The Colas c31.26

c31.26

How exactly the measurement of land was carried out to such minute accuracy is not known. But the system of measurement by *vēli* which was an ancient one in the Cōḻa country spread over the other parts of Southern India with the Cōḻa empire and apparently disappeared with it. Cōḻa inscriptions in the Pāṇḍya country for instance used this system, which is not found there either before or after the Cōḻas. For all the minute care bestowed in the inscriptions from Tanjore and elsewhere on the fractional sub-divisions of the *vēli*, the extent of the *vēli* seems itself to have been somewhat indeterminate. The length of the rod (*kōl*) used is gathered from expressions like the 16-span-*kōl*,⁷³ the *kaḍigaikkaḷattu-kōl*,⁷⁴ *śrī-pāda-kōl*,⁷⁵ the *māḷigai-kōl*,⁷⁶ and so on. Not only did the extent of the *kuḻi* differ with the length of the measuring rod used, but the number of *kuḻis* that made up a *mā* or *śeru*,⁷⁷ the twentieth of the *vēli*, also varied considerably. In Kiḻūr in South Arcot, the *mā* contained 256 *kuḻis* by the 16 span rod in the sixth year of Rājēndra I;⁷⁸ in the same year in the Tanjore district (Tiruvāḍuturai) one hundred *kuḻis* by the *māḷigaikōl* made up the *mā*.⁷⁹ About twelve years later, in Tiruvāmāttūr not far from Kiḻūr, 200 *kuḻis* by the 16 span rod were reckoned to the *mā*.⁸⁰ In land-measures, as in currency, therefore, the same tendency to standardisation on the part of the central government can be traced by the side of the persistence of local usage. The *māḷigai-kōl* (the rod of the palace), and the 100-*kuḷi*-*mā* as well as the spread of the *vēli*-unit outside the Cōḷa country proper may be taken as evidence of the attempt to impose a uniform system on the provinces. In the temple at Tiruvālangāḍu in the Tanjore district the length of the standard *kōl* (rod) is marked on the stone wall and on the *gōpuram*, to conform to the *kōl* found engraved on the wall of the Tanjore temple.⁸¹