The Colas c25.9

c25.9

The royal household comprised numerous servants of various descriptions including body-guards of sorts. Several groups of Parivāras are mentioned and distinguished from one another by their individual names formed from the surnames of the kings;¹⁴ that these groups served also as body-guards is clear from their being described occasionally as *Tirumeykāppār*. The bath-room and kitchen establishments would seem to have been composed more or less exclusively of women. The palace servants were organised into *vēḷams* and settled in separate quarters in the cities of Tanjore and Gaṅgaikoṇḍacōḻapuram;¹⁵ these *vēḷams* were often recruited from the men and women captured in war. We have to look upon this crowd of personal servants as in the enjoyment of a fair competence in return for generally very light work; the status of the members of the *vēḷams* was perhaps that of a not unpleasant servitude to which the less sensitive among them might have reconciled themselves in a short time.