The Colas c12.34

c12.34

Even less specialised and more entangled in the social and religious complex of village life was the *manṟam* of the rural areas. Each village had its common place of meeting, generally under the shade of a big tree where men, women and children met for all the common activities of the village; there were held the folk dances in which the women took part and which were suspended in the midst of a war or siege.³³ Lacking evidence on the place occupied by the *maṉṟam* in the politics of rural life, we may still trace to these primitive folk-gatherings, at least in part, the beginnings of the highly developed system of village-government which came into existence and functioned so admirably in later Cōḷa times.³⁴