Life in Ancient India as Depicted in Jain Canons

Author(s): Jagdishchandra Jain
Publisher: New Book Company

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FISCAL ADMINISTRATION
About the collection of taxes it may be mentioned that the collectors were very oppresive to the poor-folk. We are told of a king who invaded another king for non-payment of taxes (kappaka).16 The Vivaga. suya refers to a district-officer (atthakuda) named Ikkai who harassed the people of five hundred villages under his jurisdiction by means of various taxes (kara), custom duties (bhara), interest, bribc, insult, compulsory contribution (dejja), punitive taxes (bhejja), extortion of money at the point of the sword, by giving shelter to thieves, by setting fire and waylaying the travellers." The Brhatkalpa Bhasya refers to the king of Soparaya who demanded tax from the merchants (negama). They refused to pay and the king ordered his tax-collectors to burn down their houses.18
18 Ava tu, II, p 190 17 1. p 6 f.
18 1. 2506f In the Jatakas the tax collectors are mentioned as hungry robber training the poor earnings of the cultivator. We come across references when the subject op pressed by taxation took their wives and families and wandered in the forest like wild bents where once stood villages, there now were none, and the people through the fear of the king's officers by day did not venture to dwell in the houses but fencing them about with thorn branches, as son aso the day broke, they disappeared into the forest (Fick, op. cit., p. 120°7.).