The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t17: 1. A Lay Balance-Sheet (c 640 A. C.)
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t17
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1. A Lay Balance-Sheet (c 640 A. C.)
c11.t17.1
A contemporary account of the finances of the Vardhana Empire (606—647) is furnished by Hiuen Thsang, the Chinese state-guest of Harṣa's. It is said that forced labor was not exacted by the government. When the public works required it, labor was exacted but paid for in strict proportion to the work. Those who cultivated the royal estates, paid a sixth of the produce as the share of the state. The river passages and the road barriers were open on payment of a small toll. In regard to public expenditure there are said to have been four charges on the private demesnes of the crown. The first charge was of course the management of the affairs of state and the provision for sacrificial offerings. The second was for providing subsidies for the ministers and chief officers of state. Honorariums for men of distinguished ability constituted the third charge, and the fourth was religious charity. Altogether, in the Chinese scholar-pilgrim's opinion, the taxes on the people were light, and personal service required of them was moderate.⁴
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⁴ *Si Yu-ki*, Vol. I, pp. 87, 88.
c11.t17.3
Evidently we have here the material for a very elementary balancesheet much too naive for an imperial organization¹ based as it was on the triumphs of *dig-vijaya* and military aggression² no less than on the victories of peace. The reporter was a lay-man and naturally failed to notice the "sinews of war" that operated the administrative machinery of *pax sârva-bhaumica* (peace of the world-state).³ It is on such facile statements about "light taxes" and "religious charities", however, that students of comparative politics in the nineteenth century were used to founding their estimate of the Hindu political systems. In the publications on finance, as in the treatises on legislation and jurisprudence it has been the custom, therefore, to summarily dismiss the Oriental monarchies as primitive polities of the "patrimonial" type. Today the states of Old Asia are treated by scholars more or less in the same light as the feudal kingdoms of mediaeval Europe, i. e., as organizations modelled on a private household, the domestic establishment of the ruler.⁴
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¹ See the extent of the Vardhana Empire on the map facing p. 340 of *Early Hist.*
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² *Harṣa-charita*, p. 188.
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³ *Infra*, p. 223.
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⁴ Art. on Finance in the *Enc. Brit.*
Linked texts (2)
- Harṣacarita — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
- 玄奘 — Classical Chinese