The Colas c29.28

c29.28

The prosperity of an agricultural country depends to a large extent on the facilities provided for irrigation, and the importance of securing an adequate water supply was recognised in South India from very early times. Natural streams and dependable channels leading off from them were the first source of supply: but for the passing mention, in an inscription at Tiruvāḍuturai,⁶¹ of a Parakēsari Karikālacōḷa who raised the banks of the Kāvēri, we hear little, in inscriptions, of the methods adopted to turn natural streams to account. Much literary evidence can be cited to show that the prosperity of the Cōḷa country proper was a gift of the Kāvēri, and particularly all the names now known of the many branches of this great stream in the delta country are traceable in the Cōḷa inscriptions. In the absence of natural streams, recourse was had to tanks, and the bulk of the evidence on irrigation from the inscriptions relates to the care bestowed on the proper maintenance of the tanks. The Cōḷa-vāridhi of Sholingur, the Kaliyanēri near Ānaimalai in Madura, the Kaḷḷinangaikuḷam at Śōḷapuram, the Vairamēgha-taṭāka of Uttaramērūr dating from Pallava times, the 'big tank' of Bāhūr, and the Rājēndraśōḷap-periya-ēri at Punganūr are only the leading examples of a very large number of irrigation tanks mentioned in the inscriptions. The primary care of the village assemblies was to get the silt removed (every year before the rains set in) from the tanks under their control in time for them to secure the proper depth needed to store the full supply for the next year. Often special endowments were created in relation to each tank to safeguard this important work from the neglect or the penury of village authorities. Even where, as in Bāhūr or Tribhuvani,⁶² the annual repairs were not provided for by specific endowments, a special cess, the *ēri-āyam*, ear-marked for this purpose was collected from the ryots in the village, the rate in the instances mentioned being one *padakku* of grain per *mā* of cultivated land. The water-rights attaching to particular plots of land were often enumerated on the occasion when they changed hands by sale or gift. Where natural levels were not favourable for the flow of water, and it had to be lifted, piccotahs and baskets were commonly employed for the purpose. The water lift worked by bulls may have been known, but finds no place in the inscriptions. About a.d. 1010, the *sabhā* of Nemali (S. Arcot) which was then called Caḷukki-kula-kāla-caturyēdimangalam set apart certain incomes as *ēri-āyam* for the maintenance of a local tank; one of these was a small charge of ¼ *pon* levied on men and women of the Brahmin community at death. In a.d. 1110 there is recorded a breach of the tank of Tirukkāñji in a storm and the repairs effected to it by a local Araiyan; the repairs included the construction of a stone revetment to the banks (*karpaḍai*).⁶³ A tank near Tirukkāccūr was extended, and a fresh sluice erected at the cost of a temple, in order that the lands of the temple may be properly irrigated; the tank originally belonged to the people of Śenguṉṟam, and their consent was obtained before the extension of the tank was undertaken. The water in the tank was to be distributed between the villagers and the temple in the ratio of their holdings.⁶⁴ In the 12th year of Vikramacōḷa owing to the silting of an irrigation channel, the assembly of Neṟkuṉṟam had to divert water from a spring in a neighbouring village after giving compensation to it. Again, in the fifteenth year of Rājarāja II the *mūla-pariṣat* of Tiruvāyppāḍi (Tanjore Dt.) sold away some fallow common land of the village to be able to make a bund and dig a channel for the irrigation of some of the cultivable land of the village. Such examples, which may be easily multiplied, furnish clear evidence of the vivid realisation by the people of the importance of irrigation and of their readiness to meet and solve irrigation problems in a reasonable spirit.