The Colas c26.6.1

c26.6.1

Before discussing the types of village assemblies and their working, the leading examples of the more limited groups may be briefly noticed. In speaking of these groups and of the village assemblies themselves as corporations, we are to understand, not that there was in existence any formal system of incorporation by which groups attained a particular legal status, but simply that they, in fact, acted like individuals, buying and selling, suing and being sued in their group capacity. They recognised also that the continuity of their life as corporations was independent of their changing personnel.² He who runs may read from the inscriptions that this was the universal rule. It was simply assumed that there was no difference in these respects between an individual and a group of persons banded together for a common purpose and well known as such in the neighbourhood. Such groups were organised for all sorts of purposes. Some were economic like the mercantile groups of Vaḻañjīyar, and the Maṇigrāmam, often named after the locality of their domicile;—Vaḻañjīyar of Tiruppuṟambiyam,³ Maṇigrāmam of Ādittapura⁴ are examples. These mercantile groups will come up for more detailed consideration in another connection. There were other groups, more numerous, organised on the basis of religion. The *mūlaparuḍaiyār* of different localities were clearly in direct charge of temples.