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Studies in Cola History and Administration c9: IV. The Sabhā of Nālūr

Studies in Cōḻa History and Administration c9

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IV. The Sabhā of Nālūr

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We shall study briefly the practical working in the Coḷa period of the assembly (Sabhā) of one of the Brahmadēya villages of the Tanjore district. This study is based on the evidence of contemporary inscriptions which give interesting details of the economic and social life of the village and of the part played by the assembly in it. The name of the village as it occurs in the inscriptions is Nālūr, a Brahmadēya in Śērrūr-kūrram in the Kṣatriya-śikhāmaṇi-vaḷanāḍu, a name applied to N.E. part of the modern district of Tanjore.* In a comparatively early Rājakēsari inscription, the village is called Paḷaiyaśembiyan-mahādēvi-caturvēdi-maṅgalam on the southern bank, apparently of the Kāvēri. In later inscriptions the village gets another name as well, and that is Vāṇavaṇ-mādēvi-caturvēdi-maṅgalam; † it is not possible to say if this name is derived from that of Parāntaka II Sundara Coḷa's queen Vāṇavaṇmahādēvi who is known to have performed suttee on his death, or from that of some other Coḷa queen; it does not appear in records till late in the reign of Kulōttuṅga I. The village has been identified, very plausibly, with Tiru-Nālūr-Tiru-mayāṇam of the hymns of the great Śaiva saint Tirujñānasambandar. ‡ This identification gains support from the name of one of the temples repeatedly mentioned in the inscriptions, viz., Tirumayāṇam-uḍaiya Paramasvāmin.* The name of the village from which these inscriptions come, Tirumeyñāṇam, is a palpable corruption of the more ancient form Tirumayāṇam; and the occurrence of this name with Nālūr in our records leaves no room to question its identity with the shrine celebrated by Sambandar. It is situated within ten miles to the S. E. of Kumbakōṇam. †

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∗ S. I. I. Vol. II, Intro. p. 22. † No. 317 of 1910 of year 3 of Vikramacoḷa. Earlier name in No. 320 of 1910. ‡ By Mr. H. Krishna Sastri in A. R. E. 1911 II, 17.

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† No. 168 in the Śivasthalamañjari by Mr. V. T. Subramania Pillai (Madras 1931.)

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In point of time, the inscriptions range over a period of nearly three centuries and half from the second regnal year of Rājakēsari Āditya I, the father of Parāntaka I, c. A. D. 880, to the seventeenth of Rājarāja III, ‡ c. A. D. 1233; and the series gives us a fair insight into the kind of work that occupied the assembly from time to time during several generations of Cōḷa rule. It is best to arrange some inscriptions from the series in chronological order and give a brief indication of the contents of each before offering a few remarks on the salient features of village life and administration reflected in these records:—

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‡ 321 and 332 of 1910.

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(1) 321 of 1910—Āditya I, 2nd year—The Assembly described as Bhaṭṭapperumakkaḷ-uḷḷiṭṭa peruṅguripperumakkaḷōm borrow 25 kāśu from the Mūlasthānattu-mahādēva, and in return assign the right of collecting aṅgāḍi-kkūli at prescribed rates from stalls opened in the bazaar of the temple (S. I. I. III, 90).

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(2) 320 of 1910—Āditya I (?), 7th year—Gift of land by the Assembly of Tenkarai Paḷaiya-śembiyan-mahādēvi-caturvēdimaṅgalam.

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(3) 327 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 4th year—The Assembly of Akkirama-kōṭṭa-caturvēdimaṅgalam, a

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∗ 313 of 1910.

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Brahmadēya in Tenkarai Tirunāṟaiyūr-nāḍu, makes a gift of land to Śamaparēśvarattu-Perumāṉ-aḍigaḷ of the Nālūr temple.

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(4) 319 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 6th year—Sale of land by the Assembly of Nālūr.

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(5) 312 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 15th year—Sale of land by the Assembly of Nālūr.

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(6) 316 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 15th year—Sale of land by the Assembly of Nālūr.

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(7) 328 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 16th year. Gift(?) of land by the Assembly of Ārūr-ccēri, a Brahmadēya in Tirunāṟaiyūr-nāḍu, to the temple of Tirumayāṉam in Nālūr.

