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NOVEMBER, 1911.)
EARLY SOUTH INDIAN FINANCE
297
diminishing the revenue is only what was to be expected.(6 "In short," says the authority already quoted, the Mussalman rulers seem like the man in the fable, to have done their best to kill the goose with the golden eggs. No wonder then that the revennes of the Nawab for the last twenty years of his management in Nellore steadily declined.97 Nor was it better in any way of the other Subhds. Everywhere it was the same tale of cruel oppression and worse rack renting. The rapacity of the renters in every department of the revenue pauperised the people and left the cultivating masses nothing but their ploughs and cattle. The moneyed class was conspicuous by its absence, Trade was paralysed, and there were few indeed who lived by it. Irrigation was everywhere neglected, and roads there were none, properly so called. The confusion and uncertainty of revenue system; the oppression of renters; the fraud and venality which had infected all ranks, the poverty of the cultivators, who were nine-tenths of the community; the stagnation of the trade and manufacture consequent on restrictive taxation and general insecurity; the depredations of Poligârs and Kávalgars, the supposed guardians of the public security; the total want of a system of judicature, all these, in the words of the authority" already quoted, combined everywhere in the Nawab's territories to produce a state of things which was wretched in the extreme and from which the country has not, despite the peace and progress of over a century under the ægis of British rule, yet recovered.
Summary. To sum up :-Between the 11th and the 13th centuries A. D., the Cholas, who ruled orer the whole of what is at present known as the Presidency and a good deal even beyond it, took betweea 13/30ths and 4/15ths of the gross produce from the cultivators, for the Government share. This is about from 4 to 7 times greater than the proportion taken by the British Government at he present time, which is less than 6 per cent. or 1/17th of the gross produce. The proportion aken by the Cholas would be much greater than that of the British, if we but considered the Teater purchasing power of the precious metals then than it is now. Their other revendes were derived from a number of petty imposts which invaded every calling and occupation, and must have been a great impediment to the growth of commerce and enterprise. One of their later kings, who ruled between 1063 and 1070 A. D., commuted a portion of the Government share into * money payment, while another successor of his abolished most of the vexatious taxes and resurveyed the lands—the first survey having been carried out at least a century before-abont 1086 A. D., the time of the famons Domesday survey in England, and recouped the loss sustained is a revision of land assessments. Thus, the principle of temporary and not permanent settlements
ems to have been adopted by the ancient Cholas, and considering the praises bestowed upon the trticular kings who carried out these reforms, there is every reason to believe that the people i referred a little addition to their land assessments to the retention of the oppressive imposts. In the matter of collection and remission, the Cholas seem to have been more rigorous than their British successors, refusing, as they did, even the expected remission when the crops had been destroyed wholesale by ris major.
On the decay of the Cholas came the Vijayanagar kings. From about the middle of the >4th century to 1565 their supremacy was undisputed throughout southern India and Mysore. The early kings, if we may balieve the treatise on law and goverament, written by their first Prime Minister, Mâdhava, who was, according to unvarying tradition, chiefly instrumental in bringing their kingdom into existence, raised the land tax to of the groas produce, which was paid in cash and was exclusive of the fees absorbed by the village etablishm 3nt, which was met from the cultivators' share. Their later successors of the sixteenth centary disregarded the tax and practically raised it to
" Nellore District Munnal, 495-8.
Jbid, 433.
Ibid, 489.
10° Nellore Manual, 494-5.
