The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c11.100

c11.100

A controversial problem of this period is the proportion of the produce taken by the state. The deductions of modern writers on the topic are based on inconclusive evidence. It will be helpful to examine the question in the light of Hindu tradition and Muslim law. The writers on Hindu legal theory say that the state should demand a sixth of the produce as its share; but this figure soon became a stereotyped term to denote the state demand.³ Later foreign observers like al-Bīrūnī were misled by the persistent use on the part of Hindu writers of the term ‘one-sixth’ for the land revenue.⁴ There is concrete proof that the state demand was higher. Oppressive assessment finds mention in the Jātakas, and even Kautilya increases the state demand if there were irrigation facilities.⁵ The Shukranīti says that one-sixth should be taken only from barren and rocky soils, whereas “the king should raise one-third, one-fourth or one-half from lands which are irrigated by tanks, canals, and wells, by rain and by rivers respectively.”⁶ It is true that the date of this work is uncertain, yet the view it takes of a legitimate demand is of considerable value. A modern writer on ancient Hindu polity has estimated that the cultivator had to pay from forty to fifty-seven per cent. of his produce to the state as land revenue and irrigation charges.⁷ This is a very high charge when it is realized that the water was not supplied by the state, but only theoretically belonged to it.¹ The irrigation charges ranged from a fifth to a third of the produce.² This applied to Kautilya’s days; it is very difficult indeed to find any fixed rule for the whole of Hindu India. New taxes and cesses grew up which were gradually added to the main demand which only nominally remained at a sixth of the produce; when old taxes were compounded by an increased land-revenue, new ones raised their head.³ Towards the end of Hindu rule in Northern India, the burden on the cultivator had grown almost unbearable, and yet in theory it was only one-sixth of the gross produce.⁴ This was the situation which faced the Muslim conquerors when they had to fix their own demand. It was a question bristling with difficulties, and it required an Alexander’s sword to cut the Gordian knot.