DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

218 MONOPOLY AND PROFIT [7.5
(Meg. 87). State trading houses, along with state granaries, treasuries,
stores for forest produce, and jails were to be specially built by the
sannidhati, (Arth. 2.5). Besides obeying regulation of weights and
measures, the merchants had to pay tolls at both ends whenever their
merchandise went from one janapada to another. “No commodity
may be sold (by a private trader) in the place of its origin” (Arth.
2.22). The trader had to add value to goods by transport, which was
then — as now in India — the most serious problem. His legal profit
was fixed at 5 per cent over the local price for inland commodities,
10 per cent for foreign imports (Arth. 4.2). Importers were encouraged
by some other concession. The state had its own superintendent of
commerce (Arth. 2.16) who engaged in sale of royal goods, which
was often most of the local surplus. Some of these goods were obtained
as taxes in kind’.
In some important and profitable matters the state had a
monopoly. Among these were the slaughterhouses (Arth. 2.26), and
gambling houses (Arth. 3.20) ; in the latter, the superintendent supplied
true dice but took 5 per cent of all winnings. Wines (Arth. 2.25) and
prostitution (Arth. 2.27) had a separate ministry each. Gambling,
prostitution and drinking were distressing concomitants of the new
civic life based upon commodity production, trade exploitation. Such
they have remained ever since, in all profit-making class-societies.
However, they had developed out of tribal institutions, which might have
made it all the easier for the new post-tribal state to regulate them,
and to profit from them. The gambler’s hymn of the Rgveda (RV.
10.34), and the soma book (RV. 9) have been mentioned ; the etymology
of ganika (and even of vesya) shows that prostitution had been a
transformation of earlier tribal group marriage. All metals, from the ore
to the finished article, were also a state monopoly (Arth. 2.12) under a
separate ministry of mines, which controlled also other minerals, salt,
and coinage and circulation of money. The coins could be made by private
manufacturers, provided regulation currency standards were met and
the royal fees were paid. There were heavy fines and drastic punishment
for counterfeiting or uttering (Arth. 4.1). “From mining comes the
treasury, from the treasury the army has its origin ; through the