Administrative System of the Marathas c23.s13.10

c23.s13.10

Rent or land tax did not form the only item of a state's income in any country in any age remote or recent. This was supplemented by customs duties, taxes, cesses, and undefined exactions. But it was the fixed principle of the Maratha financiers that these levies should not in any case exceed the resources of the tax-payers or in their own words taxes should always be *jivan maphik*. Here also consciously or unconsciously they were following the precepts of their ancestors. Manu, for example, lays down that "after due consideration the king shall always fix in his realm the duties and taxes, in such a manner that both he himself and the man who does the work receive their due reward. As the leech, the calf, and the bee take their food little by little, even so must the king draw from his realm moderate annual taxes."¹² And again, "Let him not cut up his own root (by levying no taxes), nor the root of other (men) by excessive greed; for by cutting up his own root (or theirs), he makes himself or them wretched." ¹³ Shukracharya was of opinion that "the king should receive rent from the peasant in such a way that he be not destroyed. It is to be realised in the fashion of the weaver of the garland not of the coal merchant." ¹⁴ Baudhayana recommends the same principle of moderation when he says "Let him also lay just (duties) on other (marketable goods) according to their intrinsic value without oppressing (the traders)." ¹⁵ This may be an accidental coincidence, as the principle is one that will recommend itself to the good sense of every statesman in every age. But it cannot be an accident that many of the taxes and duties of the Maratha age can be traced to a remote past. The reason of course is not hard to guess as kings in general and autocrats in particular seldom forget a single item of revenue sanctioned by law or custom. ¹⁶ Human nature being the same everywhere neither the Muhammadan nor the Hindu rulers (it is true the Muhammadan rulers often remitted many obnoxious taxes at the time of their accession to the throne, but it seems that the royal mandate was not either respected in distant provinces, or the prohibited duties were revived before long) were likely to forego any of their old rights in this particular direction and this explains the survival of many of these levies with or without legal sanction even to the present times. Let us now see how many of these taxes, duties and extra cesses had been inherited by the Maratha rulers from their predecessors of the Epic and the Pauranic ages.