The Colas c26.38

c26.38

Territorial assemblies representing the *nāḍu* were also in existence and discharged important duties, particularly in regard to land revenue administration. ‘*Nāḍu*’ like *ūr* generally means a territorial division, and the corporate character of ‘*nāḍu*’ in some of the contexts in the epigraphs is brought home to us by expressions like ‘*nāḍāyiśainda nāṭṭōm*’, ‘residents of the *nāḍu* met (formed) as *nāḍu*’.⁷¹ These corporations endow charities in their own names,⁷² and take charge of charitable endowments.⁷³ In the fifteenth year of a Parakēsari, a certain Kaṇḍan Maṟavan, the feudatory of the Cōḷa monarch, issued an order to the *nāṭṭār* of Kuṉṟakkūṟṟam.⁷⁴ This order stated that the chief had decided to make a gift of some land as *kāṇi* to a certain person subject to a fixed annual payment of 25 *pon* for all time as the land tax on it; on no future occasion, when general revision of assessment was made, was this land to be put in a class which would raise the dues from it to more than the sum of 25 *pon* then fixed; the *nāṭṭār* were requested by the chieftain to give effect to these conditions, and they accordingly handed over the land to the person named and undertook not to enhance the tax due from the land in any future assessment. The part assigned by this inscription to the *nāṭṭār* in the classification of the lands and the periodical assessment of land revenue, and the permanent settlement of the assessment on some land are all noteworthy features of the land-revenue administration of the time. The order of Rājarāja on the gift of the village Ānaimangalam to the Buddhist shrine in Negapatam was addressed among others to the *nāṭṭār* of the Paṭṭinakkūṟṟam. No direct evidence on the constitution of these assemblies of the *nāḍu* is forthcoming; an analysis of the signatures affixed to the Leyden grant (of Ānaimangalam) is, however, very instructive in this connection. The grant is signed first by the officer of the *puravu-vari* who was present with the *nāṭṭār* when they marked the boundary of the village by getting an elephant to beat the bounds, then by the man who rode the elephant on the occasion, then by the accountants of twenty-seven villages, including Ānaimangalam, in the Paṭṭinakkūṟṟam, and lastly by the *bhaṭṭas* who guided the whole transaction. The accountants sign on behalf of the *sabhā* or the *ūr* of their villages and in accordance with their instructions. One wonders if the assembly of the *nāḍu* was constituted by the representatives of each of the villages in it coming together, the accountants being present among them.