The Colas c12.81

c12.81

Spinning and weaving of cotton, and perhaps also of silk, had attained a high degree of perfection. Spinning was then, as in later times, the by-occupation of women.⁹⁸ The weaving of complex patterns on cloth and silk is often mentioned in literature, and we have the authority of the *Periplus* that Uraiyūr was a great centre of the trade in fine cotton stuffs. The *Porunarāṟṟuppaḍai* mentions⁹⁹ cotton cloth, thin like the slough of the snake, bearing fine floral designs and so finely woven that the eye cannot follow the course of the yarn. The same poem alludes elsewhere¹⁰⁰ to silk cloth with its threads gathered in small knots at its ends. The *Maṇimēkalai* speaks¹⁰¹ of artistic patterns of cloth giving evidence of the marvellous dexterity of expert weavers. The cotton and silk trades, therefore, must have provided occupation to a considerable part of the population. No detailed or specific information is forthcoming on the other trades of which a general idea may be gathered from the descriptions of city life quoted above. Cots made of leather straps plaited apparently on wooden frames are mentioned; and the leather workers came from the low class of the pulaiyas.¹⁰² If the mention, in the *Maṇimēkalai*,¹⁰³ of Magadhan artisans, Mahratha smiths, blacksmiths from Avanti and Yavana carpenters working by the side of Tamil craftsmen is not mere rhetoric, we may believe that by the side of foreign merchants from different countries in India and outside, there were also some industrial workers who had found more or less permanent employment in the Tamil lands by their exceptional skill in particular crafts. Much of the internal trade was carried on by barter, paddy forming the most commonly accepted medium of exchange. Salt, we have seen, was sold for paddy. We learn also¹⁰⁴ that honey and roots were exchanged for fish-oil and toddy, the sweet sugar-cane and *aval*¹⁰⁵ for venison and arrack. The ladies of the prosperous agriculturist families in the Pāṇḍya country poured the white paddy from their barns into the pots in which the hunter from the forest had brought venison, or the shepherdess had fetched curds.¹⁰⁶ Paddy was accepted as the most common measure of value in rural economy in the Cōḷa empire of the tenth century and later; the numerous inscriptions of that time furnish unmistakable evidence of the subordinate role of coin in the transactions of everyday life; the same feature survived until very recently in the rural parts of the Tamil country. It may be inferred, therefore, that in the early centuries of the Christian era paddy was the common measure of value in internal trade; and that metallic currency entered only in transactions of foreign commerce. It must be noted however that some evidence, not quite conclusive, seems to indicate the presence at this period in Madura, and only there, of a body of foreign colonists who appear to have used regularly small copper coins in their day to day transactions.¹⁰⁷