The Colas c27.42

c27.42

Instances are by no means wanting, from the later Cōḻa period, of land tax being realised, in the last resort, by the sale of the defaulters' lands. Some Brahmin tenants of Vānavanmādēvi-caturvēdimangalam (Tiruccirai) in the Tanjore district, unable to pay the taxes, had abandoned their lands and left the village, and these lands were sold to a neighbouring temple in 1117;⁸⁸ it is not clear whether the inability of the deserters to pay the taxes was due to heavy assessment or irregular collection resulting in an accumulation of heavy arrears; the *sabhā* of the village conducted the sale, and this favours the latter assumption. Two years later, a very similar instance of desertion and sale is recorded in Kōnērirājapuram, also in the Tanjore district;⁸⁹ in this case, it was clearly the tenants who deliberately defaulted; there was no accumulation of arrears, for only the taxes of the forty-ninth regnal year, the year of the record, were involved; and the village assembly was required by a letter from the revenue officers of the king to sell the lands and realise the tax dues. It looks as if an attempt was made to enforce more regular collections.