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PEASANT STATE AND SOCIETY
IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA
PEASANT STATE AND SOCIETY
IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

BURTON STEIN

DELHI
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD NEW YORK
1980
 Oxford University Press
OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW

NFW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM CAPE TOWN

KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOKYO

DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI

© Oxford University Press 1980

Filmset by All India Press, Pondicherry

printed by Rajbandhu Industrial Co., New Delhi 110027
and published by R. Dayal, Oxford University Press
2/11 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
 Preface

This book is somewhat perverse in theoretical and historiographical

senses. Being about peasants without lords who established and
maintained great states, enduring and complex local institutions,
and elaborate religious institutions, it is a study which denies, or
at least questions, certain of the strongly held conceptions of what
peasant society is in contemporary social science. Being1-a book
about early South Indian society viewed at the interface of what
is usually considered the ‘little’ and the ‘great’ tradition, a study
which looks upward and downward from this interface, as it
were, and further, a study which is concerned with social and
cultural change, it is also a work which denies, or seriously ques¬
tions, much of the extant historiography on early South India.
The purpose of this study was never conceived as historiogra¬
phical, that is, an essay upon the established interpretations of
some part of the medieval past of South India. Yet, it has become
such a study. Issues in South Indian history which have acquired
a comfortable and comforting acceptablity amongst many
students are found not to stand well before the queries this study
poses. The nature of the political system and the state have been
found to be wrongly conceived by scholars of the past; institutions
such as the peasant village, its locality context and rural groups
have been found to be poorly characterized, not so much on a
factual basis, but in the constructions put upon the extant evidence.
This has required the re-examination of much that has been written
and what, for some readers, will seem a heavy burden of tedious
recapitulation of old arguments and evidence. The cause of cumula¬
tive scholarship makes any other mode of exposition less than
responsible, but an inevitable consequence for some readers will
be the presence of too much detail and for others the appearance
of disrespect, even arrogance, about what previous scholars in
this field have accomplished.
This would be an understandable but unfortunate conclusion.
This study began as an effort to discover in the published scholar¬
ship on medieval South India a basis for dealing with, or con-
 • '
..

.
 Contents

Preface V
Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation xi
Glossary xiii
Abbreviations XV
Introduction 1
I South India: The Region 30
II Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order: Brahman
and Peasant in Early South Indian History 63
III Peasant Micro Regions: the Nadu 90
IV The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 141
V Right and Left Hand Castes (valangai and idahgai) 173
VI The Transition to Supra-local Integration in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 216
VII The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 254
VIII The Vijayanagara State and Society 366
Bibliography 489
Index 519

MAPS facing page

1-1 The South Indian Region 30
IV-1 Brahmadeya Distribution c. a.d. 1300 150
VII-1 The Chola Macro Region c. a.d. 1300 286
VII-2 Tondaimandalam Zonal Divisions c. a.d. 1300 310

FIGURES

VIII-1 Temples of Tamil Nadu, a.d. 1300-1750, by Mandalam,

Deity and Period 460
VII1-2 Proportions of Temples of Tamil Nadu, by Deity,
for Four Periods, a.d. 1300-1750 461
x Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

TABLES

III-l Areal Variation of Selected Nadus a.d. 1300 93

III-2 Selected Large and Populous Cholamandalam Nadus by
Area, Villages, and Relation to Water Supply 95
III-3 ‘New Nadus’ (First References) in Cholamandalam and
Naduvil-AWu, a.d. 850-1300 96
VII-1 Distribution of Chola inscriptions and Brahmadeyas by
Selected Madras Taluks to 1915 308
VII-2 Segmentary Areal Groupings in the Central Tamil
Plain during Chola Times 312
VIII-1 Village Endowments to the Tirupati Temple and
Types of Tenure by Donor Groups, 1509-68 430
VIII-2 Monetary Endowments to the Tirupati Temple,
1509-68 431
VIII-3 Temples of Tamil Nadu, a.d. 1300-1750, by Deity,
Mandalam and District 456
VIII-4 Temples of Tamil Nadu, a.d. 1300-1750, by Deity,
Period and Mandalam 458
VIII-5 Temples, a.d. 1300-1750, by Modem Taluks
Arranged by Mandalams 462
VIII-6 Valangai-Idahgai Designation 474
 Note on Transliteration and
Pronunciation

