The Colas c29.7

c29.7

From casual references in the inscriptions, we can dimly perceive the existence of a class of hired day-labourers who assisted in agricultural operations on the estates of other people and received a daily wage, usually in grain.⁹ There was no clear line of division between the absolutely landless agrarian labourer and the small peasant hiring himself out in his spare time. Garden-labour was hired for service in flower-gardens attached to temples at the standard rate of one *marakkāl* and two *nāḷis* of paddy per diem, a rate mentioned in two inscriptions of the years a.d. 1019 and 1053;¹⁰ and eight such labourers were regularly employed all the year round in a garden of the extent of seven *pāḍagams* in one case, and two for six *mā*-s in the other. In several instances a gift of land for some public purpose, to a temple or *maṭha*, is found to include some portion set apart for the residences of the families of labourers engaged in its cultivation. Such labourers were not peasant proprietors by any means, and were nearer the class of hired labourers than of tenants; they were entitled to the use of a house-site near enough to the place of their work and to get wages fixed in advance, the proceeds of their labour on land being altogether the property of the institution that owned the soil on which they worked. Tenancy-cultivation was also quite common, both on private estates and on quasi-public land such as that of a temple; after paying the landlord a fixed *mēlvāram* determined in advance, the tenant usually retained as his share what remained after payment of the direct expenses of cultivation, and any minor dues assessed on the land held by him. The extensive class of service tenures may be taken to have invested their holders with a temporary partnership in the soil as remuneration for the particular services rendered by them to the community or the institutions concerned.