The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.20
The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.20
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We have very instructive references to the irrigation arrangements that prevailed in the middle ages in the country under the Pāndyan rulers. A very interesting record from Sarkār Periyapālayam (Coimbatore) dated in the twenty-second year of a certain Sundara Pāndya¹ contains details as to the duties of the person who was appointed to be in charge of an irrigation tank and channel and an anicut at Śūralūr, all of which belonged to a temple. 'The villagers and the temple trustees stipulated that, in consideration of certain income and privileges granted to him, the fisherman Pillaiyān . . . had to look after the said anicut (anai) and the channel, had to see that the water did not escape above the dam but was properly directed into the tank, notice the defects, if any, in the tank and the dam and report the matter to the villagers and the temple authorities and that on this information the village servant (veṭṭiyāl) had to repair the dam, receiving as remuneration for that duty a piece of rent-free land and some payments in grain. Pillaiyān was also to collect the taxes vāykkālpāṭṭam (canal tax) and pāśipāṭṭam (fishing tax) from the temple tenants at Śūralūr.¹ A record (No. 14 of 1909) at Pon Amarāvati (Pudukkottah) contains an order dated in the eighth year of Tribhuvanacakravartin Sundara Pāṇdya Dēva forbidding the temple authorities to take water from Iḍangaḷikāman, evidently for purposes of irrigation. Another record from Pudukkottah (No.
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380 of 1914), of probably the same king, states that a dispute between the authorities of a temple and an individual as regards the ownership of a stream was settled by providing that, ‘after irrigating a certain specified field, one half of the income from fishing in the river should be made over to the temple authorities, while the other half was to be retained by the other party to the dispute.’¹ Unless an inscription in the tenth year of Jaṭāvarman Parākrama Pāṇdya (fourteenth century A.D.) from Tirumalai (Ramnad) has been grossly misunderstood, it may be taken to record a very interesting transaction.² Two villages and a tank irrigating lands in them are taken up by a temple from government after paying arrears of taxes due to it from a defaulting cultivator; the temple authorities had evidently miscalculated their capacity to use the lands and underrated the difficulties in the way of cultivating them properly and apparently were unable to pay their dues to the state. Then, in the presence of the king, they sold the tanks and the lands to two brothers for a sum of money with which they set up the images of Gaṇapati and Māṇikkavāśagar, and it was agreed that after that, the dues which the brothers had to pay on the lands they had bought, and which were fixed in detail, were to be used ‘for providing for the sacred bath and offerings and worship of the images newly set up.’ It is not clear if the newly fixed dues were less onerous than the old ones. Perhaps they were.
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Two other records (Nos. 15 and 16 of 1924) of the same king from the same place are dated in the fifth and ninth years of the king; the earlier record mentions some lands as having been sold by the assembly of the village for a certain sum of money ‘with the exemption of water taxes in compensation for the labour involved in reclaiming them from their waste condition’; and the later record registers the resale of the same land for over twelve times the original value at which it was sold by the village assembly, evidently a case of an extraordinarily successful land improvement encouraged by the village assembly. It is to be noted carefully how small a part in all these transactions belongs to the officials of the king, and how much is left to local and individual initiative. It may be noted also that early in the reign of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāndya (acc. A.D. 1251) a new flood embankment substantially built on the side of the Coleroon was raised with the aid of funds collected in the form of a special cess from the inhabitants in the neighbourhood.¹