Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.61

c12.61

The first prohibitory clause deals with those who had served on committees and were in default, and their relatives. The earlier record pronounced a general prohibition directed against the relatives of all persons who had served on committees. This general prohibition was perhaps too wide, vague and unjust in its incidence. First, it did not define the relatives in any more specific manner than by employing the adjective 'close' (*aṇiya*). Secondly, it did not specify any period of time to which the prohibition applied. For these reasons, and possibly out of a sense of the injustice of excluding for an indefinite period the relatives of all men, good and bad alike, who had served on the committees, the assembly felt the need for making the exclusions and prohibitions more specific in character and duration. We find, accordingly that this first clause only excludes those who, having served on committees, failed to render accounts, and twelve classes of their relatives from service on committees; but it specifies no period, and we have therefore to assume that a permanent exclusion of these persons was contemplated. The same must be taken to apply to all similar cases that follow.