Indian Antiquary Vol 45

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 36

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[FEBRUARY, 1916
THE HISTORY OF THE NAIK KINGDOM OF MADURA. BY V. RANGACHARI, M.A., L.T., MADRAS.
CHAPTER III. SECTION VII.
The Naik Finance.
(Continued from p. 118.)
In spite of the defects which I have pointed out in the Naik administrative machinery, central and local, which Viśvanâtha and his minister established or perfected, there is no doubt whatever that it was eminently suited to the people and the times. It was this eminent suitability that enabled the dynasty of which Viśvanâtha was the founder to be in power for nearly two centuries. But it is not in the field of politics alone that we see the organizing and systematising genius of Viśvanâtha (or his minister). His statesmanship and skill is seen in the financial administration also, which he placed on a comparatively sound and healthy basis. It is indeed true that, so far as he himself was concerned, he was more a sacrificer than a gainer. The difficulties of conquest and settlement and the shortness of his rule did not enable him to reap the harvest of his reforms. They went only to impoverish him, as he expended all the gigantic accumulation of property, which his father had made, and which he of course inherited. But what he gave his successors got. By freely placing his private resources at the disposal of the State, he weathered it through a time of stress and trouble, organised in the meantime an elaborate financial system, and thus placed the crown of his successors on the rock of security. The use of his private wealth was thus more or less an investment, and eloquently proves to us that he was not only an eminently wise man, but a good man.
Nelson's view of the total Revenue of the kingdom.
In the description of the Nâik financial system, which, we may believes, was shaped after the model of the Vijayanagar system, we have naturally to devote our attention to three questions closely connected with each other, namely the total revenue that was collected by the State, the various sources of taxation, and the comparative heaviness or lightness of the financial burden, when compared with the burden of later days. As regards the total revenue of the Karta, one way of finding it out is by ascertaining what he paid as annual tribute to his Vijayanagar suzerain. We find nowhere a definite statement of the tribute in the chronicles. But a Jesuit father who lived in the first decade of the 17th century, i. e., half a century after Viśvanâtha and a decade or so before Tirumal Naik, says that " The great Nayakers of Madura, like those of Tanjore and Gingee, are themselves tributaries of Vijayanagar, to whom they pay, or ought to pay, each one an annual tribute of from six to ten million of franks." In English money this would range from £240,000 to 400,000. And as the tribute was a third of the total revenue,59 it is plain that the income of the Naik State should have been from £720,000 to
57 The Chronicle Hist. Carna. Dynas. clearly shews this.
58 See Mys. Gazr., I., 578-88, for the most complete and detailed discussion of the Vijayanagar system. Rice points out how in the time of Krishnadéva Raya and Achyuta, the revenues "were first reduced to a regular form, checked by ordinances, and a system of accounts and management introduced, calculated to improve the revenue of the empire..." These regulations or rayarê khas fixed the revenues, duties and customs, etc. and were transmitted to all the local officers in villages, towns, and Naḍus.
59 Nuniz, however, writing in the time Achyuta Raya, says that out of the total revenue of 120 lakhs of pardaos, presumably, throughout the provinces, 60 lakhs had to be given to the Emperor (Forg. Empe. 373). But when he describes individual cases (Ibid. 384-9), he almost always gives the proportion of one-third. Rice gives 81 crores of Avakôți chakrams or pagodas as the total revenue on the authority of some MSS. It is evidently an exaggeration. See Mys. Gazr., I., p. 578.