The Colas c27.46

c27.46

No account of the financial aspect of Cōḻa administration can be complete which omits to lay stress on the extent to which the excesses to which the system was liable corrected themselves more or less automatically by the social uses to which wealth was put. Hoarding was by no means unknown, especially on the part of kings and temples; but there was much spending also, and in the conditions of mediaeval life the opportunities for extravagant and wasteful expenditure of an anti-social character were much fewer than at the present day. No great gulf separated the personal habits of the rich magnate and his poorer neighbours. The rich had to seek distinction by competing in the service of the gods and of the poor. To build a temple or endow a *maṭha*, to attach a school or a hospital to either, to reclaim land and to promote irrigation,—such were the most common roads to social eminence and public recognition. The temples which by their hoards tempted the cupidity of the foreign invader at a later day, were at this period, the mainstay of the people and their refuge in times of physical and financial distress. They constituted a sort of reserve bank with branches in every village which absorbed and retained the surplus wealth of the community in normal times, and released it for use in seasons of financial stringency, and was ever ready to help the community to turn a sharp corner. A destructive flood, or prolonged drought might have wrought far more permanent damage to the economy of a locality if it were not for the assistance its people derived from the resources of the temple accumulated by the piety and industry of generations of their ancestors. The king, the nobles and the temples drew largely in various ways upon the products of the industry of the common people; but much of this wealth was returned to them in ways that greatly advanced their common good. It was a wonderful social harmony based, not on equality of classes or individuals, but on a readiness to give and take, a mutual goodwill that had its roots deep down at the foundations of communal life.