The Colas c12.80

c12.80

Among the industries of the Cōḷa country as of South India in general, in this period as always, the chief place was held by agriculture. The high place of agriculture in the national economy and the phenomenal fertility of the soil in the basin of the Kāvērī are, as we know, clearly reflected in the literature of the time. Many agricultural operations were done by women especially of the lower classes, the ‘last classes’⁹⁵ (*kaḍaiśiyar*) as one of the poets of the *Puṟanānūṟu* calls them. There is no clear evidence of the prevalence of predial slavery, though it is possible that most of the labourers of the ‘last classes’ did not differ much from slaves in their status. The bulk of the land was owned by *veḷḷāḷar*, the agriculturists *par excellence*, who commanded a high social rank. The late commentator Naccinārkkiniyar distinguishes between the rich and the poor *veḷḷālas* by describing them⁹⁶ as ‘those who maintained themselves by causing (land) to be ploughed, and ‘those who maintained themselves by ploughing (land).’ Of the former he says that besides owning land, they held official posts under the king in the civil and military administration, and the titles of *Vēḷ* and *Arasu* in the Cōḷa and of *Kāvidi* in the Pāṇḍya country, and enjoyed the *jus connubii* with royal families. These were doubtless the nobles of the land who shared with the king the pleasures of war and chase and the table. The poorer veḷḷāḷas did not shun manual labour and for the most part worked on their own lands, and not as hired day labourers on estates belonging to others. They were in fact the peasantry of the country who worked themselves and sought the assistance of hired labour as necessity arose. A casual simile in the *Puṟanānūṟu*,⁹⁷ which mentions the poor farmer who having no income from his fields had to eat up the seed-corn, may lead us to infer that drought and failure of crops were not altogether unknown. We have no information on tenancy-rights or on the taxation of land in this period.