The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c19.16

c19.16

A considerable number of inscriptions of the Pallava period discovered by the Archæological Survey of India refer to the system of local administration by the Councils of Five. But the most interesting and detailed in its information are two which are inscribed on the walls of a Vaishnavaite temple in the Madura district. They belong to the early part of the tenth century A.D., when a Chola king, Parântaka I, had possessed himself of Madura, the Pândya capital. The inscriptions relate to the king's intervention in the affairs of a municipality in his dominions, called Uttaramêru-Catursent from the royal Court in drafting the final settlement refers to the members of the Assembly with the honorific *Tiruvadiyâr* (their Majesties), and it is by their command and not by royal mandate that the rules approved of are promulgated: "At the order of the great men sitting in the Assembly, I, the Arbitrator, Kâdadippôttan Râjum rules were made to suit local circumstances ; for other inscriptions show that cultivators and merchants were on the voters' register in other villages.