DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

332 SHARING OF THE PROFIT [9.6
They use it for lighting and dip bread in it, and the women put it on their hair.” (Bat. 114-
5).
To this dassic description must be added a few more products,
such as charcoal from the shell, sugar and wine from the sap, some rare
silky cloth made from fluffier portion of the husk, (Var. 65-6) and the
numerous uses of the fronds and the trunk for construction of
shelters and houses, fishing boats, outriggers etc.
These landowners bid at triennial auctions for plots in the riceproducing
valley land, then worked on a share, or less often wage,
agreement with the actual cultivators who provided only the labour, not
the tools, seed, planning, supervision, and transport. The competition was
not strong till recently. The profits of the auction were first spent for the
communal expenses, dykes, roads and the like. There was often an extra
charge, namely a fixed share for each brahmin which’ might later be
reassigned, or divided between his heirs. If the enterprise showed a loss
after that, the losses had to be borne by the landowners, according to
the shares held in rough proportion to the plantation land assigned. If
there were a profit, as happened oftened than not, it was divided between
working-class families and shareholders in the proportion of two-thirds
for the workers, one-third for the landowners; further subdivision was by
the number of shares held by each family. The working-class shares were
periodically reassigned by number of labourers in the household. The
leases on some land, as for example the khazan reclaimed from sea or
estuary, were for nine years or more, because of the heavy capital
expenditure involved. Such leases were generally taken from tfee
community by temporary associations of many workers on mutually
argued shares, as with the classical gosthi. In all this, local custom
made for inevitable variation.
The further developments of these village communes are well worth
following. The brahmin settlements were thirty on Goa island (Tisuary),
sixty-six in Salcete, as the names and tradition both prove. Nonbrahmin
communities sprong up, naturally upon inferior land that was
left, on the same pattern. Shifting kingdoms and gradual development of
warfare meant taxes of some sort, for the communes, whether of