Local Government in Ancient India c13.116

c13.116

The evolution of larger associations and confederations is also evidenced in the inscriptions. They provided the material conditions and facilities for the growth of a wider political and democratic life in the country. They served as the organs of a larger public opinion controlling and organizing larger democracies. No. 28 of 1913 records the meeting under a president of the residents of the eighteen divisions at which the deficiency shown in the total area of a division was rectified. No. 521 of 1912 similarly records that the *nāḍu* and *nagara* of Urrattūr-nāḍu assembled in the hall called Uttamasola-Maṇḍapa of a temple and converted a village into a mercantile town. No. 59 of 1914 refers to the assembly of Parāntaka-nāḍu which enters into an agreement with the *Valaṅgai* 98 and the *Iḍaṅgai* 98 sects regarding the payment of dues to the king. No. 67 of 1906 mentions the assembly of seventynine Nāḍus to administer justice in a criminal case. No. 80 of 1906 refers to a meeting of the people from all quarters and Nāḍus for a similar purpose. No. 91 of 1906 refers to a similar assembly of ‘1,500 men of four quarters’. No. 600 of 1908 records the sale of land through ‘the great assembly of twelve Nāḍus’. Thus these larger assemblies must have been well defined political structures, regularly functioning, when they exercised such executive and judicial functions. No. 76 B (*S.I.I.*, vol. II, part III) refers to the grant of a village made in the presence of the Nāḍu assembly. No. 274 of 1910 informs us of officers attached to the Nāḍu assembly who sign the trust-deed under which the assembly receives a gift. This further shows that these larger Nāḍu assemblies were well organized as actual working and governing bodies and not mere temporary associations. No. 404 of 1911 points to the same conclusion, showing a Nāḍu assembly imposing a special impost upon every village within its jurisdiction to provide an embankment which would protect all the villages against floods. Thus their co-operation was enforced for their common good by their common and supreme political authority. The assembly of a larger area or division, viz., *koṭṭam* is referred to in no. 73 (*S. I. I.*, vol. II, part III).