The Colas c30.22

c30.22

The main features of the formulae adopted in documents, sale or gift deeds, conveying property in land may be briefly noted. The minute care with which the boundaries were described in each case may be seen from the copper-plate grants like those of Anbil, Ānaimaṅgalam, Tiruvālaṅgāḍu and Karandai (Tanjore). The same feature marks the stone inscriptions as well, though the description is often more summary in form and therefore much shorter than in the copper-plates. Then the phrase ‘*mikudik-kuṟai-uḷḷaḍaṅga*,’ ‘including excess or shortage,’ is invariably employed, and this implies that the boundaries rather than the measurements stated formed the decisive factors. Then there occurred phrases which excluded other properties like old *dēvadānas*, canals, roads etc., which were not meant to be conveyed. Like gift-deeds, sale-deeds also often contained details of the rights inherent in the property conveyed. These included the ownership of the subsoil, trees, hills, wells etc., irrigation-rights, easement rights and so on. The document usually concluded with a declaration that the price agreed upon had been fully paid and the land duly conveyed, and that the document concerned was to serve as the acquittance for the sale price⁵⁷ and that no other receipt or acquittance was to be demanded in the future. One sale deed from Ārpākkam⁵⁸ dated a.d. 1232 contains the following provisions: a declaration that the land sold was subject to no encumbrance and that if, in future, the existence of any encumbrance was discovered, the vendor would release the land from it; the usual clause about acquittance for the sale price; a declaration that the purchaser acquired all the rights over the land including the rights to sell, mortgage and give away; that the vendor was not to raise objections at a later stage and plead that the document was void on the score of imperfect wording, illegibility of letters and so on. An inscription from Tiruvaṇṇamalai (1204)⁵⁹ records a resolution of the *māhēśvaras* that houses built on sites in the *Tirumaḍai-viḷāgam* (temple area) were to be sold at a price to be fixed by a superintendent (*kaṇkāṇi*) from the temple treasury, and that half the sale proceeds must be remitted to the temples, the owner of the house being entitled only to the balance. Very often a payment is made in addition to the price of land to cover the future taxes and dues on the land so that it may be conveyed tax-free; in these cases this further payment is also mentioned in the documents and the taxes intended to be remitted specified in detail. Sometimes the *irai-kāval* was a separate document, that is when the taxes were commuted some time after the purchase of the land.