Studies in Cola History and Administration c10.13

c10.13

Our inscriptions range from the late Pallava times, that is from the last quarter of the eighth century A. D., to the downfall of the Cōḷa empire in the middle of the thirteenth. Viewed generally, they furnish a striking, though by no means unique, example of the continuity of social life amidst political changes. They comprise records citing late Pallava monarchs, the early Cōḷa conquerors of the Toṇḍaināḍ of the ninth and tenth centuries including Parāntaka I, his Rāṣṭrakūṭa enemy Kṛṣṇa III who gloried in his "capture of Kacci and Tañjai," and the somewhat mysterious Pārthivēndra-varman, before the almost unbroken series of Cōḷa records commences with the reign of Rājarāja I.† Not only do the inscriptions thus reflect all the changes in the political situation in the land, but they furnish tangible evidence that the village Sabhā supplied the element of continuity in local life through such changes. Of many records at Uttaramērūr (and elsewhere) that go to prove such continuity, one of Kulōttuṅga III dated in his thirty-seventh year, about A. D. 1215, is of peculiar importance. In this record of the thirteenth century are recalled transactions which were over three centuries old, and at the instance of the authorities of the temple concerned, the *Sabhā* gives a fresh undertaking to carry out, although on a somewhat reduced scale, the obligations laid upon their ancestors several generations before. The nature of this agreement and the employment of the phrase ‘our ancestors’ (*eṅgal pūrva puruṣāhaḷ*) by the *Sabhā* in mentioning the old endowments, alike show that the idea of a corporation with a continuous life of its own, independent of its personnel which naturally varied from time to time, was clearly grasped by both parties to the agreement. And a little consideration shows also that the primary sanction behind such long-standing engagements is to be found in a general readiness to act up to a proper standard of equity which, though not precisely defined beforehand, can yet be ascertained in each separate case by argument and accommodation. In this instance, though it is not explicit, we may infer that the *Sabhā* had for some time defaulted in the maintenance of some old endowments for eight lamps in the temple; the authorities of the temple, when they discovered the default, drew the attention of the *Sabhā* to it, citing the old records engraved on the stone walls of two temples as evidence; the *Sabhā* pleaded inability to provide for the daily requirements of all the lamps concerned (*niṭṭattēvai - iṟukka - muṭiyāmai*). It would appear that the temple authorities had not been very prompt in their discovery of the default and were constrained to admit the force of the *Sabhā’s* pleading that, in the conditions prevalent at the time, they found it impossible to meet the ancient obligations in their entirety, and a compromise was reached. It is conceivable that if no agreement had been arrived at, an appeal might have been carried by either side to the appropriate official representing the king in the locality, or in the last resort to the king himself, who would have had then to adjudicate the matter.