Administrative System of the Marathas c23.s12.8

c23.s12.8

These various classifications, divisions and subdivisions were by no means new and were known as early as the Maurya era when the great Brahman administrator and political philosopher wrote his Arthashastra. He makes a clear distinction between *sita* or produce from crown lands and *bhaga* or portion of produce payable to the government. "Flower gardens, fruits gardens, vegetable gardens, wet fields and fields where crops are grown by sowing roots for seeds (Mulavapah)," he continues, "come under Setu. Game forests, timber forests and elephant forests are forests.¹ While recounting the duties of the Gopa, Kautilya lays down that "It is the duty of Gopa, village accountant, to attend to the accounts of five or ten villages as ordered by the collector general. By setting up boundaries to villages, by numbering plots of ground as cultivated, uncultivated, plains, wet lands, vegetable gardens, fences, forests, * * irrigation works * * pasture grounds and roads, * * he shall register gifts, sales, charities and remission of taxes regarding fields."² Reference is frequently made to classification according to irrigation facilities. "Those who cultivate irrigating by manual labour," says Kautilya, "shall pay one-fifth of the produce as water rate; by carrying water on shoulders one-fourth of the produce; by water lifts one-third of the produce and by raising water from rivers, lakes, tanks, and wells one-third or one-fourth of the produce."³ Mention is made of irrigation tanks also in a subsequent passage. Similar classification for assessment purposes was also in vogue when the Sukraniti was compiled, where we find that "the king should realise one-third, one-fourth, or one-half from places which are irrigated by tanks, canals and wells by rains and by rivers respectively."⁴ The Chola kings also recognised this time-honoured distinction between irrigated and unirrigated lands." "The assessment is said, under the Cholas in 1046 (Dv. 75), to be one-sixth of the produce, and this was the recognised Hindu rate from the earliest times. But a quarter of a century later it is described in more detail as a fifth of the produce of forest tracts and of lands on which dry (unirrigated) crops are raised, and a third of the produce of lands below a tank on which paddy is grown."³ The classification of land according to fertility and actual state of cultivation was perhaps the outcome of the Mughal influence.