Administrative System of the Marathas c23.s13.32

c23.s13.32

4 & 5. In Shivaji's time two taxes *Telpatti* and *Tup* by name were not uncommon. *Telpatti* literally means an oil cess and *Tup* is clarified butter. These were in all probability taxes in kind exacted from the manufacturer. We may seek their origin in that passage of Manu which authorises the king to take "the sixth part of trees, meat, honey, clarified butter, perfumes, herbs, substances used for flavouring food, flowers, roots, and fruits."²⁹ An identical provision is also found in the Vishnu Smriti.³⁰ Nor is Kautilya altogether silent about these taxes. We have already referred to villages that supplied dairy produce.³¹ But he includes oil and clarified butter in more unequivocal terms among the items of revenue when he recounts the imposts that come under the head of forts. "Tolls, fines, weights and measures, the town-clerk, the superintendent of coinage, the superintendent of seals and passports, liquor, slaughter of animals, threads, oils, ghee, etc., come under the head of forts."³² We have also seen in the famous Siyadoni inscription how the oilmen levied a voluntary impost of a certain measure of oil in favour of the local temple. This is however a North Indian inscription. But we have already seen that the impost was not at all unknown in Southern India as well. Ghi or clarified butter was one of the "imposts professedly abolished by Firuz Shah in A.D. 1375."³³ It may therefore be safely concluded that Telpatti and Tup were very old imposts possibly as old as the 4th century B.C. if not older.