The Colas c28.19
The Cōḷas c28.19
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That a considerable element in the population, especially among agricultural labourers, lived in a condition not far from slavery is clear from the literature of the age. There are several inscriptions which show that the most odious form of private property, property in human beings, signalized by their being bought and sold by others irrespective of their own wishes, was not unknown. Free men and women fell into slavery for various reasons, and it would appear that there were several grades among slaves. Most of the sales recorded in the inscriptions are sales of persons to temples. Sometimes they are voluntary; two ladies sold themselves and their dependants and their relatives to a temple in the Tanjore district;³⁸ in these instances, the religious motive must have been more dominant than the economic. But when six persons are sold to the same temple in the same year for thirteen *kāśus* by another person, neither the voluntary nor the religious character of the transaction is so apparent.³⁹ There is another sale of eight persons recorded in the same place some years before, the price not being stated.⁴⁰ All these inscriptions are dated in the regnal years of some unknown Cōḷa king. About a.d. 948, a *madhyastha* of the village of Nandivarman-mangalam presented to the temple of Vayalur (Trichinopoly dt.) three women to sing *Tirupadiyam* and serve as *Kavarippinā* (chauri-bearers) to god Parameśvara;
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he had acquired these women six years earlier as *Kuḷḷāḷ* (?) Another record of the reign of Rājarāja I from Tiruvaḍandai (Chingleput), dated in the seventeenth regnal year, a.d. 1002, states that twelve families of fishermen (*paṭṭinavar*) were dedicated to the temple of Śrī Varāha Dēva at the instance of two officials serving in the locality as *nāḍu-kaṇkāṭci* and *nāḍu-vagai*; the families of the twelve persons named had each to pay, out of their income from weaving and fishing, ¾ *kaḷañju* of gold, and to assist in the celebration of two annual festivals in the temple, one of them being of seven days' duration and ending with the day of Śadaiyam in the month of Āvaṇi, the day of the king's nativity. The *sabhā* and the *ūr* of Tiruvaḍandai undertook to hold them and their decendants strictly to their obligations.⁴¹ The terms of this dedication are on the whole liberal and do not constitute slavery; they even included some privileges of the dedicated families such as the receipt of *prasādam* (food-offering) on the festival days. But the element of compulsion, the hereditary nature of the dedication, the part played by two officials of the state and the undertaking of the *sabhā* and *ūr* to enforce the terms, prove that the dozen families of *paṭṭinavar* would not have readily accepted the arrangements of their own choice. Kulōttunga I ordered in A.D.
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1088 that some *dēvaraḍiyār* of the temple of Kāḷahasti who had been wrongly appropriated to the palace service should be restored to the temple; these persons had been stamped with the king’s seal which was erased and the trident stamped on their bodies in token of their servitude to the temple.⁴² At Tiruvallam, in 1119, one of the *villikaḷ*, (bowmen) of Bāṇapuram, dedicated some women of his family as *dēvaraḍiyār* after stamping them with the trident.⁴³ In the reign of Rājādhirāja II is recorded a sale, in A.D. 1175, of four women to the temple of Tiruvālangāḍu for a sum of seven hundred *kāśus*.⁴⁴ As the term *kāśu* is applied to coins of varying value, it is not possible to compare the price recorded here with prices stated in some of the inscriptions cited above. An inscription⁴⁵ of somewhat uncertain date from Tiruvālangāḍu (Tanjore) mentions some facts which bring out the general prevalence of slavery and the treatment meted out to slaves. A certain Vayirādarāyar had a number of slaves, some belonging to him and others forming part of the dowries of his wives. With the consent of his wives, he sold some of these slaves to the local temple which purchased them for employment as slaves of a *maṭha* (*maḍa-aḍimaigal*).
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In accordance with a sale deed, and a royal order (*rāja-sādana*), the *māhēśvaras* and the authorities of the temple recorded the transaction in a stone inscription, marked the slaves with the trident-mark, and resolved to assign specific duties to them and punish them suitably when they failed in their duty. The inscription then states that after some time some of the slaves defied the orders of the *sthānattār* of the temple and took to mischievous and roguish ways, and the matter was laid before a general assembly of the authorities of the temple and of the *maṭhas*. Their decision is not easy to make out owing to gaps in the record. In fact the slaves would have been more than human had they not chafed at their lot. And as slavery was not confined to temples, the idea that slaves consoled themselves by looking on their lives as dedicated to the service of God can only have a limited range of application, if it had any at all.⁴⁶ There are also instances of slavery due directly to poverty; in times of famine, destitute persons escaped death by literally selling themselves and sometimes their unborn descendants for their keep. Only temples seem to have left records of this mode of accession to the numbers of their slaves; but we cannot be sure that rich and powerful individuals did not trade on the necessities of their less fortunate brethren.⁴⁷