The Colas c25.33

c25.33

The order is communicated in the form of a *śrī-mukham* by the *Āṇatti*, the executive officer nominated by the king for the purpose, and the rest is done by the local corporations to whom the letter is addressed; and when the transaction is complete and a record of it is drawn up, it is attested by a number of persons who appear to be local magnates and describe themselves in various ways as Nāṭṭukkōn, Nāḍū-kiḻavan, Ūruḍaiyān and so on. It is difficult to decide if these witnesses were only prominent men of the neighbourhood or held definite posts under government. However that may be, the procedure followed some years later under similar circumstances is far more elaborate and furnishes a measure of the complexity of the administrative organisation that had grown in the interval. The larger Leyden grant and the Tiru-vālangāḍu, Karandai, and Chārāla plates exhibit a close resemblance with regard to their official forms. The grant of Ānaimangalam to the Bauddha shrine in the Cūḍāmaṇivarma-vihāra was ordered by the king on the 92nd day of the twenty-first year of his reign, recorded on the ninety-sixth day of the same year, and the execution was completed on the 113th day of the twenty-third year.⁸⁰ The corresponding dates for the grant of Paḻaiyanūr as a *dēvadāna* recorded in the Tiruvālangāḍu plates of Rājēndra I are: the 88th and 90th days in the sixth regnal year, and 155th in the seventh of that monarch.⁸¹