Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.s1.t2: B. Private Transfers of Property
Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.s1.t2
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B. Private Transfers of Property
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Documents recording endowments by private persons are perhaps the most common among South-Indian inscriptions. There is scarcely a temple in South-India on the walls of which numbers of such are not to be found; others are on stelae or rocks. They convey all kinds of property, sometimes land or produce in kind, more often they record donations of gold, etc., and vary accordingly in form from elaborate deeds in the style already described¹ down to brief notes of the gift². The endowments to the Conjeveram temples are mostly of saltpans; in the S. Arcot district (at Tiruṇāmalai) flocks of goats are mentioned, and these records of endowments show a very primitive condition of society down to comparatively recent times. Inscriptions of this nature to which there are not witnesses must be taken to be holographs.
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¹ See *Madras Journal*, xiii., part 2, pp. 36-47. do: part i., pp. 46-56.
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² Do: part i., p. 47.
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These documents have not the seal, but in other respects the form is much the same as that of the royal grants; it must be, however, clearly understood that their direct value for historical purposes is very small. Some king's name is mentioned in nearly all of them, and perhaps also, the year of his reign in which they are supposed to be written; but very often a purely mythological king is mentioned, and in some recent documents of this kind, after some purāṇa mythology, Kṛishṇarāya or some other well known king is eulogized, and then the Muhammadan Government or the "Honorable Company" is praised³. These details are, then, nearly always worthless and of no value for history. The year of the king's reign, when a real sovereign is mentioned, is (as might be expected) often several years wrong. In constructing genealogies of S. Indian royal families it will be most important to exclude all information derived from private documents, the value of which consists entirely in the details of tenures which are often very complete.
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³ F. W. Ellis ("On Mīrāsī Right" pp. 67-82) gives four specimens of private deeds: two in Canarese, one in Telugu and one in Tamil.
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To fully understand this part of S. Indian inscriptions it must be recollected that down to quite recent times the land in S. India was held in common by village communities¹); and, thus, the greatest number of existing private deeds are of grants to temples etc. by the sabaiyār (from Sanskrit: ‘sabhā’) that is, the heads of the community acting on its behalf²). The earliest documents of this kind which are now in existence indicate that the earliest form of communal property (in which the common land was cultivated by all the owners in common who divided the produce³) had already become uncommon; for, though townships still exist where this system is followed, and there are other traces of it, yet the inscriptions indicate that the system which still exists to a great extent in S. India⁴), viz., communal lands with shifting lots changed periodically⁵), was already widely practised. Under this system, the rights of ownership in a township are divided into a number of shares, and these again are subdivided often to a great extent. The township-land is divided into a number of kaṭṭalai which answer to fields. And these are subdivided into lots which answer to the shares (paṅgu) or fractions of shares owned by the several members of the community. But the township-land consisted only of the arable land; the ground on which the houses of the community were built (ūrnattam), that on which the serfs or artizans resided (paṟaiššērinattam etc.), the village burning ground (šuḍukkāḍu), water-courses and tanks, temples, waste land (iraiyilinilam=land without owner) were private property, or reserved for the public in general, and over which the members of the community had merely right of use. What could be transferred was, therefore, a certain extent of land within the township limits and corresponding to a share or shares or part of a share together with the undefined rights over the public property which attached to every member of the community, but which were not, and still seldom are, mentioned in deeds, or to the separate property⁶) of the individual member or family. There can be no doubt that all such transfers of either kind were illegal and void without the sanction of the community, and the Sanskrit lawyers clearly recognized this principle[^1); it is much to be regretted that Anglo-Indian jurisprudence has entirely ignored it, and thus destroyed a salutary restraint upon evil-disposed persons. The numerous attestations to transfers of property are intended to represent the co-proprietor's assent and ratification rather than evidence of execution of the document[^2).
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¹ It is now admitted that this is the oldest form of property in land—De Laveleye, “De la propriété et de ses formes primitives,” p. 2.
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² On the constitution of village communities in S. India, see F. W. Ellis in Mr. Brown’s collection of Papers “On Mirāsi Right,” pp. 5, ffg. The chief was called nāṭṭān in the Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam villages.
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³ De Laveleye, *u. s.* p. 5.
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⁴ There are still many such villages in the Tanjore district. According to the “Fifth Report” (p. 830) there were 1774 such in 1805-7; it is useless to look for later information.
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⁵ The usual practice now seems to be to effect a re-distribution of the lots every 15 or 17 years.
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⁶ Acquisition of separate property by ‘occupation’ of *res nullius* is mentioned in the lawbooks, Mādhava says: “Ananyapūrvasya jalatṛiṇakāshṭhādeḥ svīkāraḥ parigrahaḥ.” The technical term ‘parigraha’ appears to have a larger meaning in the earlier books.
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This peculiar system of communal villages has always subsisted in greater integrity in the Tamiḷ country than in the Northern part of the Deccan occupied by the Telugu and Canarese people[^3).
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Every village community had a number of public servants, priests, schoolmasters, artizans and menials, and all these had house-ground and allowances in return for their services. It is no longer possible to explain precisely many of the technical terms relating to this subject which are to be found in old documents; the English revenue administration being based originally on the Muhammadan system, as modified to suit the theories of the so-called political economists, has, naturally, completely obscured the primitive system[^4).
