Local Government in Ancient India c14.22

c14.22

¹ ‘It is curious to note that this interesting record is written in both the Tamil and Telugu languages. It is not unlikely that the reason is to be sought for in the fact that the majority of the merchants whom this charter concerned were, perhaps, Tamils, whose capabilities as sailors from very early times have been proved beyond doubt by the series of conquests on sea registered in the eulogistic introductions to the records of the great Cola kings, Rājarāja I and Rājendra-Cola I. The Telugu version of the epigraph [No. 602 of 1909] supplies the additional information that the pillar on which this charter to the sea-merchants is engraved was set up under orders of the minister Somayāmātya in the town of Mukulā, which was probably a surname either of Moṭṭupalli itself or of one of its suburbs' (*Mad. Ep. Report*, 1909-10, pp. 107, 118).