Taxes, trade and crafts

Parabrahma Sastry divides Kakatiya taxes into five groups: land taxes, taxes on industry and property, taxes on professions, commercial taxes and other dues. Telangana – Land and People follows the same scheme. Many tax names are still hard to interpret, as Sastry warns. The inscriptions seldom state the amount of a tax, so most rates must be inferred from gifts and remissions to temples. Sastry thinks that the Kakatiyas added new taxes to the system they inherited from the Chalukyas.

In principle the king owned all land, while the cultivator held a secondary right that he could sell, give away or mortgage. This is Sastry's view, and Telangana – Land and People gives the same rules. All land held by cultivators, temples, brahmanas and chiefs paid tax, and temple and brahmana lands usually paid at a reduced rate. Unassigned royal land, called racha-bhumi, paid nothing. Waste land, forests and hills also paid nothing. Settlers who cleared new land could farm it free of tax for three years or more.

Three terms appear most often. Pannu was the basic tax for holding land, and Sastry thinks that it was paid in coin. Pamgamu, called koluchu in many records, was the king's share of the harvest in grain. Putti-madalu was a cash levy. Sastry reads this levy as one mada for each putti of produce. A mada was a gold coin, and a putti was a large grain measure. Officers visited each field at harvest to assess the king's share, and the karanam collected the money and kept the record.

The size of the king's share is uncertain. The law books set it at one sixth, but Sastry notes that kings took a quarter, a third or even a half in some cases. Sastry reads the levy of one tumu of grain for each putti of produce, which he identifies as koluchu, as one twentieth of the produce. Telangana – Land and People repeats both the one-sixth rule and the levy of one twentieth. A dictionary gives another rate. Sastry reports that D. C. Sircar cited C. P. Brown's Telugu dictionary, which defines pamga as a quarter of the produce taken from temple and brahmana lands.

Land belonging to the king, called racha-polamu, was leased to cultivators almost permanently, and the rent depended on the land. Sastry gives it as a half, a third, a quarter or a sixth of the produce, and on the same page he infers that government lands were usually leased for half the gross yield. Telangana – Land and People gives one sixth as the usual rent and suggests that the rent may have been higher in times of war. Two inscriptions record actual cases. The Mogalutla grant of 1219 calls such tenants ardha-siris, cultivators who paid half the gross produce. At Chittapur under Prataparudra, a merchant dug a tank, and the king kept two thirds of the irrigated produce.

Cultivators paid several dues besides the share of the crop. Kanika was a tribute paid to the king or to a chief as a mark of submission. Darisanamu was a payment due for an audience with the ruler. Pullari, from pullu, grass, and ari, tax, was a grazing tax on herders who used the king's pastures. A chief collected such dues locally and paid a fixed sum to the king, called pullari-kanika or darisana-kanika.

Some dues paid for particular benefits. Niruvidi was a water charge on wet land watered from a tank, well or canal, and the owner of the water source collected it. Vennu-pannu was an extra levy assessed on a good crop just before harvest. Bantela-ayamu was a levy for the upkeep of soldiers. Sastry thinks that cultivators paid it in every village held as a nayamkara, a grant of land for military service. Telangana – Land and People repeats these explanations.

Property also paid tax. Herders paid ari, a property tax, on cattle and sheep. A Tripurantakam record gives a cowherd 50 cows and fixes the ari of the cowherd at 2 gadyanas and 5 rukas. Sastry takes this to be a yearly sum and works it out as half a ruka for each cow. House tax was called illari. An inscription of the Kanduri Choda chief Bhima at Perur records house contributions by the local merchant guild in three classes. The rates were 2 rukas, 1½ rukas and ¾ ruka for each house.

Craftsmen and other workers paid taxes on their trades. The Mogalutla grant of 1219 lists dues from carpenters, blacksmiths, potters, goldsmiths, washermen and barbers. An inscription at Kandukuru of 1316 gives a temple one chinna for each loom, oil mill, potter's wheel and warrior, and for each Komati house. Inscriptions at Maktal record yearly dues paid by soldiers.

Other dues fell on particular occasions and services. The Velpuru inscription includes a tax on marriages, and a Gudivada record makes the bridegroom's party at a Komati wedding pay one ruka. A record at Konidena mentions revu-sumka, a levy at a river ferry. The Uttaresvara grant of 1290 mentions madhyakam. Sastry reads madhyakam as a levy for extraordinary needs or as a tax of a joint nature. A Bhimavaram record states that some dues were leased for 27½ madas a year. Sastry infers that such dues were usually leased to tax farmers.

Sumka was the general word for a toll or duty on trade. The right to collect tolls in a market, or adda, was leased each year to a contractor called the sumkari. Sastry names four officers in a market. The karanam recorded payments, the tirpari assessed the value of goods, and the kolagadu weighed and measured them. The karanam and the tirpari were state officers, while the sumkari and the kolagadu were contractors.

