The Colas c29.14

c29.14

Very good examples of service tenure proper come from temples and villages, which generally remunerated their servants in this manner. The temples often parcelled out their lands and assigned them as *jīvita*, *bhōga*, or *kāṇi*, all these terms are used indifferently, for persons who fetched water for bathing the deity,²¹ kept watch over the temple premises,²² sounded the conch (*śangu*),²³ performed the *arcanā* and aided at the *śrī bali*,²⁴ sang in the temple or trained songsters²⁵ and so on. The *Sabhā* of Jananātha-caturvēdimangalam met once in the ninth year of Rājēndra I to regulate the occupation of the lands of the local temple of Mahāśāstā by its servants and fix the nature and extent of the services for which the occupants were liable in each case, such as conducting worship (*arcanā*), supplying oil for lamps, and keeping watch over the temple.²⁶ Individual donors often ear-marked their gifts of land to temples for particular services; slightly different in its origin, this type did not differ in any other way from the foregoing. The endowment of a *nṛtyabhōga* (*śākkai-kāṇi*) for the performance of *āriyak-kūttu* at the annual festivals in Tiruvāḍuturai from the ninth year of Rājarāja I (A. D. 994),²⁷ and that of a *taṭṭārakkāṇi*, goldsmith’s holding, by queen Dantiśakti Viṭaṅki attached to the temple of Tiruvārūr from the fourth year of Rājēndra I,²⁸ furnish instances of one of the common methods by which service-tenure on temple lands was created from time to time. Many items of service, high and low, to the village community were also remunerated in a like manner. Here again there was a double process at work; sometimes the village assembly took the initiative and set apart a portion of the common land as *bhōga* for the performance of specified services; there were also rich and generous persons ready to meet some pressing local need from their purse, buy land from the village community itself to create the necessary endowment, and leave it to be administered by the local authority. Of the first process there are several examples of *bhaṭṭavṛttis* being created by village assemblies for the maintenance of teachers in schools, or of persons who popularised culture by expounding the Purāṇas or philosophies in temples, and the *kāṇis* for artisans like goldsmiths,²⁹ for the village physician,³⁰ or dancing-master.³¹ A very common form that private benefaction assumed was the gift of land for the maintenance of dredging-boats and of men who kept the village tanks in good repair by removing silt, repairing the tank bund and in other specified ways.³² Such land was called *ēri-paṭṭi*. Another was the *ambalappuṛam*, for the maintenance of rest houses and public places for the supply of drinking water.³³ In view of a gift of two *mā*-s of land to each, three carpenters of Sōmanātha-caturvēdimangalam agreed to serve in the several hamlets of the village, accepting a reasonable remuneration for each job.³⁴ In fact, the universal prevalence of service tenure created for all conceivable purposes is most clearly established by the inscriptions. Its place in the tax-system gave rise to disputes which were settled by the general order of Rājarāja issued in his twenty-fourth year.³⁵ From this order, we may conclude that, unless there were reasons to the contrary, all lands held under service tenure were subject to the usual imposts, central and local, that were levied on land. The numerous instances of land being set apart for the maintenance of lamps in temples are also best regarded as examples of service tenures.