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(8) 309 of 1910—Parāntaka I, 22nd year—Gift of 90 sheep for a lamp.

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(9) 318 of 1910—Parāntaka, Year lost—Sale of land by the Assembly of Nālūr.

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(10) 330 of 1910—Rājarāja I, 15th year—Gift of twelve Iḷa-kkāśu for twelve lamps by a merchant of Nālūr named Tirunāvukkaraiyaṉ to the temple of Tirumayāṉattu-paramēśvara.

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(11) 326 of 1910—Rājarāja I, 23rd year—Gift of land for maintaining a lamp in the Viṣṇu temple Tirunārāyaṇa Viṇṇagar of Nālūr. A meeting of the Assembly of Nālūr was held at the big hall called Gaṇḍarādittaṉ.

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(12) 322 of 1910—Rājarāja I, 24th year—Gift of land to a temple by a merchant. A meeting of the Assembly of Nālūr in a hall called. Rājarājaṉ in front of Śamaparēśvara temple.

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(13) 308 of 1910—Rājarāja I, 24th year—A lease of land. A meeting at Vaṇṇakkaṉār-ambalam of the Assembly of Nālūr, a Brahmadēya in Śērrūr-kūrram.

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(14) 310 of 1910—Rājēndra Cōḷadēva, 24th year. Mentions Śērrūr-kūrram.

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(15) 331 of 1910—Vīrarājēndra Cōḷa, 7th year—Two lamps by a lady to the temple of Tirumayāṉam-uḍaiyār.

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(16) 313 of 1910—Kulōttuṅga Cōḷadēva, 36th year—Two lamps to Tirumayāṉam-uḍaiya Paramasvāmin.

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(17) 323 of 1910—Kulōttuṅga Cōḷadēva, 43rd year—Sale of land by the Assembly to an individual of Vāṉavaṉ-mādēvi-caturvēdimaṅgalam.

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(18) 317 of 1910—Vikramacōḷadēva, 3rd year—Money endowed for a lamp. Nālūr is also called Vāṉavaṉ-mādēvi-caturvēdimaṅgalam.

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(19) 332 of 1910—Rājarāja III, 17th year—Registers a decision of the Assembly of Nālūr alias Vāṉavaṉ-mahādēvi-caturvēdimaṅgalam which met under a tamarind tree. All people who violated the decision that no one should do anything against the interests of the village or against the temple of Tirumayāṉam-uḍaiyār and similar institutions were declared to be grāma-drōhins and were deprived of certain privileges of a social and religious character.

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There seems to be a rather large gap of over a century in these inscriptions between Vikrama Cōḷa and Rājarāja III. We are not able to explain this satisfactorily at present.

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The first thing that strikes us in looking over these inscriptions is their pre-occupation with temples and

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religious charities. The inscriptions themselves are engraved mostly on temple walls; and they generally register endowments of money, land or cattle for the maintenance of lamps and festivals and other means of securing religious merit for the donors or their friends and relatives. This common trait in our inscriptions has led scholars sometimes to underrate their importance in the study of social history and to brush them aside as a mass of dull and dreary narrations of puerile transactions. This tendency is apt to grow if scholars have to depend on bald and occasionally inaccurate summaries of these records, without being able to examine closely the texts themselves. But even the published summaries, if carefully used, can tell us a great deal that is interesting and important about the social and economic life of the country in the past.

