The Rashtrakutas and their Times c17.s3.21

c17.s3.21

It is thus clear from the above instances that the village Mahājanas, whom we meet in the records of our period, included practically all the heads of the village families, and perhaps all the adult population as well. A record from Sirur in Dharwar district, dated 866 A.D.,⁵² refers to 230 Mahājanas of the place, who figure as the recipients of a donation; an inscription from Nargund in the same district, dated 929 A.D.,⁵³ records a grant when 220 Mahājanas of the locality had assembled together; another epigraph from the same district, dated 916 A.D.,⁵⁴ mentions 220 Mahājanas of the village of Pattiya-Maltavur; two more records from Bijapur district, one from Kattegeri, dated 1096 A.D.,⁵⁵ and the other from Managoli, dated 1161 A.D.,⁵⁶ mention an assembly of 500 Mahājanas of these places. Mahājanas in all these places must be standing for the local assemblies, and since most of these places were small villages, it is quite clear in view of the evidence already adduced above that they must have included almost all the adult householders of the localities, who had not particularly disqualified themselves from being designated by that high-sounding appellation. They certainly did not represent the executive of the village assembly, firstly because an executive committee of so large a number of members is inconceivable not only for villages and towns but also for large units, and secondly because the records sometimes mention the heads or the executive committees of the Mahājanas. Thus Nadwadinge record mentions the Mahājanas and their three heads, (57) and the Hatti-Mattur inscription of 917 A.D. mentions five merchants as being at the head of the 50 Mahājana agriculturists. The Mahājanas, therefore, did not form a small body of elected or selected members in Karnatak, as was the case with the "great men" of the village in Tamil country. They practically included the whole of the adult population of the village.