The Colas c23.64

c23.64

In the twenty-third and twenty-fourth years of the reign, there was apparently a wide-spread scarcity of food-grain resulting in acute famine. The inscriptions record nothing of state action by way of famine relief; but it would not be safe to conclude that the state did nothing in such a situation. It should not be forgotten that the inscriptions are the records of a narrow range of transactions and are by no means the Moral and Material Progress Reports of the times. It is therefore not a little remarkable that an inscription from North Arcot (Tiruvaṇṇāmalai)¹³⁵ records that during the famine, when rice was selling at one-fourth of a measure per *kāśu*, two persons started relief works in the form of an embankment for the river and the construction of a fresh tank, and paid the labourers in gold, paddy or any other form that they desired. The idea of organised famine relief was therefore quite well known, and it is only reasonable to presume that when private charity undertook such relief when required, the government would not have omitted to exert itself likewise. On the other hand, it is clear that the relief afforded by such measures did not go far enough, and unfortunate individuals who were the victims of famine were sometimes forced to seek other remedies. A Tanjore (Tiruppāmburam) inscription¹³⁶ of the twenty-third year states, for instance, that owing to bad times and the high price of food-grains, a veḷḷāla and his two daughters sold themselves as slaves to the local *maṭha* for 110 *kāśus*, in order to escape death by starvation.¹³⁷