Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.45

c12.45

Duṣṭar keṭṭu śiṣṭar vardhittiḍuvārāga : In view of some statements made by Venkayya, it seems necessary to say that this expression has no very specific significance. It is the object of all government to restrain the wicked and promote the welfare of the good. Venkayya understands by 'śiṣṭa' 'the rest', and 'B' has 'viśiṣṭar' in the same context in the place of 'śiṣṭar'. But the whole formula occurring in the record of the proceedings of a Brāhmaṇ assembly has to be understood, it seems to me, in the light of the celebrated adage of the Gītā: "paritrāṇāya sādhūnām vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām" (IV. 8.) In any case, I cannot help feeling that Venkayya has treated these words as a more concrete account of the affairs of the village than in reality they are. He says: "We have reason to suppose that local administration was very near being wrecked in an important village not far from the premier city of the Cōḷa dominions, (Kāñcīpuram). The rules regulating the constitution of village assemblies (!) and the method of selection of committee members seem to have been lax, and unscrupulous and ignorant men appear to have taken advantage of the opportunity to embezzle communal funds, and would not render accounts.† The king deputed one of his Śūdra officers, with special instructions, in A. D. 918-9, to set matters right. Owing, perhaps, to his want of experience and to the excitement of the villagers over the evil doings of the ‘wicked men’ of the village, the rules which he promulgated (A below) must have made matters worse, and the consequences of his mistakes were felt during the second year the rules were in operation. The king had to depute a Brāhmaṇa officer of his from the Cōḷa country to improve upon the system devised more than a year ago. Accordingly, on the sixteenth day of the fourteenth year of the king’s reign (A. D. 920-21) a carefully worked out set of rules (B below) was framed and promulgated in order that the ‘wicked men of the village might perish and the rest prosper.’ The rules leave no doubt whatever as to who the wicked men were and wherein their wickedness lay.” These statements of Venkayya give a measure of the extent to which he allowed the general formula about duṣṭa nigraha and śiṣṭa paripālana so well established in the parlance of Indian Sanskrit culture to influence his view of the settlement of the constitution of the committees by the Sabhā of Uttaramērūr. And one can hardly fail to observe that the identity of the ‘wicked men’ who caused all the trouble does not seem to be so clear from the records as it was to Venkayya, or that the difference in the caste of the officers deputed by the king on the two occasions might have been anything more than an accident. In any event, there is nothing in the words employed in the inscriptions that cannot be explained without supposing that the Śūdra officer bungled it and that the Brāhmaṇa officer of the Cōḷa country was more successful in dealing with the situation. The reforms consisted, in our view, in the introduction in Uttaramērūr of a fully developed committee system of village administration