The Colas c27.39

c27.39

It should also be noted that protests against unusual levies and successful attempts on the part of the people to resist them by codifying the standard of normal fiscal practice are not unknown. An inscription⁸⁴ of the third year of Kulōttunga I from the Mysore territory is very interesting in this connection. The inscription is a record of the *periya-viṣaiyam*, the Great Assemblage. It opens by saying that since the race of Cōḷa rulers began, no tax had been laid on cows and she-buffaloes in all the territory comprising the 78 *nāḍus* of Nigarili-śōḷa-maṇḍala, the 48,000 *būmi* of Jayangoṇḍa-śōḷa-maṇḍalam, the Rājēndra-śōḷap-padineṇbūmi assigned to the Valaṅgai-mahāsēnai of the Great Army, and that consequently, the new levy on cows and she-buffaloes introduced by Adigārigaḷ Śōḻa-mūvēndavēḷār need not be paid. Again the government share (*mēlvāram*) was specified as one-fifth of the produce of forest tracts and dry crop lands, and one-third of that of rice lands under a tank. Further, the rate of tax on the cultivation of hill-tracts by hill-tribes (*vēḍar*) was to be one cloth (*puḍavai*) for 1500 *kulis*; the record also laid down the rates for all other miscellaneous dues and services, concluded by specifying the length of the measuring rod to be employed in land measurements. We have not many recorded instances of such popular attempts to fix the scale of customary taxes and dues to government; and such attempts might not have always restrained a self-willed and autocratic ruler or chieftain; but that they were made, and that in the popular consciousness there was a clear limit to the taxing power of government—these are facts of some significance and must be noted in any account of Cōḷa polity.