,⁸ is at pains to limit the boundaries of the areas of land-grants and to specify the accompanying privileges, in the most exact manner. Grants could be made out of any areas.¹ Sometimes only part of the revenue of the area alienated was assigned to the grantee.²