Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.32

c12.32

according to the *śēris* (ll 6-7). (2) Before that * twelve men shall be chosen, as above (*mērpaḍi*), for the garden committee (ll. 7-8). (3) The remaining six tickets shall constitute the tank committee (ll. 8-9). (4) After the choice of thirty persons in this manner, they shall serve on the three committees for full three hundred and sixty days and then retire. There is nothing in the record to say how exactly it was to be secured that the two larger committees got one man from each *śēri* and from a different *kuḍumbu*, though this seems to be presumed throughout as the proper incidence of representation. On the other hand, it confuses the whole question by talking of tickets being collected according to *śēris*, of electing twelve, one from each *śēri* for one committee, and of twelve others elected similarly for another, and lastly, of the remaining six for yet a third. Again, while referring to future elections, it uses the phrase ‘by allotting pot-tickets to *kuḍumbu* (*kuḍumbukku-kkuḍa-vōlai-iṭṭu*) (l. 9). Moreover, for appointing twelve persons for the *pañcavāra* and ‘gold’ committees (l. 10), thirty tickets were to be allotted to the thirty *kuḍumbus* and twelve chosen therefrom, one for each *śēri*. This is doubtless a badly drafted record, and its wording must have given rise to differences of opinion as to the exact procedure to be adopted at the election. If we consider the distinct superiority of the later record in this respect and the clearness and precision of the procedure laid down in it, and contrast it with the vagueness and the clumsiness that characterise the earlier document, the conclusion seems to be forced on us that the main reason for the revision of the *vyavasthai* (settlement) that was undertaken by the *Sabhā* after an interval of two years, must be sought in the intolerable vexation arising from the imperfections of the earlier settlement which they had bound themselves to observe in perpetuity (l. 11).