Local Government in Ancient India c12.25

c12.25

¹ The motive for such benefactions was sometimes connected with the prevailing belief that the spirit of a dead man is consumed by extraordinary thirst, and that it has to be appeased by charities of a watering-shed, well, or tank. An instance of this is mentioned in a record of the time of Rājarāja I (see *Mad. Ep. Report*, 1914), and another in the twenty-sixth year of his reign recording a gift of land for maintaining a watering-shed in order that the thirsty spirit of his sister, the deceased queen Vīramahādevī (evidently the wife of King Rājendra-Cola I) might be appeased (*Mad. Ep. Report*, 1916, p. 118). No. 422 of 1915, however, quotes the words of the *Mahābhārata*, stating that the person in whose tank the thirsty cows, beasts, birds, and men drink water obtains the fruit of performing the Aśvamedha-sacrifice, thus expressing probably the true motive of these secular charities.