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Private documents of this description are generally in the vernaculars; the usual Sanskrit imprecations are sometimes added at the end, after the names of the witnesses who should be, at least, three.
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The earliest I have found are Tamiḷ documents of about the eleventh century.
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There is every reason to believe that mortgages were common, but old documents of this kind do not appear to be now in existence.
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[^1): See, *e. g.*, Mitāxarā, i., 1, 31. The author (to suit his theory of property) limits the meaning. That this principle prevailed in S. India is evident from statements in the "Fifth Report", pp. 826-7: "It is essential to the validity of every transfer that it be sanctioned and authenticated by every individual concerned in the property of his village." On the next page absolutely inalienable property is mentioned. "The Vellālar only could hold landed property; to secure this, the right of pre-emption was in the joint proprietors of the village, so that no stranger, even of their own caste, could obtain a settlement in it without the formal consent of the whole." Ellis, "Mīrāsi Right", p. 60. The conveyance of complete rights in all kinds of documents is by renunciation of what is commonly termed 'ashṭabhoga': nidhi (treasure-trove); nixepa (unclaimed deposits); pāshāṇa (mines); siddha (improvements actually made); sādhya (improvements which can be made); jala (irrigation water); axiṇi (actual privileges?); āgāmi (future privileges?). This seems to be a Tamiḷ form originally, and thence translated into Sanskrit, for it only occurs in the later documents. See (for the memorial verse) Colebrooke's "Digest", Madras ed. i., p. 22, where the editor (the late Mr. Marcar) gives it. [^2): Even at the present day an attestation is supposed by natives to convey assent. [^3): Ellis, *u. s.* pp. 62-3. [^4): The chief information on the interesting subject of S. Indian communal villages is to be entirely found in books now forgotten: "Fifth Report"; Strange's "Notes of Cases" (i., pp. 260 ffg.); "Minute of Revenue Board" (1810); "Transactions, Royal As. Society" (ii. pp. 74 ffg.); Briggs's "Land Tax"; Wilks's "South of India". For Java see also: Raffles's "Minute on Java" (1814) pp. 121-3; and De Laveleye, *u. s.* The only valuable contribution in recent times to this important subject is by Mr. H. J. Stokes, "Indian Antiquary, vol. iii., pp. 65 ffg. It is useless to search either the Reports of the Law-Courts or the Revenue-Administration Reports.
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Forgeries of private documents are excessively common, and are caused by the usual motives; the law-books (and especially Varadarāja's treatise) explicitly state the fact of their being common¹. Detection of these forgeries is easy. In the first place if an attempt be made to imitate an older character (which is very seldom done), it is so bad as to betray the forger at once. Again, as the dates of the rise of the chief religious sects in the South are well known, forms of names and usages which owe their origin to these sects infallibly point to the period in which a forgery has been committed. All documents of this kind which contain recitals of previous transactions are very doubtful, for this is the favourite way of getting up a case in S. India.
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¹ The early enquirers into Indian tenures do not appear to have been aware that this is the case. Some such documents seem to have been used to mislead Sir T. Munro. See his "Life" by Gleig (1861) p. 163. (Letter from him to Col. Read, *d.* 16th June 1801.) Of late years, the number has been greatly increased by the now common desire of the lower castes to prove that they are entitled to a higher position in the social scale than they actually occupy. Several such forgeries, I have seen, come from the extreme South. I have also seen one feeble attempt at forgery intended to falsify history. It is needless to remark that only alleged transcripts are produced in such cases; there is always some reason given for not discovering the original, though its existence is asserted and circumstantial details about it are always furnished, but forgery on copper plates or stone would involve too much trouble and expense, nowadays, to be thought of in S. India.
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Valueless as these private documents are for what is commonly termed history, they are of immense importance for what is really of more consequence, the history of property and the social condition of the people. By the aid of such documents, taken together with royal grants, a history of property in S. India is quite practicable from the 11th century down to the present time. Indeed, in the Tanjore district at least, it would be quite possible to trace in a satisfactory way the economical history of several communities. A little research in this way would remove many common errors. That the land-tax (for such it, originally, was in S. India—not rent) should amount to half the produce, has long been quoted as an instance of rapacity of the Muḥammadan and English Governments, from the illustrious B. Niebuhr's early letters down to modern public discussions by people ignorant of Indian history; but it has nothing to do with either. The inscriptions at Tanjore show that the indigenous Coḷa kings in the 11th century took about half the produce, and F. W. Ellis long ago asserted (on other grounds) that the tax was always more than the sixth or fourth permitted by Sanskrit lawyers². A little consideration of royal grants and old private documents would also conclusively show (as the Sanskrit lawyers asserted) that the government never had any right to the land.
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² *u. s.* p. 63 *note* 28.
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It is necessary to remark that in all documents in S. India the provisions of Hindu law are followed; there is nothing in them that can be traced to any other system. In this respect the Hindu law has been, and still is, more generally adopted in S. India, than even in respect of inheritance or adoption¹. Great as has been the influence of Muḥammadan ideas in S. India, it has only extended to the administration.
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¹ This is remarkable, for, except the Malayāḷam "Vyavahārasamudra", there is no vernacular treatise on law that is even a century old.
Cites (1)
- Vyavahāranirṇaya — Śrīpati 1700, Sanskrit