Lekhapaddhati
The Caulukya dynasty ruled over Gujarat for nearly four centuries, from the ninth to the beginning of the fourteenth
century. We have considerable source material for this dynasty including coins, copper-plates, stone inscriptions and
both secular as well as religious (Jain) literature. Besides these, there is one remarkable source as well, the
Lekhapaddhati (‘models of written documents’), a collection of documents, unique among the mass of ancient
Indian texts. The Lekhapaddhati is also known as Lekhapañcāsikā, ‘models of fifty letters’. It contains numerous
specimens of letters and documents of various kinds, gives rules for the drafting of land grants, treaties between
kings, rules of administration and model drafts of private letters. It was presumably written as a guide for official
draftsmen or scribes and professional letter-writers. Since the Lekhapaddhati documents touch upon many aspects
of life (from rights and obligations of land grantees to sale of women slaves).
Administration
The terms indicating particular types of territorial or administrative units in LP are often suffixed to place-names, a
fashion also common in Caulukya inscriptions. The territorial divisions or administrative units of pre- Sultanate
Gujarat as they appear in the LP were maṉḍala, deśa, pathaka, vishya, nagara (town) and grāma (village). It would
thus seem that maṉḍala, pathaka and vishya were interchangeable terms, representing districts or sub-divisions.
LP documents offer good evidence for the earlier forms of names of various places and ports: Yoganipura for Delhi,
Bhrigukaccha for Broach, etc. Many place names recorded in these documents have survived with no great change,
for example, Godha, Malava, Surashtra, Lata, Disa. Anhillapattana and Maharashtra.
The Lekhapaddhati documents also give information about officers who were associated with the administration of
the territorial units.
The designation mahāmātya indicates an officer of the highest status. LP documents give us the names of a few
mahāmatyas for example, Shila, Maladeva, Nagada. The mahāmātyas were usually associated with the department
known as śrī karaṇa. Frequent references to śrī karaṇa or śrī karaṇādi in the documents imply that this was an
important department of state and hence the minister in charge of this department, the mahāmātya seems to have
enjoyed considerable authority. The two other departments such as, deva karaṇa and dharamādhi karaṇa were also
under the charge of mahāmātya. Sometimes the mahāmātya gave instructions to the officers of the province and
districts they were also associated with the Pañcakula. The term maṉḍaleśvara or mahāmaṉḍaleśvara indicates the
officer of high rank or one in charge of a maṉḍala or province. It is clear from the LP that maṉḍalas were partly
controlled by the rāṇakas who styled themselves mahāmaṉḍaleśvara and maṉḍalādhipati. They were immediate
vassals, or feudatories of the king. They were powerful enough to appoint officers in their maṉḍala or pathaka. They
even made treaties like autonomous rulers. The daṉḍanāyaka performed both civil and military duties.
The Deśa ṭhakura was a royal officer, who held the charge of a particular department of the maṉḍala, or province. A
distinction is made between the deśatalāra and gramatalāra. It is therefore evident that the prefix deśa was used to
denote a higher rank, the former officer dealing with deśa (district), the latter only with a village (grāma).
In many LP documents the boundaries of villages are defined. The term caturāghāta indicates the four boundaries of
the village. The actual process of how a village was administered is, however, not definitely known. The designation
of the officers can provide only a rough idea of it. We find mentions of the designation of a few officers, such as,
watchman of the village, tax collector, road toll collector or gate keeper, tax-collector, official (unspecified). The last-
named official apparently performed various duties. The adhikārī settles a village boundary dispute. He performs the
services of a revenue official and gives instructions to other functionaries. Obviously adhikārī was a very general
designation.
In towns and villages the administration seems almost universally to have been carried out by royal officers with the
assistance of the Pañcakula (‘Five Elders’). The Pañca mukha nagara are also mentioned in several documents of LP.
It lays down the requirement of informing the Pañca mukha nagara before the sale of a house or a female slave
takes place.
In the LP Document we find a man being ostracized by his family as he was a habitual offender. His parents brought
the matter before the Pañca-mukha nagara and Pañca-mukha Brāhman, who thereupon deprived the accused of his
right of inheritance, maintenance and partition. However, if the evil-doer changed his conduct in future and was
accepted by the family, a certificate to this effect was to be given by the judicial officials (dharmādhikārī).
