Local Government in Ancient India c14.11

c14.11

(5) The *Ayyapolil* guild of merchants, consisting of 500 members with their organization extending almost throughout Southern India, as indicated in a record in the reign of Vikrama-Cola (no. 97 of 1915 and *Mad. Ep. Rep.*, 1916, p. 121). They are ‘known from a large number of epigraphical records to have run a flourishing trade in the early centuries of the Christian era both by land and sea’.