Studies in Cola History and Administration c12.9

c12.9

context to be used to describe duties to be performed by an individual. The Mānūr inscription of Māṟaṉ Śaḍaiyaṉ contains the earliest use of ‘vāriyam’ known to me in the phrase: * “muḷuccirāvaṉai illādāṉai evvakai - ppaṭṭa - vāriyamum ēṟaṇḍa - pperā - dārāgavum” that is, ‘that they shall not appoint to any vāriyam anybody who does not possess a full share’. ‘Vāriyam’ here may well mean a committee; but there is nothing in the context to preclude its being some office or privilege held by an individual. The Tamil dictionaries simply give the meaning ‘income’ for the word ‘vāri’; but Kittel, in his Kanarese-English dictionary, gives under the word ‘vāri’ the meaning “unrelenting demand”, and this suggests a possible meaning, “collection of dues or taxes,” for the word ‘vāriyam.’ If this meaning is adopted, it will follow, further, that this collection may be the work of an individual or a group of men, a committee. Thus ‘vāriyam-āga’, that is ‘becoming vāriyam,’ as applied to a royal officer may mean that he was there in Uttaramērūr representing the king and collecting certain royal dues from the village. On this view, the phrase ‘ivvuṇḍu mudal’ meaning ‘from this year’ must be taken both in ‘A’ and ‘B’ to mark the year from which the officer named in either case was appointed as ‘vāriyam’; but there seem to be no other instances of such a permanent deputation of an official of the king’s service for the collection of royal dues from Brahmadēya villages. The only other supposition we can reasonably make is that the officer became a member of the vāriyam; but this raises a difficulty as there were many vāriyams in the village, and there seems to be no method of deciding to which of these the king’s officer was assigned.