Agriculture and Fiscal System
LP documents shed interesting light on fiscal and agrarian matters. According to one document the rate of revenue
was fixed on the basis of the nature or type of land. Previously uncultivated high land, when put under cultivation by
peasants coming from outside, had to pay ten drammas per viṁośopika (unit of area of land). The same document is
makes no difference between local peasants and those from outside, but states that for tilling previously
uncultivated high land one had to pay sixteen drammas per viṁśopika. For soft land also the tax was the same,
namely, 24 drammas.
One Document is of the utmost importance in revealing how heavy the land- tax was. As we have already seen, it
required the peasants to carry two-thirds of the produce into the granary of the rāṇaka. Any cultivator who
abandoned land risked his land, grain, cattle and property being seized by the ruler, (apparently) in lieu of the tax-
loss his abandonment of cultivation would bring about.
For the peasant the term kuṭumbika is generally used. According to B.N.S. Yadava kuṭumbin, as a generic term for
peasant, prevailed all over Northern India during the early Medieval period. These documents mention two types of
peasants, such as, those who came from outside and brought land under cultivation, being now obliged to pay
revenue on them, and the local peasants who already paid taxes.
Given its nature LP naturally supplies little information on the methods employed in cultivation and irrigation. It
mentions crops such as wheat, millet, lintels, rice; agricultural tools, such as: spade, axe, hoe, an iron bar sharpened
at one end, plough and a kind of cart. Other documents record names of fruits, seeds, and other products such as
betel-nut, coconut, pepper, Indian madder; yellow myrobalan, sugar, and molasses, and seeds of maithī, a kind of
kidney beans (mūga).
A reference to the Vārigṛiha karaṇa (official in charge of irrigation) in models of documents of LP suggests that there
was a department of irrigation. We have references to kūpa (well), taḍāga (tank) and nadi (river), which provided
water for irrigation.
In addition to these taxes and cesses, the following fines are also mentioned:
1. For stealing hides, 25 drammas
2. For violence, breaking heads (mastaka phoḍana), 6 drammas.
3. Ploughing land belonging to someone else (appropriating the share of crop due to another), 5 drammas.
4. For allowing one's cattle to graze on (others') corn fields: 1 dramma.
5. For disobeying orders: 5 drammas.
Documents provide about yield information about other methods for collecting the land revenue. According to
deeds, agreements were made between private persons and the government for the payment of yearly revenue.
According to A.K. Majumdar, the type of agreement conformed to what under the British was termed ‘ryotwari
settlement’, although this seems to be a little far-fetched since the Ryotwari Settlements envisaged fixed rates for
long periods in the Bombay Presidency and permanently in the Madras Presidency. The revenue was to be paid in
three instalments along with a few perquisites. Under another arrangement given in LP, the annual revenue was
fixed and villagers were freed from paying any further impost and perquisiters.
Trade and Commerce
Lekhapaddhati refers to many departments of state related to trade and commerce such as trade and commerce
department, department of waterways and roads, department of excise, customs and octroi and the department of
the mint. There are also references to both inland and sea trade in the documents.
For carrying goods from one place to other merchants had to pay taxes such as road-tax, toll and excise, and also had
to obtain permits, certificates, and transit clearances which mainly indicated that they had paid the taxes due. Two
documents called de śottara show that officers such as the pratisārika and the volāpika collected taxes from the
merchants. The pratisārika, an officer, after charging a fee, allowed carts carrying household furniture, corn, 160
unspecified [units] of packed goods, eight bullocks and ten buffaloes, to encamp at a place. After being detained, the
merchant, who was the owner, obtained a permit called de śottara to travel further.
Another document called ṭippanakaṁ yathā (certificate) recites that the Pañcakula along with the balādhikāri had
issued a certificate to the merchant Cahada. According to this certificate, the merchant had to pay 10,000 drammas
as road tax. These drammas were part of what he had obtained after selling a hundred mūḍakas, a kind of mūng
(lentils), being carried to Śrī Pattana from Vardhamana. The amount seems unrealistically high.
The third document which mentions that the Pañcakula, in charge of custom house gave transit clearance to a
merchant with his goods, comprising four carts, ten earthen pots, 15 packages of Indian madder, 10 bundles of
sweetmeats, one bundle of sandal wood, four earthen pots, fifty manas of seeds of pravāla grass, and two packages
of maithi. However, for the road cess, along with a tax on sacks, he had now to pay 1000 drammas.