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Thus our inscriptions contain references to no fewer than six different shrines in the village, and these include Vaiṣṇava as well as Śaiva deities. The names of these temples are (1) Plāśapurīśvara from which come Nos. 308 and 309 of 1910; (2) Vaṇṇakkaṇār-ambalam where the assembly met once in the 24th year of Rājarāja I (A. D. 1009) for leasing out some land; (3) Śamaparēśvara, the Mahādēva temple which gets some land from the assembly of a neighbouring village and in front of which there was a hall called Rājarājaṇ in which the assembly of the village held a second meeting in the 24th year of the king after whom the hall took its name; (4) Tirumayāṇam-uḍaiya Paramasvāmin also called Mūlasthāṇattu-mahādēva in the inscriptions and represented to-day by the Jñānaparamēśvara temple on whose walls are engraved most of the inscriptions listed earlier in this paper; (5) Agastīśvaram-uḍaiyār temple which received a gift of land in the reign of Parakēsari-varman Rājēndracōḷadēva * and lastly, (6) Tirunārāyaṇa Viṇṇakar containing shrines of (a) Lakṣmīrāghava-dēva † and (b) Kṛṣṇa of the butter-dance (Veṇṇaik-kūttādukinṟa-āḷvār). The presence of so many temples undoubtedly added to the fullness and gaiety of the social life of the place besides contributing to the economic well-being of its inhabitants by the various opportunities for employment it must have offered to them. One inscription tells us for instance of the provision made for the maintenance of persons for playing on the Viṇā (lute) regularly and for reciting the Vedas and the Śrīrudram. The supply of oil and ghee for lamps, of flowers for daily worship and for special occasions, and the provision of all the other requirements of the temples must have furnished constant and secure employment for many persons. Very often endowments took the form of gifts of land to the temples, and the cultivation of these lands at more or less favourable terms of lease under the supervision of the village assembly formed no inconsiderable feature of the economy of rural life. And when new constructions were undertaken or old ones renovated, the people must have had exceptionally good opportunities of employment suited to their abilities and tastes. In all these ways the temple is seen to have been the nucleus round which clustered the daily activities of considerable sections of the people in its neighbourhood.

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Nālūr-Tirumayāṇam being a Brahman village, a Brahmadēya or caturvēdimaṅgalam, its assembly took the form of the Sabhā. It may be noted in passing that a caturvēdimaṅgalam need not necessarily have

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∗ No. 314 of 1910.

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included, as its name may be taken to imply, Brahmans representing each of the four Vedas; *caturvēdi* must, it seems, be taken to be the Sanskrit form of *nāṉmaraiyōṉ* meaning simply a Brahman. And to the form *caturvēdimangalam* was usually prefixed the name of some king, queen or other distinguished person whose benefaction led to the establishment of the *agrahāra*, or a part of it; and in Cōḻa times these names were undergoing frequent changes. We have apparently no information in the inscriptions about some important aspects of the working of this particular *Sabhā*. We do not know whether it functioned through standing committees and whether, if it did, there were any special qualifications governing service on such committees. In the absence of information to the contrary, it is only natural to assume that all the Brahmans of the village were members of the *Sabhā* and that the entire *Sabhā* attended to all the business that came before it.

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We notice that the assembly did not have a fixed meeting place and that it met in different places at different times. The place of meeting is not always recorded; but two inscriptions * tell us of two meetings in the twenty-fourth regnal year of Rājarāja I, one held at the temple called Vaṇṇakkaṉār-ambalam and another in a hall called after the king in front of the Śamaparēśvara temple. One is tempted to imagine that the hall called after Rājarāja was built in front of perhaps the largest temple in the village—this temple receives a gift from a neighbouring village †—to serve as a permanent meeting place for the assembly.

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Once, however, in the reign of Rājarāja III the assembly met under a tamarind tree (*nammūr-paṇḍanēri-ppuḷiyaḍi*). This could not have been due to the absence of a more suitable meeting place; for we have just seen that this was not so. We shall revert to this question presently.

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∗ Nos. 12 and 13 above. † No. 3 above.

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Turning to the functions of the village assembly, we have to observe that until a critical study is made of all the texts of the inscriptions bearing on this subject we shall not be in a position to formulate general conclusions of a trustworthy character. In dealing with individual assemblies, however, we can make note of what seems to be of striking importance in their working, in the hope that when a sufficiently large number of these institutions have been studied in a similar manner, some conclusions of a general character may emerge from such enquiries. In this respect the very first inscription in the list given above, which belongs to about the end of the 9th century is very noteworthy as we see from its published text. The assembly is called Bhatta-pperumakkal-ullitta Perunguri-pperumakkal, i.e., "members of the Great Assembly including the priests of the temple." What accounts for the special mention of the Bhattas? We can hardly suppose that they were not ordinarily members of the assembly and that they attended one meeting of that body for special reasons; for if our view of the composition of the general body of the assembly is correct, the Bhattas being necessarily Brahmans must normally have been entitled to sit and take part in it. The reason for their being mentioned separately must then lie elsewhere. It may be that, as we learn from the details preserved in Uttaramērūr inscriptions of Parāntaka, the Bhattas had some special functions in the assembly. But we know what these functions were in Uttaramērūr; they related mainly to the elections to the vāriyams or committees, and we have no evidence that the committee system obtained at Nālūr. Or possibly, the reason lies in

