The Colas c29.18

c29.18

A deliberate attempt seems to have been made in the reigns of Rājarāja and Rājēndra I to maintain the homogeneity of the *brahmadēya* villages by excluding all other classes from owning land in them. This policy was dictated, not so much by reasons like pride of caste and social exclusiveness, which readily suggest themselves to a modern student, as by the real difficulty of fitting into the constitutional arrangements suited to a *sabhā* other persons whose aims, needs and attainments were not the same as those of the Bhaṭṭas and Kramavittas. It has been pointed out elsewhere⁴⁹ that in large villages where such homogeneity could not be attained, the device was adopted of running two types of village assemblies side by side, the *sabhā* and *ūr*. But in places where Brahmins formed the bulk of the residents, and landholders of other classes were too few to be constituted into a separate *ūr*, these landholders had either to be received as members of a *sabhā* which laid down high educational qualifications for taking part in debates and for service on the executive committees, qualifications not easily attained by the common people, or they had to go without exercising any of the privileges normally associated with ownership of land in those days and without an opportunity of giving adequate expression or gaining proper attention to their needs. The only other course was for them to betake themselves to more congenial surroundings. Possibly difficulties of the character above mentioned were not foreseen at first, and no restrictions were imposed on ownership of land in *brahmadēya* villages; as in actual practice this policy gave rise in some place or other to the sort of inconvenience that was quite natural in the circumstance, the king's attention was drawn to it, when no satisfactory solution was reached by local agreement. There was issued by Rājarāja, in the seventeenth year of his reign, A.D. 1002, a general order⁵⁰ that in Brahmin villages, the estates (*kāṇi*) of all persons of castes other than Brahmin be sold out, exception being made of servants holding land under some service tenure. The Brahmins were apparently expected to buy up the land and pay down cash, and a special officer was deputed to Rājakēsari-caturvēdimaṅgalam to get the *sabhā* to conform to the order and make early payment; some of the land sold on the occasion was bought by the king's sister Kundavai, who gave it to the local temple. A similar order of Rājēndra I is recorded in an inscription⁵¹ of the sixth year of his reign from Veḷiccēri, a *brahmadēya* in Puliyūrkōṭṭam.