Two documents are concerned with sea trade. One mentions slaves being shipped overseas and sold or exchanged
for other commodities. This is a document of great significance, since it shows that the export of slaves took place
from the Caulukya kingdom as well, and not only from the Sultanates. Another Document records that horses and
other articles were being imported from Hormuz.
Gujarat then, as for much of pre-modern times, occupied a premier position in oversea commerce, and these
documents reflect the concern of the Caulukya state for both protecting commerce and extracting its own share out
of its profits.
Credit and Banking System
The Lekhapaddhati cites a number of principles or norms recorded in the Dharmaśāstra literature and later legal
texts, in matters relating to credit and banking. For example, the Dharmaśāstra prescribes that the creditor should
take an adequate pledge or deposit, and a reliable surety before advancing a loan and should have the transactions
written down in the presence of witnesses. The pledge was to be mainly of two types, usufructuary and non-
usufructuary. Both types of pledges occur in LP documents.
Two documents entitled vṛiddhiphala bhoga and gṛihaḍḍāṇka patra vidhi refer to the mortgage of a residential
building in return for loan. In both the documents the mortgager is not obliged to pay any interest, but has to let the
mortgagee use the house without paying any rent during the period of mortgage, set at one year in the first
document and five years in the second.
Both the documents follow the rules laid down in Smriti literature. Usufructuary mortgages, according to these
texts, carried no interest and the debtor got back the property on repaying the principal. Both our documents give
details of the mortgaged property such as boundaries of a field or a house. The documents also record that if any
damage occurred for which any action on the part of the mortgagee was not responsible, then, the mortgager would
have to repair the property at his own expenses. The second document also contains a specific provision forbidding
the mortgagee from creating a sub-mortgage by transferring the original deed of mortgage to a new mortgage.
The document called gṛihadūlipatraṁ is an example of a non- usufructuary deed. This records that the mortgagee
would not enjoy the possession of the property and the mortgager would have to pay him interest at the rate of 2%
per month. Further it records that if the debtor failed to repay the principal along with interest, the house would be
permanently lost to the mortgager.
Coinage
Much about the currency system in Gujarat under the Caulukyas can be learnt from LP documents. These documents
mention different types of coins, namely, dramma and its variants; rūpya or rūpaka, and ṭaṉkā. Contemporary Jain
Prabandhas, inscriptions and other literary accounts also furnish information on the coins current during 13th and
14th centuries in Gujarat; and these sources provide good corroboration of LP's statements.
The frequent mention of dramma in LP documents shows that it was the basic coin, preferred over all other coins. It
has been suggested that drammas were coins of different metals such as gold, silver and copper, but the term
dramma was mostly used for silver coins. Dalal notes that the dramma mentioned in the LP documents was a copper
coin, which he rather unconvincingly holds as equal to the Anglo-Indian copper pice in value.
The LP documents record various type of drammas, such as, vīsalapriya or viśvamalla dramas, pāraupatha or
pāraupathaka dramas. V.S. Agrawala is of the opinion that pāraupātha dramma was the same as bhillamala dramma
or śrīmāliya dramma.143 Lallanji Gopal holds the same view. In LP documents these coins are also called visalapriya
dramma. S. Deyell suggests that the pāraupatha dramma was superseded by visalapriya dramma. These may be
considered separately.
Social Life
The Lekhapaddhati documents naturally accord a prominent position to the caste system. The term caturavarṇa
(four castes) occurs again and again. More interesting, perhaps, are references to subdivisions (designated jātis) of
Brahman and Vaishya castes such as Nagara, Modha, Pragavata, Oswala, Śrīmālla, Divedi, Vyasa, Bhaṭṭa and
Saṉghavī. One Document refers to the presence in a small village of the ‘five artisans’, of which the professions of
three are given: sutradhāra (mason), lohkāra (ironsmith) and kuṁbhakāra (potter). Document No.45 mentions the
castes of weaver and goldsmith.
There are indications of untouchability as well. Document prescribed that the mātaṉga (also known as cāṉḍāla)
should not keep cows in their houses and Bhaivaḍa (members of a shepherd community) and Mehakula (who
performed menial tasks) should live only in the forest. The Śudras were also considered outside the pale of what
might be called civil society: Another Document thus pairs Śudras and thieves together.
