Local Government in Ancient India c15.31.1

c15.31.1

Besides their capacity to cope with difficult situations, the indigenous local administrations must also be credited with producing a high level of public spirit in the citizens. We have even some instances in which the public spirit or patriotism becomes a passion leading to extremes. No. 411 of 1912, assigned to the eighth year of Rājarāja I, (about A.D. 992) records that 'a certain Kalipperumān lost his life in the act of affording protection against ruin to his native village. Perhaps he sacrificed his life voluntarily, or in defending the village against an invading enemy. The good residents of the district in which Marudāḍu was situated provided for a permanent lamp to burn in the temple of Perundirukkoyil-Āḻvār at that village in order to secure merit for the martyr' (*Mad. Ep. Rep.*, 1912–13, p. 96). Here the patriotism of the individual has been rewarded by the gratitude and abiding recognition of his community which immortalized, by a monument more enduring than brass, the memory of a man who gave up his life for them. Another notable instance of individual service and communal appreciation is recorded in nos. 119 and 120 of 1908. The temple of Tiruttaliyāṇḍa-Nāyanār at Tirupputūr is stated in those records to have been occupied by the encamped Muhammadans (probably under Malik Kāfūr in A. D. 1310), and to have been consequently ruined and desecrated. The inhabitants of Tirupputūr were therefore very much unsettled.