According to Sastry, the usual toll was one visa for each mada of goods sold. Sastry counts this rate as five eighths of one per cent. In his coins monograph, Sastry adds that some inscriptions mean one sixteenth of a mada for each mada. Sastry values that rate at ten visas a mada. A Nadendla inscription of 1258 sets two visas a mada on sales of cart horses and other animals. Sastry counts this Nadendla rate as 1¼ per cent. Merchants at Durgi in 1269 paid one visa a gadyana on both sales and purchases. At Tripurantakam in 1296, salt merchants and market officers fixed one chinna on each mada of salt.

The Velpuru inscription, dated Saka 1169, lists the dues of one licensed market. In the record, Dochana Peggada gave the dues to the temple for the merit of Ganapati Deva. Purchases of horses, oxen, carts and ropes paid a toll, and sheep paid on both sale and purchase. Oil mills paid a fee when they were set up and a yearly charge afterwards. Purchases of koluchu, the grain collected as tax, also paid a toll. Telangana – Land and People gives the year of the record as 1169 and names Rudra Deva as king.

Ganapati Deva set up a pillar edict at Motupalli, a port in the old Bapatla taluk of Guntur district. The edict is dated Saka 1166, the year Krodhin, which corresponds to 1244-45. E. Hultzsch, who edited it, calls it an abhaya-sasana, an edict assuring safety, for sea traders. The edict says that earlier kings had seized the whole cargo of ships wrecked on the coast. Ganapati Deva promised that only the fixed duty would be taken.

The edict fixes the general duty at one part in thirty on all exports and imports. Hultzsch translated gadyana as pagoda and ruka as fanam. In Hultzsch's translation, silks paid 5½ fanams a bale, and every lakh of areca nuts paid one pagoda and 3¼ fanams. Camphor, pearls, pepper, ivory, metals, coral and perfumes paid fixed amounts in fanams for each pagoda of value.

Sastry prints two versions of the list, and both differ from Hultzsch's translation in places. For sandal, Hultzsch gives one pagoda and ¼ fanam for each tola. Sastry gives ¼ fanam for each tola or for each pagoda of value. Sastry's second list gives areca nuts 3¼ rukas for each lakh, without the pagoda.

Most tax records are records of remission, in which a ruler or officer gave up dues in favour of a temple or brahmanas. Land was often given as sarvamanya, free of all dues, but some primary dues could still be kept back. Devari Nayaka's Koccherlakota grant of 1310 frees temple land from pannu but keeps the grain share.

The Salakalavidu inscription of 1317 names the many dues owed by a single village. At the request of Prataparudra, Devari Nayaka gave the village to the god Ranganatha of Srirangam with all its income. The grant lists pamga-tappu, kari-kolchu, pannu, kanika, pullari, sumkamu and several kinds of kanika. Sastry counts twelve kinds of tax in the record.

In 1245, Pochana Peggada Ganapaya, an agent of Ganapati Deva, remitted the duties on three hundred pack bullocks that brought goods into Tripurantakam. The owners hired out the bullocks and were called perikavaru. Sastry thinks that the remission was given because the bullocks carried the temple's goods free of charge.

At Penumuli in 1314, Erraya-lenka remitted kanika, putti-pahindi, grazing fees and other dues on temple and mahajana lands. These lands lay in the twenty-two villages of the nayamkara of Erraya-lenka. According to Sastry, remissions could follow complaints. Sastry reads the Penumuli record as saying that a village elder of Pinapadu had protested in harsh words against unjust levies. The summary of this record in South Indian Inscriptions X lists the remitted dues but does not mention a protest. In 1317, Mayideva-lenka remitted several dues, including bantela-ayamu, in the villages of the Konduru sthala.

Rulers also exchanged one due for another. At Akunuru in 1172, Rudra Deva gave the local temple the dues of several professions. The king also exempted the village from his grain share and from tolls. Sastry explains the high professional dues in this record by the remission of the other taxes. Telangana – Land and People gives the same explanation.

Trade took place at markets called pemta, adda or santa, and larger villages held a weekly fair. The Koccherlakota inscription of 1310 describes a fair with thatched sheds that traders rented for one gadyana, perhaps for one week. Traders also paid rent for the market yard and a registration fee called mudra-sumka. According to Sastry, the market of the capital lay at Mathiya, now Mattewada in Warangal. An inscription at Itikala made street sellers who carried goods in baskets pay a yearly due of oil for each basket. The site's database dates the Itikala record to 1148. Sastry reads its date as Saka 1060, calls that date unverifiable and thinks that the record is much later.

Merchant guilds organised much of the trade. Sastry divides merchants into svadesi, those of the kingdom, and paradesi, those who travelled from place to place. Sastry adds that local merchants were often called a nakaramu and the wider guild the ubhaya-nanadesi pekkandru, but not as a strict rule. The old Ayyavali Five Hundred guild survived in the Telugu country mainly as a name in eulogies. A Tripurantakam guild record of 1292 lists reddis, nayudus, herders and setti merchants among the members of one nanadesi guild.

