The Colas c29.10.4

c29.10.4

And the language of this order which contrasts the payment by the ordinary *veḷḷān-vagai* villages with the fixed annual assessment of Paḻaiyanūr also suggests the possibility that in *veḷḷān-vagai* tenure the state's share was in some manner directly dependent on the annual yield. But of this we cannot be sure. Another example of a similar conversion of *brahmadēya* to a *veḷḷān-vagai dēvadāna* is found in an inscription of the sixteenth year of the Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya Viceroy Sundara by which five *vēlis* of land, originally *brahmadēya*, were made over to the Tiruvālīśvaram temple as *veḷḷān-vagai* with an annual assessment of 642 *kalams*, 6 *kuruṇis*, 2 *nāḷis*, 3 *uḷakkus*, and 2½ *śeviḍus* by the *nārāyam* measuring five *nāḷis*, and 40 *kalañjus* and 3 *kāṇis* of gold, of which five *kāśus* represented *kāṭci-erudu-kāśu* and the rest *uruvukōl-nilan-kāśu*.¹⁶ These instances make it clear that the *veḷḷān-vagai* villages fell, in the reign of Rājēndra I, into at least two broad classes—one directly remitting a variable annual revenue to the state and the other paying dues of a more or less fixed and standardised character to the public institutions like temples to which they were assigned. Which of these benefited the cultivator more, if at all, we lack the means of determining.