Indian Antiquary Vol 40

SR No.: 032532
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 388
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 281

OCTOBER, 1911.]
EARLY SOUTH INDIAN FINANCE
267
any way diminished the heaviness of the burden. Collecting the revenue in kind,” says Sir Thomas Munro in one of his able minutes," is a very clumsy, but very simple mode of realising it. No commutation is required, whether the crop is poor or abundant, a share can easily be taken, and Government can always draw from the ryot as much as he can possibly pay. The case is very different under money-rents. If the assessment is to be a fixed one-he means one fixed in Doney as contradistinguished from the fluctuating one in kind and not a perpetually fixed money asse-sment-it must be so moderate as to meet the contingencies of the seasons in ordinary times, and a more liberal share must therefore be allowed to the ryot than when he pays in kind; and the co:sequence is, that where the ryots pay a fixed money-rent, they are usually more substantial than wien by a share of the crop. "20 Elsewhere Sir Thomas Munro thus balances the advantages and disadvantages of the system of payment in kind and shows clearly that payment in kind itself discluses the heaviness of the assessments.-" The system of paying in kind, a share of the produce as th Government rent, is also well adapted to the same state of things, because Government is always sur of obtaining half of the produce, or whatever its sbare may be, from the ryot, whether the crop be scanty or abundant, and because the ryot is also sure of not being called on for rent, when the cro has entirely failed, and he is, perhape, unable to pay. Such a system is better caloulated to save the ryot from being oppressed by demands which he cannot pay, than to enable him to become Walthy. This protection to the ryot from payment of revenue in a season of calamity is the only advantage which appears to belong to the system ; but it is an advantage which could be necessary onls under a rigid system and would not be wanted under a more liberal one of assessment. The very existence of such a system in Arcot and other districts where it is prevalent, is a proof that, however light Indian revenue may be in the theories of Indian writers, in practice it has always been heavy. Had the public assessment, as pretended, ever been, as in the books of their sages, only a sixth or a fifth, or even only a fourth of the gross produce, the payment of a fixed share in kind and all the expensive machinery requisite for its supervision, never could bave been wanted. The simple plan of money assessment might have been at once resorted to, in the full confidence that the revenue would every year, in good and bad seasons, easily and punctually be paid. No person who knows anything of Indian revente can believe that the ryot, if his fixed assessment were only a fifth or a fourth of a gross produce, would not every year, whether good or bad, pay it without difficulty, and not only do this, but prosper under it, beyond what he has ever done at any previous period. Had such a moderate assessment ever been established, it would undoubtedly have been paid in money, because there would have been no reason for continuing the expensive process of making collections in kind. It was because the assessment was not moderate, that assessments in kind were introduced or continued; for a money-rent equivalent to the amount could not have been realised one year with another.21” He winds up with the conclusion that there is no ground, either from tradition or from record, or from the present state of the country, for believing that a moderate land-tax was ever at any time throughout India the principle of its revenue system." Nothing more, perhaps, is necessary to show the uncommon general acuteness of Sir Thomas Munro than these few sentences of his, written when epigraphical and other historical researches had not yet made known to as the really high rate of assessments that prevailed during the days of the Cholas and their Hindu and Muhammadan successors.
20 Minute on Northern Circare printed in Sir A. J. Arbuthnot's Selections from Sir Thomas Mundo's Minutes I. 216, whero, however, contrivance is plainly a misprint for commutation. See E. 1. House Selections III, parsa. 23 to 33.
1 Minute on the state of the country and condition of the people. Arbuthnot's Minutes of Sir Thomas Munro, I. 946-7.
# Ibid. 249.