Indian Antiquary Vol 45

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

Page 62

54
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1916
THE HISTORY OF THE NAIK KINGDOM OF MADURA.
By V. RANGACHARI, M.A., L.T., MADRAS.
(Continued from p. 36.) The Jesuit theory of oppression not quite trustworthy. The theoretical rate of 50 per cent. of the gross produce would have been, if strictly adhered to, hard enough for the cultivators; but we are informed that the Polygars and the crown officials were always rapacious, and squeezed more from the ryots. Their rapacity, says the Jesuit authority," was usually limited only by the inability of the Ryot to pay, or by his success in deceiving or bribing the collecting staff." It is difficult to believe this severe and wholesale condemnation. The large number of wars in which the Naik kings were engaged, the size and extent of the grants they made to Brâhmans and temples, the enormous amount they spent in the construction of public works and in the performance of charities, the industrious liberality with which they constructed vast irrigation works, could hardly have been possible, if the revenue system were based on injustice and tyranny. An unceasing extortion by revenue officials would have hopelessly impoverished the country, and made it unable to bear the burden of those incessant wars and those works of unproductive expenditure, for which the Kartas were famous. The country's splendour and luxury, moreover, could not have been the result of a reckless maladministration. Indeed the dynasty itself could not have been in power for such a long time, if it had been erected on the foundations of tyranny and cruelty. The importance attached to a just rule in contemporary literature, and the laudation of the kings in inscriptions could not have happened in an atmosphere of unalloyed misery. The praises of chronicles, the exploits of kings like Ranga Krishna Muttu Vîrappa, the works of Tiramal Naik and Mangamma! are even now existing proofs of a prosperous kingdom and a resourceful people. It is therefore safe to conclude that, as a rule, the administration was paternal and sympathetic, while there were not wanting, as the Jesuit writers inform us, grave intervals of oppression and misrule. As A. J. Stuart says, 70 a government whose wealth and whose tastes are manifested by hundreds of temples and statues throughout the peninsula, and whose readiness to employ all its resources for the benefit of its people, as proved by the number and nature of the irrigation works which it completed, implies a contented and prosperous people; while a high state of the arts and of knowledge is abundantly testified by the exquisite design and workmanship discoverable in many of the temples and statues, as well as by the grasp and mastery of the principles of irrigation, a complicated and difficult branch of the engineering art displayed in their irrigation system."
Comparison of the Naik assessment with the later Musalman system. Passing on to the quogtion how far the Náik assessment as heavy or light when compared with later assessments, we have first to see that it was, in the words of A. J. Stuart, undoubtedly light when compared to that of the Mahomedan Government of the Nawabs of the Carnatic which follows." In highly eloquent and pathetic terms Dr. Caldwell describes the oppression of the Carnatic Renter77 and the absolute helplessness of the Ryot in the days of the Carnatic Raj. Interested in squeezing as much as possible, the Renters practically reduced the farmer's share to 16 per cent. of the proluce. It was out of this meagre dole that he was to maintain his family, to furnish the stock and implements of husbandry, to purchase cattle and meet other expenses. Besides, he was compelled to "labour week after week at the repair of water-courses, tanks and embankments of rivers." He could 76 Tinnevelly Manual p. 69. Tinnevelly alone contained 36 pagodas of note and nearly 400 recoiv.
ats (exclusive of village pagodas), in the beginning of the 19th century. "This gives some idea of the wealth and civilization of the province at a very early period." In Madura there should have been a much larger number of such shrineg.
77 His Tinnevelly; Stuart's Tinnevelly Manual, p. 63.