DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

9.5J INCREASING NUMBER OF OFFICIALS 321
to a sixth of the produce. The powerful trade and rapid expansion of
village settlements in Bengal are to be seen incidentally from such
grants.
Local tenure differed from place to place, and older usages were
always respected as far as possible. In Fleet 80, a village was given
away by consent of some assembly to temple priests, along with its
inhabitants, who must have been some special class of sudras. This
puzzling gift of the maharaja maha-samanta Samundrasena belongs to
the 7th century Punjab; in other places, the people given away were
conquered aborigines. But village workmen were sometimes “given”
too (JBORS 2.423, 407, 415; EL IS.lff., 363). In some plates,
individualplots are granted. As time went on, the grants
became more and more generous. Yet one feature remained
unchanged. The recipients of a whole village gained at most the rights
the state would normally claim. That is, they collected the taxes already
fixed by usage. No portions of the tax was to be passed on to the state
or any state official, but the donee had not the right to increase such
taxes, nor any property rights over land and cattle. The Arthasastra
theory of state ownership of land survived, but meant primarily that
the state would claim taxes on cultivated land, in which settler’s rights
were guaranteed on the whole. Again, caste was responsible for limiting
oppression of the cultivator to a certain extent. His fellow-castemen,
originally descended from the same tribe, would stand by him, if it came
to the worst; such a local jati would normally extend beyond a single
village. In the Harsacarita and the successive Damodarpur plates,
the development of more and more high officials is to be noted :
feudalism from above tended to become heavier with time.
The following extract from a land grant of Harsa in the 25th
year (of his reign) illustrates a general process :
“From the great royal camp-headquarters, provided with boats, elephants, horses
and (accompanied by) victory, .at (the village of) Kapitthika. Har§a, the devotee of
Mahesvara, issues this command to the feudatories and officials (mahasamantas,
maharajas, dauhsodhya-sadhanikas pramataras, rajasthaniyas, kumaramatyas,
uparikas, visayapatis, regular and auxiliary soldiers, state servants and others) assembled
at the village of Somaguflftla, which belongs to the Kuaritfadhani visaya in the Sravasti
bhukti; and to the people JH-21