Local Government in Ancient India c13.165

c13.165

Certain South Indian inscriptions throw light on the relations between the king and the local bodies in this regard, and record several interesting cases of the royal power being invoked and exercised in the interest either of the assemblies or of aggrieved parties. A village assembly had misappropriated some money which was deposited with them as a trust-fund for a temple. The temple authorities thereupon sought redress at the hands of the king. He sent for both the parties and instituted a proper inquiry, as a result of which the guilt of the assembly was proved and they were fined and made to refund the money to the temple (*Madras Epigraphy, Annual Report*, 1906–7, p. 71). An inscription assigned to about A.D. 1291 records the case of the misconduct of a Brāhman member of an assembly who brought ‘a widow from a foreign country’ and lived with her, and against him the assembly reports to the king (ibid., 1908–9, p. 83). In another inscription the same village assembly for the purpose of paying their homage to the king alienated some land to raise money for the cost of the journey (ibid., p. 84). An inscription assigned to A.D. 1303 records the case of a village assembly seeking the protection of the king against an intruder into the village who succeeded in intimidating the assembly and confining the members in the temple (ibid.). Another inscription mentions a village assembly appropriating some of its revenues towards securing the friendship of the king’s agents (ibid., 1912–13, p. 114). In another, money is raised by the assembly for the performance of public prayers on behalf of a sick member of the royal family (ibid., 1898–9, p. 20). An inscription in the Great Temple of Tanjore (no. 57 in Hultzsch, *S. Ind. Inscr.*, vol. II, p. 227) gives a list of village assemblies, each of which was required by the king to supply watchmen for the temple. One of the Tiruvallam inscriptions, assigned to a.d. 991, records the visit of a royal personage to the temple. Observing that the offerings in the temple had been reduced to a minimum and that the temple lamps were only burning feebly, he calls upon the assembly in charge of the trust funds deposited with them for those purposes to render accounts (Hultzsch, *S. Ind. Inscr.*, vol. III, no. 49, p. 102). Another inscription of the same series (ibid., no. 57) records how two royal officers (the minister, Adhikārin, and the Senāpati) met at Kāñcipuram and called for the accounts of the villages belonging to the Tiruvallam temple. One of the two decided that the revenues from certain villages (named in the record) should be assigned to the temple for expenses not previously provided for, and called in the aid of a large assembly to make allotments from this revenue for various heads of the temple expenditure. In no. 268 of 1910 we find the assembly being fined by the king for not doing their duties as trustees of the temple property. The fines are to go to the royal exchequer and the 'council of justice'. A most important and typical case of royal interference is recorded in two inscriptions at Uttaramallūr (*Arch. Surv. of India, Annual Report*, 1904-5, p. 134), probably a Brāhmaṇa village, where local government was very nearly wrecked by gross mismanagement, giving dishonest men opportunity even to embezzle communal funds and decline to render accounts. The king in A.D. 918-19 deputed one of his Śūdra officers with special instructions to set matters right. The settlement he made not having worked well, the king had again to interfere in A.D. 920-21 and to depute a Brāhmaṇa officer from the Cola country to improve upon the system devised by the Śūdra commissioner more than a year earlier.