South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c8.s1.13

c8.s1.13

Communal Responsibility.—We may note here two other examples of communal responsibility in matters of administration, and take leave of Kulottunga III. The first has reference to an unusual impost by a governor who is described as Piḷḷaiyār (prince) Yādavarāyar. In the thirty-fourth year of the king¹ this officer levied the tax *pon-vari* upon the village Punnaivāyal, otherwise Rājanārāyaṇa Chatur-vēdimangalam, apparently a Brahman establishment. The tax was one-fourth *māḍai* upon every *vēli* of land, but this levy failed to make the usual exemption of uncultivated wastes in the village. The collection of this impost was entrusted to a special officer. He collected the utmost he could out of the landholders and held the village assembly responsible for the balance. In this predicament the Brahman members sold the eighty *vēlis*, constituting the village Kuḷattūr, to a certain Pichchan Duggai-āḷvān for 200 *kāśu*. These eighty *vēlis* were assigned by the purchaser to a Viṣṇu temple, a Jain Paḷḷi, a Piḍāri (village deity) shrine, the Bhaṭṭas (Brahmans), etc., and sixty *vēlis* made over with the permission of the king for the upkeep of the Vyākaraṇamaṇḍapa in the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr temple. The whole village was later on made rent free by order of the king. The record, as it has come down to us, is hardly complete enough to warrant any positive inferences. It would be interesting to know whether the impost was a new levy or an old one; whether it was levied with the consent of the community or otherwise. It seems possible to infer that this uniform levy and its unusually strict collection were intended to compel the bringing into cultivation of lands unnecessarily left uncultivated.