318 
Bajendralala Mitra— Two Copper-plate Inscriptions. [No. 4, 
According to the Tattvahaumudi , there were formerly four classes of tax- 
gatherers intermediate between the actual occupant on the one side and the 
king on the other ; these were the Gramadhyaksha, the Kautumbika, the 
Vishayadhyaksha, and the Sabhadhyaksha, and the revenue passed succes¬ 
sively through their separate hands before it reached the king.* Whether 
these persons were paid officers, or owners in some sense or other, I cannot 
ascertain, but in the Vivctda Chintdmani a rule is quoted which says, “ A 
gift of land made by the king by taking it from its proprietor through 
anger or avarice, or under a pretext, (i. e. not lawfully resumed) is illegal.”! 
.There are laws quoted in it of the rights of squatters and lease-holders, 
apart from those of permanently fixed cultivators, who held the position of 
the ryots of the present day.! This becomes the more apparent from the 
nature of the right of the king in land as defined by STikrishna Tarka- 
lankara in his commentary on the Dayabhaga of Jimutavahana. “ When the 
owner of one kingdom,” says he, “ buys a country or the like from the owner of 
another, the right acquired in his purchase is that of realising revenue, which 
the seller had, and not anything similar to the right acquired in land by 
inheritance, which is also connected with land, and which is not of the same 
nature with the former, and cannot be produced by its transfer, the dis¬ 
cordance being in their natures.”§ Accordingly, we find in one of the Sanclii 
inscriptions a vassal of Chandra Gupta purchasing from one of his own sub¬ 
jects a piece of land, at the legal rate, for 12,500 dinars for a Buddhist temple. || 
The rights conveyed by the patents also indicate this very clearly. 
The first right named in the records under notice is called bhaga or “ a share” 
of the produce. It is, I believe, the same with the bliagajota of the present 
day, in which an owner allows the cultivation of his land by a farmer on 
the understanding of receiving a share (bhaga) of the produce, the cost 
and labour of cultivation being borne by the latter. The share varies from 
four to ten-sixteenths, according to the nature of the soil and other circum¬ 
stances ; but it is ordinarily fixed at half the produce, which in the case of 
paddy is sometimes meant to include the straw, and sometimes to omit 
it. Owners of land are occasionally required to supply seed grain; but 
* fwjT- 
^ ^ wnniT ydt 1 
f Prasannak a mar Tagore’s Translation, p. 124. 
1 Ibid., pp. 130-31. 
<t^j srrsra, ^r^qfrr^fcr- 
rnq crfsTT^m rrreii- 
C\ C\ -s 
YmTcf I 
Bharatachandra Siromani’s edition of the Dayabhaga, p. 18. 
|| Ante Yol. YI, p. 455. 
