A History of Agriculture in India v1.c29.s5.3

v1.c29.s5.3

Kautilya refers to the headman (*gramika*) as well as to the village-elders (*grama-vriddhah*), who constituted the local assembly. The headman co-operated with the Gopa, a royal official, in maintaining the village register, which contained a full description of the tax-paying and non-tax-paying parts of the village, a record of gifts, sales, charities and remission of taxes. The Gopa attended to the accounts of five or ten villages. Villages were divided into the following categories: villages exempted from taxation, those that supply soldiers, those that pay their taxes in the form of grains, cattle, gold or raw material, and those that supply free labour and dairy produce in lieu of taxes. Kautilya enjoins: ‘When the headman of the village has to travel on account of any business of the whole village, the villagers shall by turn accompany him: those who cannot do this shall pay 1½ panas for every Yojana.’ This shows that the headman was assisted by the villagers in matters relating to the whole village. The village elders, with the *gramika* at the head, looked after the local administration. So far as affairs touching land were concerned, we notice them, in the first place, taking charge of property of the infants or minors and improving it. They looked after the temple-property (*deva-dravyam*). ‘In the absence of claimants to dilapidated religious buildings, villagers or charitable people may repair them. They also conducted the sale of buildings of different kinds, fields, gardens, lakes or tanks, etc. The property on sale was accurately described, so that the buyer could know exactly what he was going to and the sale was by auction. They decided disputes concerning boundaries of land within a village as well as those between two or more villages in consultation with the elders of other village. They also punished those who made encroachments upon the boundary-areas or destroyed the boundary-marks.