Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.52

c12.52

‘B’ *l.* 3: *eḷubadu pirāyattin kīḻ muppattaindu pirāyattin mēṟpaṭṭār*: The age limit here laid down is 35 to 70 as against 30 to 60 of ‘A’. Venkayya suggested * that this change was due either to ‘young men’ having kept the company of ‘wicked men’ or to experience having shown rashness still persisting in the administration of the committees. This will account for raising the lower age-limit from 30 to 35 but not for putting up the higher limit. It would seem that this variation in the age-limits prescribed for service on committees has no very special reason underlying it, unless it be a realisation that too many competent people in the village over sixty had been kept out by the earlier rule, and that the newer limits were more in accordance with the age-distribution of the population in the village. In other words, this may be only a minor change which was effected incidentally because a revision of the rules had been necessitated by more imperious reasons.