Certain Indian-language terms have not been transliterated. These

include proper nouns such as the names of castes (e.g. Reddi),
kings (e.g. Rajaraja), places (e.g. Tanjavur), and authors and titles
of Indian-language texts (e.g. Civakacintamani by Tiruttakkadeva).
Also included among the untransliterated words are those well-
established enough in English usage to appear in the Concise
Oxford Dictionary 6th.ed. (e.g. vihara, sastra, puja). Finally, a
selection of frequently used, technical terms have been separately
glossed (q.v. ‘Glossary’); after having been transliterated in their
first use in the text they are simply italicized thereafter.
The transliteration of Sanskrit words has followed Monier-
Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (see ‘Abbreviations’) and
Dravidian words generally have followed the D.E.D. augmented
by the M.U.T.L. (see ‘Abbreviations’) for Tamil words. There
are two exceptions to this. The first involves Sanskrit borrowings
into the Tamil where the orthographic system of the latter is
peculiarly unadaptive and results in awkward, at times unintelligi¬
ble, constructions (e.g. brahmotsava, the principal annual festival
of a temple, is rendered by the M.U.T.L. as piramorcavam); in
such cases, Sanskrit transliteration is followed to which is added
an rn as occurs in earlier usage (hence: brahmotsavam; and grd-
mam, village, for kiramam; prasadam, consecrated offering, for
piracatam; prabandham, poetic composition, for pirapantam).
The other deviation from the D.E.D. and M.U.T.L. schemes
for Tamil follows the practice of rendering the voiceless stops
p, f, k, in initial positions of a word as voiced stops b, d, g, when they
occur between vowels, and rendering the hard palatal ( as d. Thus:
parambu, revenue account, not parampu; tiruccendur, a temple
town, not tiruccentur; and kongu, a large territory in Tamil country,
not konku. However, in Tamil and other Dravidian languages,
long or double consonants occur (e.g., ndttdr, those of the country
or locality); these and kk, nn are pronounced as in the English
xii Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

ho/ tea, black cow, ten wights. The letters r and r are trilled, and
the long consonant rr is pronounced with a hard trill (thus: kurram,
a local territorial unit, is pronounced like kootrum; similarly, nr
is pronounced ndr as in the English laundry.
 Glossary

The following selection of terms are formally transliterated on

their first occurrence in the text and thereafter appear in italic
script only. After each transliterated term, the language and a
brief definition are given. Where appropriate, the location in the
text, where a full discussion of the term occurs, is also given.
Standard glossaries for the material in this book are: MUTE;
S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, following p. 1610; D.C. Sircar, IndianEpigraphical
Glossary, Motilal Banarsidass, 1966; T.V. Mahalingam, South
Indian Polity, 2nd ed., University of Madras, Madras, 1967,
p. 421 flf (see 'Abbreviations’).

amman. Tamil. Goddess; divine lady; q.v., ch. VI.

bhakii. Sanskrit. Doctrinal principle of salvation through devo¬
tion; q.v., ch. I.
brahmadeya. Sanskrit. Gift to Brahmans; specifically, a grant of
village income and management to Brahmans; q.v., ch. IV.
devaddna. Sanskrit. Gift to gods; specifically, the endowment of
income from land or a village to a temple; q.v., ch. I.
gahgavadi. Tamil. Territorial unit, like mandalam (q.v.) in Karna¬
taka.
ghatika. Sanskrit. Centre for advanced studies; same as Tamil
salai (from Sanskrit: sala).
kallar. Tamil. A people of southern Tamil country.
kammalar. Tamil. Artisan-traders, usually including five groups,
hence also pahca/ar.
kurram. Tamil. Local territory, especially in tondaimandalam
(q.v., mandalam).
mandalam. Sanskrit. Large territorial units of which the principal
ones are : tondaimandalam, colamandalam, kohgumandalam, pandi-
mandalam.
maravar. Tamil. A people of southern Tamil country.
matha. Sanskrit. Seminary; educational centre.
nddu. Tamil. Local territory; nattar, those of the territory; q.v.,
ch. III.
xiv Glossary

nayaka. Sanskrit. Title of chief; nayarikara, status of chief; q.v.,

ch. VIII.
nu[o]lambavadi. Tamil. Large territory, like mandalam (q.v.).
periyancidu. Tamil. Big-nadu (q.v.); a territory comprising several
nadus; q.v., ch. VI.
prasasti. Sanskrit. Eulogy; eulogistical preamble to inscriptions;
meykkirtti in Tamil.
sabha. Sanskrit. Assembly; specifically, the assembly of a brah-
madeya (q.v.) village; also mahasabha, q.v., ch. IV.
sangam. Sanskrit: samgha. Community of Buddhist or Jaina
sectarians; specifically, such a community or academy of Jaina
literary scholars in fifth century Madurai.
ur. Tamil. Village and assembly of a village; urar, those of the
village.
valangai-idangai. Tamil. Right and left hand; specifically, castes
of the right and left division; Kannada: balagai-edagai.
 Abbreviations

