Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 69

48
BUDDHIST INDIA
No individual could acquire, either by purchase or inheritance, any exclusive right in any portion of the common grassland or woodland. Great importance was attached to these rights of pasture and forestry. The priests claimed to be able, as one result of per. forming a particular sacrifice (with six hundred victims !), to ensure that a wide tract of such land should be provided. And it is often made a special point, in describing the grant of a village to a priest, that it contained such common.'
What happened in such a case was that the king granted, not the land (he had no property in the land), but the tithe due, by custom, to the govern. ment as yearly tax. The peasantry were ousted from no one of their rights. Their position was indeed improved. For, paying only the same tax as before, they thus acquired the protection of a strong influence, which would not fail, on occasion, to be exerted on their behalf.
Not that they were usually without some such protection. It was through the village headman that all government business was carried on, and he had both opportunity and power to represent their case to the higher officials. From the fact that the appointment of this officer is not claimed for the king until the later law books it is almost certain that, in earlier times, the appointment was either hereditary, or conferred by the village council itself.
This village headman had, no doubt, to prepare
1 Sat. Br. 13. 3, 7.
? Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. 108, etc. Comp. M. 3. 133; Ját. vi. 344.
3 Manu, vii. 115; Vishnu, iii. 7-10.