The Colas c25.38

c25.38

The duties of Revenue officers included, then as now, many other spheres besides that indicated by their designations. They are often found regulating the receipts and expenditure of temples, or helping local authorities to do so.¹⁰¹ They audit the accounts of temples and take steps for the prevention of embezzlement.¹⁰² In one instance they are seen, as a department of the government, purchasing land after paying cash to a village assembly; the purpose of the purchase is not clear as the inscription is incomplete.¹⁰³ They attest public documents of importance drawn up by local authorities like village *sabhās*, embodying their resolutions such as exempting lands from payments of taxes and dues,¹⁰⁴ determining the status and obligations of particular groups of people¹⁰⁵ and so on. They seem to have been in the enjoyment of magisterial powers. In one instance they bound over to good behaviour the villagers of Kallūr who renounced some temple lands they had originally undertaken to cultivate, and were thereafter required not only to give up the lands but to undertake, on pain of being held guilty of treason, not to obstruct the cultivation of the lands renounced by them, nor to seek to re-establish their claim to them.¹⁰⁶ The inscriptions abound in extravagant oaths and asseverations; yet, it seems proper to infer, in this particular instance, the existence of a somewhat acrimonious dispute between the authorities of the temple of a neighbouring village and the residents of Kallūr. The temple owned some lands in Kallūr of which the cultivation was in the first instance entrusted to the people of that village; the Kallūr villagers suddenly threw up the land and pleaded inability to continue the cultivation and the periodical payment to the temple of the dues thereon. The bond entered into by them with the revenue officers closed the dispute, so far as we know. A *nāṭṭarasa* in the Mysore country conducts a trial for manslaughter.¹⁰⁷ It may be observed in passing that a revenue official, an accountant, is stated¹⁰⁸ to have received a deposit of money that belonged to a charitable endowment in the charge of the assembly of Maṇali and agreed to pay the annual interest on it at a prescribed rate. This he must have done in his private capacity; but, if that be so, the example is interesting in relation to the personal conduct of public servants.