Local Government in Ancient India c13.71

c13.71

We have now considered the evidence of important groups of epigraphic records which give details about the number, composition, and constitution of the various committees through which the assembly administered local affairs. But it should be noted that the number of committees of such village assemblies does not seem to have been the same everywhere. The number seems to have varied with local conditions. No. 688 of 1904 furnishes the names of the following committees, viz. (1) the great men of the wards committee, (2) the great men of the fields committee, (3) the great men (numbering) two hundred, (4) the great men of the village committee, and (5) the great men of the *udāsīna* committee. These together with the learned and other distinguished men of the village are to constitute the village assembly. No. 393 of 1905 mentions the annual garden and tank committees; no. 395 mentions the wards and tank committees; the tank committee (*eri-vāriyam*) is again mentioned in no. 396. Again no. 262 of 1913 mentions another committee in each village, the land-survey committee, which had to classify lands according to their yielding capacity, and also to measure them. This committee was useful in connexion with the survey of land by government, as carried out, for instance, in the seventeenth year of Rājarāja I (*Mad. Ep. Rep.*, 1912–13, p. 96) and in the sixteenth of Kulottuṅga I (no. 317 of 1913 in *Report* for 1913–14, p. 37). The extent, ownership, assessment, classification of land (no. 262, ibid., stating eight classes of land), &c., were to be noted in the village and temple registers by specially appointed clerks, and both such registration and possession were deemed essential to establish ownership. No. 269 of 1912, as well as no. 38 of 1911, similarly mentions a committee to supervise cultivation and collect the produce called *ūrvāriyam*, while no. 257 of 1912 mentions *amṛtagaṇattār* and *gaṇapperumakkal*, as names of assemblies forming probably the executive committee of the village assembly (*Ep. Ind.*, vol. XI, p. 224), which is again referred to in nos. 302, 308, 312, and 315 of 1914. A committee of justice is mentioned in no. 268 of 1910 and also in 259 of 1909 in which it is called *nyāyattār*, with a lady as one of its members.