The Rashtrakutas and their Times c16.s2.3

c16.s2.3

Imperial officers appointed over the subdivisions and Talukas administered their areas with the help of hereditary revenue officers. These officers were known as Nāḍgavuṇḍas in Karnatak and Des'a-grama-kūṭas in Maharashtra. A country headman or Nāḍgavuṇḍa of Belvola 300 is mentioned in a record hailing from that division, (21) and the record in question makes it clear that this officer was different from the governor of Belvola 300 appointed by the central government. The Managoli inscription of 1161 A.D. enumerates among the officers assembled on the occasion 'the 16 of the 8 districts.' This expression '16 of the 8 districts' can be best understood on the hypothesis that each of these 8 districts was in charge of two officers, one hereditary and the other appointed by the central government. Purigeri 300 and Belvola 300 each possessed a headman who was different from Mārasimha, who was the officer appointed by the central government over those divisions. (22) The Kumonelihalli inscription of Kṛṣṇa II mentions Aladitya Gova and Kalpata as the officers holding the country shrievalty of Anniga 100; (23) appointment of joint Mamlatdars by the central government over a Taluka of about 100 villages is hardly an intelligent administrative procedure; probably one of the two officers, therefore, was the nominee of the central government and the other the hereditary Nāḍgavuṇḍa or the country headman of the division. In 874 A.D., when Bankeya was the governor over Banavasi 12,000, his son Kundatte was the officer over the Nilgundige group of 12 villages. When Bankeya proceeded to make a grant of five mattars of land at his son's request to a local temple, the record informs us that he summoned his son Kundatte and Rāpa. (24) It is almost certain that this Rāpa was the hereditary headman of Nilgundige 12 in co-operation with whom Kundatte, the nominee of the central government, was administering the group of villages under his charge. Only on this assumption we can explain as to why he was summoned along with Kundatte. A des'a-grāmakūṭa-kṣetra or the rent-free field of the district headman is twice mentioned in a spurious Ganga record from Lakshmeshvar; this would show that there existed headmen of districts who were partly remunerated by hereditary rent-free lands, as is still the case with the Deshpandes and Sardeshpandes of Maharashtra. Tuppaḍ Kurahatti inscription of Kṛṣṇa III (25) mentions a tax which the cultivators had to pay in addition to the normal government demand for the remuneration of the country gāvuṇḍas,—a tax which was as high as the king's tax, probably because the latter was low owing to the field being temple property. This record too supplies clear evidence proving the existence of country headmen similar to village headmen. Like the Deshpandes of the Maratha period, these posts were hereditary; an inscription from Shikarpur informs us that when the Nālgāvuṇḍa of Nagarkhande died while fighting for Kaḷaviṭṭa-rasa, the governor of Banavasi, his wife succeeded to the office which she ably managed for 7 years. Then when she decided to perform the *sallekhanā* vow and die, she sent for her daughter and nominated her to her office.²⁶ This case would make it clear that the post of the country headman was, like that of the village headman, a non-official and hereditary one. He being a man of the people must have served the purpose of popularising the administration to some extent. We do not know whether there existed popular bodies of *mahattaras* to co-operate with the divisional and subdivisional officers. But since there certainly existed, as will be shown in the next chapter, such bodies in villages there is nothing improbable in the existence of corresponding bodies for these administrative units. It is, however, doubtful wheher they were more formal and definite than the councils of the *vishaya-* and *rāṣṭramahattaras*.