Social Customs
The document called Nayāyavāda, is a judgement given in a case where a Brahman woman had been unjustly
defamed. Someone had spread a rumour that a certain Brahman's wife had a paramour. This news infuriated the
woman, and she approached the court and swore on her family honour before all the judges, that she had always
been chaste. The judges thereupon declared that as there was no witness of the offence attributed, there could be
no punishment. It appears that if her guilt could be proved she would have been punished, according to the Smriti
laws. On the other hand unless adequate witnesses were produced, the maligner must be punished for the offence
of Vākaparushya.
One Document relates to ostracism. It records that a person named Punak was a habitual offender, though no
specific offence committed by him is mentioned. Therefore his parents and all his relatives, after taking permission
from the court, declared that no one would maintain any relations with him, and he was expelled from society. By
this declaration the offender was given a ‘black-letter’. In future if the offender did not commit any offence and
wanted to return to his family, then the court and judges would first give him a warning and then issue him a
certificate of good conduct and a ‘bright letter’.187
Four documents of LP prescribe that the instructions given by mother and father, teacher and the king should be
obeyed by all sons, pupils, and subjects respectively.
LP contains two types of inheritance documents. One is called vibhaṉaga patra vidhi , This document records that the
movable and immovable property of the deceased father, should be divided among all the heirs (sons, and the
mother), after the taxes and debts and other claims have been met. It also prescribes that an equal share should be
deducted from all heirs after the death of the father to meet funeral expenses. Besides this, if a son or daughter
remained unmarried, then an equal share should be deducted from the shares of the other family members to
defray his or her marriage expenses, the amount to be kept with the mother, that is, the widow.
Another document envisages the division of a person's property among the heirs well in advance of the event. It
records that the son had borrowed 500 drammas from his father and issued a receipt, stating that if he failed to
return the amount borrowed, then upon the division of his father's property, he would receive 500 drammas less
than his due share. It absolves the son from paying any interest. To safeguard the interest of the other heirs the
signatures of the security and witnesses were taken.
Funeral Ceremony
In one of the documents called vibhaṉaga patra vidhi details are given regarding funeral ceremonies performed by a
dutiful son for the benefit of his dead mother's soul. The following funeral rites are mentioned:
1. Ourdhadehikakṛiyā which was undoubtedly the chief ceremony, where oblations of rice and water were
offered to the deceased.
2. Ekādasa—dvādasaha prabhṛitika: These probably included the rites which the son was expected to
perform each day up to the twelfth after his mother's death.
3. Saṁvatsaraṁ yāvata dīpadāna māsika shaṇamāsika—saṁvatsaraṁ: This probably means that a light was
placed in memory of the dead person the end of every month, but there was a special ceremony at the end
of six months and a year when special funeral rites were performed. 4. Navaha-paksha māsa tripakshādi
kṛiyā. It probably means that a certain funeral ceremony was to be performed at the end of every ninth day,
fortnight, a month and three fortnights. The document lays down that these ceremonies were to be
performed according to the usage current in one's family.
Women: Slavery and Marriage
Four documents of LP record the sale of female slaves. The Brihaspati Smriti prescribes that a female slave ‘could
never be acquired and possessed without a written deed (title)’. This perhaps explains why the deeds of acquisition
of slaves only concern women, not men, for whom a written deed was apparently not required.
From these documents it transpires that female slaves could be acquired by capture, purchase, gift, or mortgage,
and, as we learn from vibhaṉga patra vidhi, by inheritance as well. One could also volunteer to become a slave. All
these methods are in accordance with the Smritis. The Manu knew of seven types of slaves; and in Narada and
Katyayana we get further elaboration. Following Narada, Vijnanesvara enumerates fifteen categories of slaves. In the
LP documents we get detailed accounts regarding the duties of female slaves, which consisted of all type of
household work as well as field work whether ‘pure’ or ‘impure’.
The Lekhapaddhati contains a document called ḍhaukana patra (presentation of letter for divorce and remarriage),
which is of considerable importance as it shows that women could also remarry. It describes how, unhappy with his
wife, Mehar Lunaika caused his father-in-law to take her away, freeing her from the marital knot. This was done in
an assembly of relatives who received his letter from the court. The girl's father then offered her in marriage to
another person. Thenceforth the former husband was forbidden ever to see the face of his divorced wife.
Both parties in this particular case were of the Mehar caste. According R.E. Enthoven's description of this caste, the
practice of widow marriage was current in it. Our document shows that in earlier times divorce and subsequent re-
marriage of the divorced wife were also allowed by the custom of the Mehars.
