The Colas c25.40

c25.40

We have stated above that no clear evidence is forth-coming of the existence of a council of ministers or other officials regularly associated with the king in the central government of the realm. But the value of consultation and deliberation was emphasised in all ancient treatises on polity, and not even the most autocratic of monarchs felt himself free to throw away the wise counsels of able ministers. Some high officials of the state are described as of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam*, an expression meaning ‘the group or assemblage (ever) at hand’; the term ‘*kūṭṭam*’ is often applied to the executive bodies of rural assemblies in the phrase *kūṭṭapperumakkaḷ*. The idea of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam* then seems to be that of a body of executive officers in immediate and constant attendance on the king. Some officers of this rank are named in a record,¹¹⁴ (from Tiruppāccūr) of the third year of Adhirājēndra; a few years earlier, six officers of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam* are mentioned in the Tirumukkūḍal inscription of the fifth year of Vīrarājēndradēva¹¹⁵ (A.D. 1067). An inscription¹¹⁶ of the thirtieth regnal year of Kulōttunga I mentions the land revenue department of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam* and thus raises the presumption that each department of the bureaucracy was represented in this group of officers in immediate attendance on the king. If this presumption is correct, the role of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam* must be held to be not so much that of a council, as of a staff of personal assistants who served as liaison officers between the monarch and the regular bureaucracy, explained the policy laid down by the king to the members of the departments carrying on their work in the mofussil, and conveyed to the king, as occasion required, the actual results, in the provinces, of the policies and measures of government. At the same time, it would have been open to the king to consult any official or group of officials on matters on which he felt the need of their advice. The important part played in the administration of the realm by this group, the nearest approach to a council of ministers that we are able to trace, was well recognised by Pallavarāyar, the trusted minister, who armed himself with the consent of the *uḍan-kūṭṭam* before he proceeded to instal Rājādhirāja II on the Cōḷa throne.¹¹⁷