DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

342 NOTES TO CHAPTER IX
descriptive of the Gupta administmtion. That work mentions gunpowder (including
the formula) and firearms five separate times, hence belongs to the late Muslim period,
as its editor and translator B. K. Sarkar (Allahabad, 1925) has shown. “ The king
should promptly realise the land revenues, wages, duties, interests, bribes, and rents
without delay. The king should give to each cultivator the deed of rent (assessment),
having his own seal. Having determined the land revenue of the village, the king
should receive it from one rich man in advance, or a guarantee (for the payment) of
that either by monthly or periodical instalments. Or the king should appoint officers
called gramapd by paying 1/16, 1/12, 1/8, 1/6 of his own receipts... .He should
realise 1/32 portion of the (capital) increase or interest of the usurer.. .He should
receive rents from houses and dwellings as from cultivated lands. He should also
have land tax from shopkeepers. For the preservation and repair of the roads, he
should collect tolls from those who use the roads” (Sukrarati, Sarkar’s translation;
4.2.245-258). The formula for gunpowder is given in 4.7.400-406; muskets
and cannon in 4.7,389-94, ramrod 4.7 V 418-21, firearms for the royal bodyguard 4.7.47-
53. Lawyers and their fees (1/16 to 1/160 of the value defended or realised)
appear in 4.5.224-31. The document therefore belongs to the period of developed
feudalism from below, when taxfarmers, tolls, house taxes, &c., were fully proliferated.
In fact, V. Raghavan has found excellent reasons for suspecting that the document is
a very recent forgery, perhaps by Oppert’s pandits at the Madras Presidency College,
who might also have fabricated other ‘discoveries’ like the Galava-nirukta,
Narasiiflha-sowhita &c; R. N. Saletore’s Life in the Gupta age (Bombay 1943) is
an uncritical compendium which might be used for reference with due caution. My
paper in note 1 of the last chapter gives details of the tribes, and land-grants, including
a discussion of Chinese pilgrims’ accounts.
2. V. S. Sukthankar’s paper on the home of the ‘so-called’ Andhra kings (ABORT.
1.21-42; Memorial ed. vol. 2. 251-265) gives this inscription as an appendix; I have
modified the translation slightly. The inscription was also published by the same
author in EL 14.153-5 (Memorial ed. 2.213-5).
3. A Sabaean inscription found ‘ somewhere in Gujarat or Kathia-war’ (whereof
a photocopy reached me in 1942 as “cuneiform”) was identified by Dr. A. F. L.
Beeston of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (letter of August 20, 1951). It duplicates
another near Aden published in Corpus Inscr. Sem. 27, 1905, 153-5 : “The landed
estate of Abhirata of Harran and his fellow tribesmen of the hill of Harran, who are of
the tribe Yath’ir, clans Rabib and Khait, extends from this inscription northwards,
while the buildings and the ravine of the mountain bound it on the east.” The
palaeography may be about the beginning of the Christian era. Shorter Sabaean
epigraphs have been found at Bhfij (EL 19.300-302). Sun-worshippers, presumably
imported during Ku$§na rale for settlement on the Chenab river, turned into Maga
brahmins, with their own Samba-purana (cf. R. C. Hazra, ABQRL 36.1955.62-84).
The line of foreign