The Colas c26.30

c26.30

There are not wanting, on the other hand, instances in which the king's government interferred to regulate the constitutional arrangements prevailing in the *sabhās*. They belong generally to the late Cōḷa period. Even in these instances, it is possible, though by no means clear, that the initiative was taken by the *sabhās* themselves, and that the terms of the constitutional settlement reported to the king by his officials and sanctioned by him were based on resolutions taken by the assemblies concerned. The inscriptions, however, contain only the record of the sanction accorded by the monarch to proposals placed before him by his own officials. An inscription from Talaināyar (Tanjore district), dated the 73rd day of the seventh regnal year of Kulōttunga III,⁵⁶ takes the form of a letter addressed to the *sabhā* of Kulōttunga-śōḻan-tanināyaka-caturvēdi-maṅgalam and the *taṇḍuvān* (collector) of the village. The letter contains rules for the election of the executive body (*kūṭṭam*) of the assembly⁵⁷ sanctioned by the king at the instance of two officials, Brahmēndra and Vāṇādhirāja, written out by the *tirumandira-ōlai* and attested by nine others with titles ending in *rāya* or *rāja*, also no doubt officials of the central government. The rules laid down were the following: from the seventh regnal year, only those were to be elected to the *kūṭṭam* who had not been in the *kūṭṭam* for ten years preceding the year in which the election took place; the candidates must also be Brahmins above forty years of age, learned (*vidvān*) and impartial (*samar*); the relatives of those who had served on the *kūṭṭam* during the five years before and the five years after the seventh regnal year were also to be held ineligible for the *kūṭṭam*. The king also ordered that all Brahmins who were guilty of wicked deeds (*vinaikkēḍu*) by defaulting the land revenue (*kaḍamai*) and oppressing docile Brahmins and respectable tenants, accepting bribes (*kaikkūli*) and so on, were to be fined in proportion to their offences, irrespective of whether they had served on the *kūṭṭam* or not. This last clause, together with the requirement of impartiality in the candidates for election under the new rules, warrants the supposition that local administration in Talaināyar had suffered by the growth of faction and violence for some time before the reform recorded in this inscription. Another instance of the royal sanction of a local constitution is dated five years later, A.D. 1190, and comes from Ayyampēṭṭai.⁵⁸ At the instance of Nuḷambādarāya, the king ordered that the executive (*varaṇam*) of the *sabhā* of Rājēndra-śōḻa-caturvēdimangalam were to be chosen from among those who had not served on it before and were not less than forty years of age.