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the nature of the transaction recorded. For what happened at that meeting was this. The assembly took 25 *kāśu* from the treasury of the temple of Mūlasthāṇattu-mahādēva and in return made a perpetual assignment of a shop-cess (*aṅgāḍi-kkūli*) to the temple. Therefore one of the temples in the village was a party to the transaction, and the specific statement that the particular session of the assembly was attended by the Bhaṭṭas is apparently intended to imply that the other party to the transaction was adequately represented in the assembly. The transaction itself constitutes an interesting specimen of the financial arrangements prevalent at the time. There is some urgent public work such as the making of a new road, the digging of or repairs to an irrigation tank—we do not learn what exactly it was in this case—which it is the duty of the village assembly to provide for and which it cannot meet from its normal resources; it raises a loan from the neighbouring temple which has a treasury as full as the people are pious, and as the assembly does not expect to be ever in a position to repay the principal amount of the loan, it makes some arrangement, in this case an assignment of the shop-cess, by which the interest due every year is secured to the creditor temple. It is a pity that we are unable to form an idea of the rate of interest on this loan; for though we are given particulars of the rate at which the cess was levied, we have no means of forming even a rough idea of its annual money-value. Again it is clear that a cess which, like the present one, was collected in kind at the rate of so much per *kāśu* of sale-proceeds (*kāśin vāy nāli*) of some articles, so much per heap of others sold in heaps, and so such per unit of yet other articles sold by weight or number,—such a cess must have varied considerably in its annual yield and there must have been a large measure of goodwill on either side for such a vague and indefinite financial arrangement going through without a hitch.

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We find further that the *Sabhā* often sells land (4-6), leases it for cultivation (13) or makes gifts (2) of it. Similar powers are exercised by assemblies of other types like the *Ur*, and *Nagaram*. As it is not possible for anyone to give away or sell what is not his own, we have necessarily to conclude that there was some land in the village which was held and administered in common by the whole village besides the individual holdings of each household in it. In one instance the *Sabhā* sells some of its land to an individual in the village (17). Lastly, we find that in late Cōḷa times, in the reign of Rājarāja III, the *Sabhā* of Nālūr met under a tamarind tree outside the village. So also did another *Sabhā* (Brahmadēśam, N. A.) in A. D. 1044 * At that meeting the *Sabhā* sold some land to a Sēnāpati who was the brother of Viramahādēvi. This queen had died perhaps committing suttee we are told that ‘she entered the supreme feet of Brahma in the very same tomb in which the body of King Rājēndra Cōḷa was interred’—and her brother wanted to endow a drinking place to quench her thirst and that of her deceased husband, the Cōḷa king, and the sale of land by the assembly was to enable the Sēnāpati to start this propitiatory foundation. Is it far-fetched to suggest that the assembly met outside the village beneath a tamarind tree because it was engaged in some work not of auspicious import? A similar explanation may hold also in the case from Nālūr Tirumayāṇam. From the decisions recorded, it seems probable that on this occasion the *Sabhā* assembled in the midst of a great commotion caused by some serious misconduct of

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∗ No. 260 of 1915.

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some people in the village or by an apprehension of grave mischief on their part. The *Sabha* decided "that the residents of their village should not do anything against the interests of their village nor against the temple of Tirumayanam-udaiyar and similar institutions; that if they did so, they must suffer as *grama-drohins* did and that persons who acted against this decision should not be allowed the privilege of touching Siva etc." * Here we have a clear instance of the assembly acting as the authority responsible not only for the punishment of local offences but as the custodian of the general conduct of the villagers and the controller of their morals, so to say.

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Nalur with its neighbour called Tirumeyñanam is at the present day a ruined hamlet far from the tracks of modern roads and railways; it has not been without interest to gain from the records on the walls of its ancient temples a peep into its busy life in the days when it shared the prosperity of the smiling lands of the Kaveri delta.

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∗ A. R. E. 1911 II, 30.

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