The Colas c29.9

c29.9

Communal ownership of land by the villages as such has been noticed already; the residuary claim of the state as represented by the king to all unassigned land must have been tacitly assumed. For the rest, all cultivable land was held in one of three broad classes of tenure which may be distinguished as: peasant proprietorship called *veḷḷān-vagai* in the inscriptions; service-tenure, comprising all the holdings described variously as *jīvita*, *bhōga*, *kāṇi*, *vṛtti*, and so on; and eleemosynary tenure, such as *brahmadēya*, *dēvadāna* and *śālābhōga*, resulting from charitable gifts and governed by the special terms laid down in each case in a separate document drawn up in set terms and engraved on copper plates or stone or both. Service-inams were also often recorded on stone, but these records were simpler and stated only the extent of land held, the name of the person holding it and the particular service for which it was the remuneration, the details of the rights of the parties to the arrangement being left to be regulated by local custom. The three classes of tenure so differentiated may now be considered in some detail.