The Colas c9.8

c9.8

Several inscriptions were obviously intended to publish and preserve in a more or less permanent form decisions and agreements on matters of public importance. In this class, which though not extensive is doubtless of greater interest to the student than the more numerous donative records, we find royal orders on taxation and land-revenue, the resolutions of village assemblies on their own constitutional arrangements, their awards in disputes between communities or other corporate organisations, judgments delivered against persons guilty of theft, adultery, murder and other crimes, and political compacts between powerful feudatory chieftains of particular localities. Quite often, inscriptions on temple walls served the purpose of a public registration office by conserving a trustworthy record of sales, mortgages and other forms of transfers of property-rights in village-lands.¹¹ Sometimes a record is expressly described as the copy of a copperplate grant.¹² A unique inscription from Tiruviḍaivāyil (Tanjore) preserves an otherwise unknown Dēvāram of Ñānasambandar on the local shrine.