Administrative System of the Marathas c27.s7.19

c27.s7.19

Customs and transit duties were levied in India by her Hindu rulers from very early times. The Muhammadan kings who succeeded them continued the old duties as usual and sometimes added to their incidence. In the early years of the Mughal rule, when Babar laid the foundation of his power at Delhi, "there was a duty levied on the frontier on goods" and "there were transit duties on merchandise transported from one part of the country to another."²⁴ Jahangir prohibited transit duties²⁵ but there cannot be any doubt that they continued to be levied. "Mundy, Thevenot, and Tavernier, who took an interest in such topics, show us a regular system of transit dues in force throughout large portions of the country, and Father Sebastian Manrique tells how the passport granted to him as an ecclesiastic to travel from Lahore to the mouth of the Indus was used by a merchant of his party to evade many demands during the journey."²⁶ Thevenot counted, on the road from Aurangabad to Golkonda, sixteen taxing posts in twenty-three leagues.²⁷ Customs, tolls and transit duties were collected throughout the territories of the Sultan of Golkonda even at the time of the Mughal conquest.²⁸ The Marathas did not cease to impose these time-honoured duties, but in their time the hardship of the merchants and tradesmen were considerably ameliorated as a class of men known as Hundikaris undertook to transport all commodities from one place to another for a single payment.