The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c16.17

c16.17

The records of Vīra Pāndya are of more than usual interest for a study of the social and economic conditions of the country during this period. Though the more detailed study of such conditions has been reserved to a later chapter some of these records may be briefly noticed here. One inscription from the Pudukottah state (No. 372 of 1906) throws much light on judicial methods and describes an ordeal of the plough-share; another from Kurrālam (Tinnevelly) registers a transaction between an individual and the assembly of Tirukkuttālam which is stated to have met together in Tirumukkālvattam, by which is probably meant a hall where it usually held its sittings. ‘No. 432 of 1917 records that the village assembly bought a piece of land from the people of Sundara Pāndyapuram and let a portion of it on permanent lease to a certain Ānda Pillai in exchange for a fixed annual rent in paddy and money on every mā (மா) of cultivated land.’ It was also stipulated that the lessee would pay on every mā of waste plot that he brought under cultivation an annually progressive rate of rent for the first four years and a fixed rate thereafter.² Two epigraphs from the North Arcot district (Āvūr, Nos. 299 and 302 of 1919) contain details of kadamai assessment in that part of the country. A series of inscriptions (Nos. 540 to 543 of 1911) from Śērmādēvi gives an idea of the procedure that appears to have been usually followed in making gifts to temples of lands freed from all taxes and other assessments. Lastly, an epigraph (No. 598 of 1926) from the Ramnad district states that a large and representative assembly was convoked for the purpose of raising funds for building a stone temple in the place of a dilapidated old masonry temple. The people of eighteen provinces (viṣayam) attended and came to an agreement that on all articles of merchandise that were measured, spread and folded and on some other specified goods, a cess of one kāśu per achchu should be collected. And among the corporations that attended the meeting and became parties to the agreement were the Valanjiyar of South Ceylon, Anjuvaṇṇam and Maṇigrāmam,--all names of self-regulating corporations of different classes of merchants.¹ The currency of the realm seems to have comprised different varieties of coins, and people had to take care to specify the type of coin to which each transaction had reference, like Paḷam-Śōḷiyan-Kāśu, Vīra-Pāṇḍyan Kāśu, etc.²