The king may in great emergencies demand one-third or one-fourth in taxes from the inhabitants of fertile country, but not of those who inhabit tracts of middle or low quality or forest tribes, nor people employed in the construction of infrastructure or the colonisation of wastelands, nor of learned Brāhmaṇas – these properties he may only purchase at a favourable compensation.
(…) Such demands will never be done repeatedly. In lieu of such demands, the collector general shall seek subscriptions from citizens and country people alike under false pretences of carrying some kind of business. Persons taken in concert shall publicly pay handsome donations and with this example, the king may demand of others among his subjects. Spies posing as citizens shall revile those who pay less. Wealthy persons may be requested to give as much of their gold as they can. Those who, of their own accord or with the intention of doing good, offer their wealth to the king shall be honoured with a rank in the court, an umbrella, or a turban or some ornaments in return for their gold.
(…) Or spies may call upon spectators to see a serpent with innumerable heads in a well connected with a subterranean passage and collect fees from them for the sight. Or they may place in a borehole made in the body of an image of a serpent, or in a hole in the corner of a temple, or in the hollow of an ant-hill, a cobra, which is, by diet, rendered unconscious, and call upon credulous spectators to see it (on payment of a certain amount of fee). As to persons who are not by nature credulous, spies may sprinkle over or give a drink of, such sacred water as is mixed with anasthetic ingredients and attribute their insensibility to the curse of gods. Or by causing an outcast person to be bitten by a cobra, spies may collect revenue under the pretext of undertaking remedial measures against ominous phenomena.
—Kautilya, in the Arthaśāstra, 5.2
