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5. YASASTILAKA AS A SOCIO-POLITICAL RECORD
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Social DATA The interesting data concerning religious conditions in the tenth century, preserved in our text, constitute a large mass of information which has been analysed in subsequent chapters; and we may here confine ourselves to Somadeva's references to social conditions proper.
The charges brought by the spy against the king's minister, a provincial governor, in Book III, point to certain potential abuses of the times, and similar incidents are mentioned also in Rājatarangini. The spy, for instance, says (3. 172):
वापसमयेषु विष्टिः सिद्धायः क्षीरिकणिशकालेषु । लवनावसरेषु पुनः स्वच्छन्दः सैनिकाबाधः ॥ The minister is alleged to be responsible for three things : demanding
abour at the time of sowing, collection of dues while the ears of corn are still unripe, and the unbridled movement of troops at the harvesting season. In Nitivākyāmrta 19, 15, 16 Somadeva says that the collection of dues (siddhadaya) while the ears of corn are unripe depopulates a country, and the movement of troops at the time of harvest leads to famine. As regards unpaid or forced labour (visti), it goes back to early times; and Kautilya says in Arthasāstra II. I that the king should protect agriculture from the abuses of fines, forced labour, and taxation.? Forced labour seems to have been the poor mans terror as we learn from the parable of the foolish son in Saddharmapundarika, wherein the vagrant youth comes after years to beg at the mansion of his wealthy father, and taking the latter for a king or a grandee, fears lest he should be detained to do forced labour, and slinks away in a hurry.3 The grant of a village sometimes carried with it the right to unpaid labour within the area granted. A record of the Rāstrakūta king Indra III. dated 915 A. D., grants, for instance, a village called Tenna to a Brāhmaṇa with the accompanying right to forced labour as occasion presents itself. Somadeva, it should be noted, takes exception to forced labour only at the time of sowing.
It is also alleged by the spy that Yasodhara's minister misappropriates agrahāras and devabhogas. Agrahāras are villages granted to Brāhmaṇas, and devabhogas are temple endowments (villages, cornfields
1 'क्षीरिषु कणिशेषु सिद्धादायो जनपदमुद्रासयति', 'लवनकाले सेनाप्रचारो दुर्भिक्षमावहति ।' 2 'queffettate Tagat ! 3 TAHU for et ufora are to TTT'IV. 17. 4 H a lf ' . I. Vol. IX ( Two grants of Indrarāja III). 5 Yasastilaka 3. 236 quoted in Chap. II (q. v.)
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