According to Sastry, guilds bought licences to trade in particular regions and goods. A guild of Enamadala sthala held a licence in 1269 for Pakanadu, Venginadu and the capital sthala of Anumakonda. Sastry infers from the gifts of this guild that the licence covered areca, gingelly, grain, cotton, betel and oil. Sastry reads the same Tripurantakam guild record as a licence granted by the head of the temple estate. Kings also kept royal settis, merchants who may have sold the grain collected as tax.

An inscription of 1228 near the Warangal fort lists the merchants of the capital market and the dues on their goods. The editors note separate rates for svadesi and paradesi merchants. The record uses different units for different goods. The record measures grain, oil and ghee by the cartload, salt by the pack load, and sandal and metals by the tula weight. The Nitisara tells the king not to seize goods, raise tolls or allow false weights.

Sastry lists the weights used for gold and precious stones. Four guriginja seeds made a sinna, thirty sinnas made a tula, three tulas made a pala and forty palas made a visa. The same word visa also named a small coin, worth one sixteenth of a ruka according to Sastry. Coins, grain measures and land measures are described on the page on Kakatiya coins, weights and measures.

Sastry finds no large industries in this period. Spinning, weaving, oil pressing, pottery and metalwork were done in homes and small workshops. Weavers, oil pressers, smiths, potters, goldsmiths and basket makers formed craft guilds. According to Sastry, these producers sold their own goods at nearby fairs. Telangana – Land and People also finds no large industries.

Weaving was a major craft. In 1228, the weavers of the Mattewada sthala at Orugallu installed the god Salesvara and endowed him with contributions from each member. Cloth merchants, both svadesi and paradesi, traded in the capital market. A toll list of 1122 from Panugallu already includes sarees among taxed goods.

Marco Polo praised the cloth of this kingdom. In Henry Yule's translation, Polo says that the best and most delicate buckrams were made there, and that they looked like tissue of spider's web. Yule explains that buckram here means fine cotton cloth. Hultzsch called the same cloth muslin.

Polo also says that diamonds were found in this kingdom and in no other country. Polo tells how men threw meat into deep valleys and then took from eagles the diamonds stuck to the meat. Yule writes that this story is an old legend, which was already told in the fourth century and in the tale of Sindbad. Yule adds that some of the mines later famous under the name of Golconda lay within this kingdom. According to Yule, these mines lay in the Krishna valley and near Kadapa and Kurnool.

Metalworkers appear in several records. Smiths and goldsmiths paid dues at Mogalutla, and metal merchants sold tin, copper and lead in the capital market. A guild of dealers in the five metals made gifts at Mathiyavada. Oil pressing was taxed at many stages. Sastry notes that an oil presser paid property tax, a tax on the mill and probably a toll on sales. Sastry adds that the oil presser also paid a tribute and a due to the guild of oil pressers.

E. Hultzsch concluded that Motupalli was the chief port of the Kakatiya kingdom in the thirteenth century. Hultzsch based this view on Polo's name for the kingdom, Mutfili, and on the site of Ganapati Deva's edict. The edict of 1244-45 is addressed to traders from all continents, islands, foreign countries and cities, and its list of goods includes Chinese camphor. Sastry names other ports of the period, such as Krishnapatnam, Chinaganjam, Divi and Bandar. According to Sastry, roads linked the salt pans of Pedaganjam and the port of Motupalli with Bellary through Tripurantakam and Kurnool.

K. A. Nilakanta Sastri thought that foreign merchants alone controlled the trade of this port. Parabrahma Sastry rejects this view and argues that traders normally moved in both directions. Parabrahma Sastry also holds that Ganapati Deva revived the sea trade after a decline under the Chalukya-Chola kings.

The Venetian traveller Marco Polo describes this kingdom under the name Mutfili. In Yule's translation, a king had died some forty years earlier, and his queen had ruled ever since with justice. Polo says that her people loved her more than any earlier ruler. Polo adds that the people paid tribute to nobody and that the kingdom had the largest sheep in the world.

Henry Yule identified Mutfili with the port of Motupalli and the queen with Rudrama Devi, whom he called the widow of the last king. E. Hultzsch corrected Yule in 1914, because Rudrama was Ganapati Deva's daughter and not his queen. Hultzsch counted Polo's forty years from Rudrama's accession to 1298-99, when Polo dictated his book at Genoa. Hultzsch found that the interval fitted fairly well.

Polo's text does not say that he landed at Motupalli. Yule wrote only that Polo named the kingdom after a place visited by himself or his informants. Hultzsch wrote that Polo is supposed to have visited South India about 1290. Sastry states that Polo visited Motupalli late in Rudrama Devi's reign. Telangana – Land and People and Yashoda Devi give the year of the visit as 1293, but Polo himself gives no date. Telangana – Land and People also states that Polo reports trade between the kingdom and the Great Khan. Polo writes only that the finest diamonds, large gems and pearls were carried to the Great Khan and to other kings of those regions.