North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA SYSTEM OF ADMINISTRATION

taken to denote ‘an accountant’. Here we may proceed one step further and notice the fact that Viśvāsa is not included in but rather associated with such as Adhikaraṇa, showing that he was a state official who was connected with more than one Ashṭakula. The case is not unlike the Kulkarṇī of Mahārāshṭra who keeps an account sometimes of more than one village. Even the Marāṭhī word kuḷ or kūḷ signifies ‘a ryot paying revenue to Government.’

        It will be seen that the Head of the Ashṭakul-ādhikaraṇa was Mahattara, and with them is associated Viśvāsa, who was most likely the Accountant of a village or a group of villages. This is not all, because with them further are associated grāmika-kuṭumbinaḥ. We have already seen that the Kuṭumbins were the peasant-proprietors just as the Kulikas were the Zamindars. There were various grades amongst Kuṭumbins. One grade is certainly represented by the Grāmika, who, as pointed out elsewhere, were village headmen, or rather the heads of village guilds. It is these village headmen who, along with the Viśvāsa, constituted the Ashṭakul-ādhikaraṇa presided over by the Mahattara, in the discharge of the village business. That there were various grades among the Kuṭumbins or husbandmen can scarcely be doubted. This is clear from the passage quoted above from a Dāmōdarpur copper plate inscription (No. 38 below), which contains the following words: brāhmaṇ-ādhyaksha-kshudra-prakṛiti-kuṭumbinaḥ. They denote ordinary husbandmen who form the inferior ryots and are presided over by the Brāhmaṇas. What this means is that those husbandmen who were not Mahattaras, Viśvāsas or Grāmikas were stamped as kshudra-prakṛiti, or inferior ryots. But they were Brāhmaṇ-ādhyaksha, that is, presided over by the Brāhmaṇas. With this may be compared Brāhmaṇ-ōttarān= Mahattar-ādi-kuṭumbinaḥ in line 3 of the Pahāḍpur copper plate inscription¹ and Brāhmaṇ-ōttarān=saṁvyavahāry-ādi-kuṭumbinaḥ in lines 1-2 of the Nandapur copper plate inscription.² Evidently, the Brāhmaṇas are here distinguished from the Kuṭumbins presided over by the village officials. The implication is that these Brāhmaṇas were not husbandmen, but, being Brāhmaṇas, were at the head of the village folk. In later times, however, some Brāhmaṇas in Bengal had taken to tillage and were therefore distinguished from those who were clinging to the old mode of life proper for a Brāhmaṇa. Thus in many inscriptions of the Sēna period we meet with the expression Kshētrakarāṁś=cha Brāhmaṇān,³ “and the Brāhmaṇa cultivators headed by the Brāhmaṇas,” the Brāhmaṇa cultivators being naturally supposed to be inferior in status to the Brāhmaṇas who did not turn agriculturists but adhered to the performance of the original duties of a Brāhmaṇa.

       There are two or three more characteristics of this old Pañchāyat system of Bengal that are worthy of note now. The passage from the Pahāḍpur plate bearing on this point has been cited above. Another, that from the Nandapur plate, referred to above, may be quoted here for comparison. It runs thus: Ambilagrām-āgrahārāt=sa-Viśvāsam=adhikaraṇam Jaṅgōyikā-grāmē Brāhmaṇ-ōttarān=saṁvyavahāry-ādi-kuṭumbinaḥ, etc. In the first place, the Adhikaraṇa here must denote the Ashṭakul-ādhikaraṇa as mention is made of Viśvāsa along with it. Secondly, this Ashṭakul-ādhikaraṇa must have been a peripatetic body. In the Dāmōdarpur plate it issues orders to husbandmen and their head in Chaṇḍagrāmaka, while it is itself stationed at Palāśavṛindaka. Similarly, in the Nandapur plate it passes these instructions from an agrahāra called Ambila-grāma to villagers in Jaṅgōyikā. Surely an agrahāra village could not have been the headquarters of this Adhikaraṇa. It must have been in camp at that place in the course of its tour. It seems that a number of villages must have been under its jurisdiction which it visited in the course of its tour. Thirdly, and what is most important, is that the Ashṭakul-
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. XX, pp. 61 ff.
² Ibid., Vol. XXIII, pp. 52 ff.
³ N. G. Majumdar’s Inscriptions of Bengal, Vol. III, p. 21, line 36; p. 63, line 30; pp. 73-74, lines 36-37; p. 87, line 33. Majumdar’s translation of the expression is wrong; so is that of J. C. Ghosh (Ep. Ind., Vol. XXIV, p. 129).