The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t21.1

c11.t21.1

On the whole the Chola revenues were bulky in dimensions and the people of southern India heavily taxed. Only one ruler is spoken of as having slightly reduced the amount of the people's dues. Kulot-tûnga's name became a household word in Madras of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for in 1086, the year of the Domesday Book, he abolished the tolls¹ after the completion of cadastral survey, — the second such survey of the Chola Empire. But the general story of *les nerfs de la république*, the nerves of the state, as Bodin puts it, under the Cholas was uniform. Like the governments of Europe in the days of Adam Smith,² the South Indian monarchs knew how to exact as much as they could "only desirous of finding the easiest means of doing so". The one redeeming feature seems to be that the Empire was conscious of the high price at which *pax sârva-bhaumica* was being enjoyed by the people. Râja-râja accordingly expressly instructed the finance officers to be elastic in the collection of revenues.³ But no figures are available as to any of the heads of government income, and there is no means of making an estimate as to the probable national income. It is naturally impossible to form an idea as to the taxable capacity or "faculty" of the people. Nor is it convenient to hazard a conjecture as to the actual "burden of taxation", i. e. the proportion of the aggregate wealth of the people that the state demanded for all its functions and services.