The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t20: b) Collections from Land
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t20
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b) Collections from Land
c11.t20.1
We have now to add the revenue from property *par excellence*, the "real estate" as it is called. Not only in primitive communities but in Rome also even under the Empire land revenue was the mainstay of the government. And this land revenue was essentially a rent from "crown-land", *ager publicus*, i. e. public domain. It took the Romans long to get used to the idea of a non-land revenue. Taxes like the *tributum* were considered by the republic as "forced loans" to be repaid out of the loot of conquest, and these were resorted to only when the proceeds of the "domain" proved inadequate to meet the extraordinary expenses.¹
c11.t20.2
Under the Tamils also south India's financial backbone must have been furnished by the realizations from land. The rate was not low. The Early Roman Empire used to levy land revenue at the rate of ¹ /₁₀th of the produce.² But in Chola India the government demand was ¹ /₆th. The high rate was indeed the normal *bhāga* or share of the government in land-produce according to the stereotyped "pious wish" of the *dharma-śāstras* (law books) and *nīti-śāstras* (political science).³ And yet in *Realpolitik* this conventional norm was but a fiscal camouflage that may deceive the academic student of financial history but did not fail to press the taxpayers themselves. For in Chola legislation the additional imposts on land, besides the tolls and octrois, were clearly defined as being ¹⁄₁₀th of the yield. The total revenue from land was thus ⁴⁄₁₅ths or more than 25 per cent of the gross outturn in Râjâdhirâja’s time (1035—1053).¹
c11.t20.3
¹ Seligman's *Ess.* p. 35. The same Roman views are expressed in the sixteenth century by the French political philosopher Bodin in his *Les six livres de la république* (Bk. VI, Ch. ii, *Des Finances*).
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² Ramsay, p. 276.
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³ *Infra* pp. 155—160.
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¹ Aiyangar, pp. 181, 182.
c11.t20.7
An interesting theoretical study in connection with the Chola revenue from real property would be that bearing on its precise character as to whether it was rent or tax. Incidentally it may be pointed out that communism in landownership is practically unknown in Hindu law-books.² The trend of ancient thought on land-tenure is to regard it as individual concern. But in *Tamil* inscriptions, while the individualistic tenure (the *ryotwari*, to use the British Indian term) is easily to be inferred, communal property in certain lands is also assured to village *panchâyats* by the legislation of Râja-râja the Great (985—1018).³ We may take it that so far as the Chola Empire is concerned, land was owned both in severalty as well as in common.
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² Jolly’s *Recht*, pp. 93—96; Hopkins’ *India* (Land Tenure), pp. 221, 225, 229; *Vedic Index*, Vol. I, pp. 245, 246.
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³ Aiyangar, pp. 161, 163, 164.
c11.t20.10
This does not, however, settle the question as to how far, if at all, the crown was the legal proprietor of land, i. e. how far the “village community” (wherever it may have existed) or the individual cultivator were but “tenants” of the state-landlord (paying “economic” rents for the usufruct of public property) and how far their dues were “direct taxes” paid on their own immovable possessions. It is the tendency of modern Indologists to postulate all lands as state property and the income from land necessarily as crown rent. But it is hardly possible to maintain this position on the strength of actual proprietary documents, *sâsanas* (laws or charters) and epigraphic records. For all practical purposes the presumption rather should be that Hindu India did not know of state-landlordism, i. e. land-nationalization⁴ except of course in very limited areas. The land revenue of Hindu states was therefore generally speaking, a tax. But, as Giffen⁵ explains away the distinction between rent and tax, “the fact of a government levying so general a charge may be held *ipso facto* to convert the charge into a tax having much the same economic effects and consequences as a tax". For in strict theory, "where the government makes a charge, it levies a tax". The features of monopoly and compulsion on the taxpayer associated with all forms of land-revenue "make the charges difficult to distinguish logically from other taxes".
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⁴ See the discussion on “public lands” in Rau’s *Finanzwissenschaft*, pp. 127—133; cf. Bodin, pp. 623—634.
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⁵ “Taxation” in the *Enc. Brit.*