The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c19.26

c19.26

On the other hand, there were many rulers who almost revelled in tyranny or who trampled religion under their feet when they required money. In the eleventh century A.D. King Harṣa plundered most of the temples and took away their accumulated treasures.⁹ The requests of his court-favourites succeeded with difficulty in preserving two colossal statues of the Buddha from molestation.¹⁰ An earlier King Śaṅkaravarman (883—902 A.D.) straightway plundered sixty-four temples and resumed the endowments of many others.¹ Starting on a campaign, Lalitāditya appropriated ten millions from the shrine of Bhūteśa, though on returning victorious, he more than made up for it and presented eleven times as much to the shrine.² All through the Rājatarangiṇī there are many kings who confiscate previous grants, or divert them from their original object or who plunder the temples.³ Kings sometimes adopted other lines of conduct which bore even more heavily on the poor. They would sometimes take possession of a whole harvest in a given area leaving hardly anything to the cultivators.⁴ In 1099-1100 A.D. when a terrible famine and inundation devastated the land, King Harṣa, far from thinking of any relief to the miserable, imposed heavy fines on the people, tormented them through his petty officers, and commanded the governors to kill or disperse certain over-powerful tribes.⁵ There were some kings who wasted the resources of the state on their own festivities and drinking.⁶ Others indulged in forms of debauchery too horrible to recapitulate.⁷ Yet others practised diabolical cruelties which make the flesh creep.⁸