Studies in Cola History and Administration c9.40

c9.40

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.