Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.3

c12.3

The remarkable progress of South Indian Epigraphy in the last thirty years has added much to our knowledge of the social and political affairs of South India in ancient and mediaeval times. With this increase in knowledge, old ideas on the constitution of village assemblies in South India are becoming obsolete, and we are called upon to review them in the light of later discoveries. To many questions concerning the rural life and administration of the country, we can yet offer only tentative answers; but we know more about these matters now than was known in 1904 when Venkayya edited the texts of the celebrated Uttaramērūr records which he had first noticed in great detail a few years before.∗ It is the aim of this study to discuss some of the points which Venkayya left open, and suggest a few corrections and improvements in his interpretation of the records. This is done best by our furnishing annotations on the more difficult parts of the published texts of the two inscriptions of the twelfth and fourteenth years of Parāntaka I distinguished by Venkayya as ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively.†