A History of Agriculture in India v1.c27.s5.2

v1.c27.s5.2

or ‘ownerless’. The sovereign was moreover entitled to ‘milk money’, a perquisite paid by the subjects when an heir was born to him. Besides these privileges he could impose forced labour or *rajakariya* on the people, limited to the confines of his own estates. Thus the peasant proprietors enclose a deer-reserve for their king, so that they might not be summoned to leave their tillage to beat up game for him. The tithe on produce was levied in kind, measured out either by the village headman (*gama-bhojaka*), or by an official (a *mahamatta*) at the barn doors, or by survey of the crops. Some of the rice and other grain were stored in the special granaries kept filled for urgency, in war or famine. The amount levied seems to have varied from 1/6 to 1/12, according to the decision of the ruling power or other circumstances. And the contributions raised at one or more *gamas* (villages), rural or suburban, could be made over by a monarch to anyone he wished to endow, e.g. to a daughter on her marriage, a minister, a Brahman, a merchant. Again, the king, could remit the tithe to any person or group.