The Colas c28.19.1

c28.19.1

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;