The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.3

c19.3

Besides the existence of written records, the careful maintenance in the capital of registers showing the rights in the land of individuals and corporations and of the state all over the country is very clearly and fully attested by contemporary inscriptions. Many of these records contain transactions in which rights in land are transferred from one party to another; the stone inscriptions and copper-plate records appear to have been only copies of originals maintained in more perishable material which should have disappeared long ago, and this view is strengthened by the occurrence of the word *Tulyam* (equal) at the beginning or the end of many of these epigraphs. The frequent references to *ōlai* found in our records may also lead one to the conclusion that the originals of the documents were written on palm-leaves.¹ There appears to have been a regular procedure to be observed in the numerous cases in which lands were made over tax-free to temples or Brahmins by the state.² In such cases the first step was to prefer a request to the king at some suitable hour and get his oral sanction to the proposal. This was usually done by a high official of the state. The king's sanction was accompanied by an order that the necessary entries should be made in the revenue registers and the *ōlai* and *uḷvari* from the revenue department issued thereon. Sometimes, years elapsed from the date of the oral order before a single transaction was carried through all its stages and the grant became effective. The entries in the revenue registers appear to have been intended to effect a decrease in the revenues due to government and to record a corresponding increase in the income of the donee. Such transactions are generally found in triple or sometimes even quadruple records, the main part of the contents being repeated thrice or four times, each time with a separate purpose. The first is generally a simple record of the king's oral sanction—*Kēḷvi*, or *Tirumugam* as it is sometimes called. The exact significance of the *ōlai* and the *uḷvari* is not quite clear. The *ōlai* generally begins with the Kōnērinmaikoṇḍān title of the king, without his proper name, and appears to have been executive order to the officers on the spot to give effect to the king's order with reference to the lands in question. The *uḷvari* on the other hand partakes of the nature of a title-deed granted to the donee, and is signed by a number of revenue officers (*variyilār* or *varikkūruśeyvār*). It seems likely that a similar method of maintaining records at the capital and communicating copies of the orders to the executive officers of the localities concerned was observed in other important matters as well. We have thus a Kōnērinmaikoṇḍān record of Māravarman Kulaśēkhara (*acc.* 1268) from Aḷwār Tirunagarī (No. 467 of 1909) which confers certain special privileges in the distribution of the *prasādam* in the temple on a certain Brahmin who recited the Purāṇas and the Itihāsas in the temples of the place.