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Administrative System of the Marathas c23.s5: 1. Their Antiquity

Administrative System of the Marathas c23.s5

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1. Their Antiquity

c23.s5.1

In Shivaji's time as well as under the Peshwas, the villages of Maharashtra were so many States within the State, self-contained and isolated. The head of the state was a despot, helped, but by no means controlled, by a council. The villages at the base were linked by a chain of royal officers with the supreme government. Such had also been the case in the past. We read in the Vishnu Samhita that the king should "appoint chiefs in every village; also lords of every ten villages; lords of hundred villages and lords of a whole district."[¹] The Mahabharata mentions lords of a single village, lords of ten villages, lords of twenty villages, lords of hundred villages and lords of thousand villages.[²] We find the same division in Manu also: "let him (the king) appoint a lord over (each) village, as well as lords of ten villages, lords of twenty villages, lords of a hundred, and lords of a thousand.¹⁵⁸ This division no longer prevailed in Shivaji's time, it had been replaced long before him by one more simple and convenient. Single villages still formed the administrative unit, but divisions of ten or hundred did not exist. A Tarf did not necessarily consist of ten villages, nor did ten, twenty or hundred Tarfs make a Prant. It is not improbable that Shivaji's division was the natural evolution of the one that existed when Manu's code had been compiled, the connecting link between the two systems being supplied by Vishnu who still retained the unit of the single village, with the lordship of ten villages. His district perhaps corresponded to Shivaji's Prant.

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¹ Vishnu, S. B. E., Vol. VII, pp. 15-17.

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² Shanti Parva, Chap. 81.

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¹⁵⁸ Manu, VII, 115, S. B. E., p. 234.

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Another link with the past is supplied by the appellation of the officer in charge of a Tarf. He was in rare instances still called Paripatyagar when Shivaji ruled, and from some papers published by Mr. V. K. Rajwade it appears that he had to perform the duties of a Police Magistrate. It appears from this that he was the lineal successor of Danda-nayaka and Dandanatha of the old inscriptions. For the word danda has often been used in old works on Hindu law as well as in the Mahabharata⁴ in the sense of punishment and can therefore be regarded as synonymous with the Marathi term *paripatya*. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar no doubt holds that the Dandanayaka was a minister of war⁵ and Dr. Fleet was of opinion that the terms Danda-nayaka and Chamunath were synonymous,⁶ but there are instances of its being used in the other sense as well. Dr. R. Shama Shastri has translated Dandadhara as a Magistrate.⁷ It will not therefore be unreasonable to suggest that the term Paripatyagar was really a relic of the past, and it still survives in the Paripothaygars of Coorg.

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⁴ Shanti Parva.

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⁵ Early Hist. of the Dekkan, 2nd edition, p. 90.

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⁶ J. B. Br. B. A. S., XVI, p. 2.

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⁷ Kautilya, Arthasastra, p. 10.

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The antiquity of the Indian village communities has been established beyond doubt. References to their constitution, regulations and bye-laws, have been made by Kautilya, Manu, Vishnu, Brihaspati, Narada, and other Indian law-givers of old. Village affairs have not unfrequently been described in Buddhist Jataka stories. The subject has been very ably and exhaustively treated by Dr. R. C. Majumdar and all that I should do here is to refer my readers to his "Corporate Life in Ancient India," and confine myself to an enquiry about the antiquity of rights and perquisites of village officers as well as their duties.

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