A.R.E. India, Department of Archaeology, Annual

Report on Indian Epigraphy. Published under
slightly different titles and in different places
from 1887.
D. E.D. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, T. Burrow
and M.B. Emeneau, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1961.
E. C. Epigraphia Carnatica, 16 v., Government Press,
Mysore/Bangalore/Madras, 1889-1955.
E.I. Epigraphia Indica, Archaeological Survey of
India, Calcutta/Delhi, 1892.
H.C.G.E.S.I. Historical and Cultural Geography and Ethnology
of South India with Special Reference to Cola
Epigraphs, B. Suresh Pillai, Deccan College
Ph.D. Thesis, Poona, 1965.
H. S.I. A History of South India from Prehistoric Times
to the Fall of Vijavanagar, Oxford University
Press, Madras, 1955.
I. A. The Indian Antiquary, Madras, Bombay, 1872-.
I.E.S.H.R. The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
Delhi, 1963-.
I.H.Q. The Indian Historical Quarterly, Calcutta, 1925-.
I. M.P. A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the
Madras Presidency, Collected till 1915 with Notes
and References., V. Rangacharya, ed., 3 vols.,
Government Press, Madras, 1919.
J. A.H.R.S. Quarterly Journal of the Andhra Historical Re¬
search Society, Rajahmundry, 1926-.
J.A.O.S. Journal of the American Oriental Society, New
Haven, 1843-.
J.I.H. Journal of Indian History, Trivandrum, 1921 -.
J.R.A.S. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1834-.
M. U.T.L. Tamil Lexicon; Published under the Authority
xvi Abbreviations

of the University of Madras, 6 v., University of

Madras, Madras, 1936.
Q.J.M.S. The Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society,
Bangalore, 1910-.
SI. I. South Indian Inscriptions, Archaeological Survey
of India, Madras/Delhi, 1890-.
s.r.T.i. South Indian Temple Inscriptions, 3 v., T.N. Sub-
ramaniam, ed., Government Oriental Series,
Madras, 1953-7.
T.A.S. Travencore Archaeological Series, 9 v., Tri¬
vandrum, 1910-41.
T.A.S.S.I. Transactions of the Archaeological Society of
South India, Madras, 1955-.
T.T.D.I. Tirumalai-Tirupati Devast hanam Epigraphical
Series; Report on the Inscriptions of the Devas-
thanam Collection and 6 v. of texts, S. Subrah-
manya Sastry, ed., Madras, 1930-8.
Wilson Glossary H.H. Wilson, A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue
Terms, Munshiram Manoharlal [reprint], Delhi,
1968.
 Introduction

This study was begun many years ago in an effort to establish the
foundation for an analysis of modern agricultural development
in the Madras Presidency of the British period and its successor
administrative units in independent India. The task proved to be
an extended one, and the results presented here are far less complete
than was naively planned at the outset. As originally intended,
the benchmark analysis of the South Indian agrarian system was
to come up to the nineteenth century. This has not proved possible.
Essentially what is presented is an analysis of the South Indian
agrarian system to the end of the Chola period, the late thirteenth
century; to this has been added a discursive final chapter suggesting
trends to the seventeenth century.
Partly, the inordinate time required for the preparation of this
study resulted from the need to master a vast and complex corpus
of evidence. It was supposed at the outset that this evidence had
already been more or less satisfactorily synthesized by three gene¬
rations of scholarship on the medieval period of South Indian
history. This supposition proved an incorrect one. Denigration
of this published work is not intended by the last observation
and by references below to viewpoints in the extant published
work against which reservations and, even more blunt, disagree¬
ments are lodged. By comparison with other parts of the Indian
sub-continent, the literature on medieval South India possesses
distinguished scholarly qualities. And, it may be added that while
one reason for this relative excellence has been the richness of the
inscriptipnal records of the South Indian medieval age, the obverse
side of this richness has been an enormous task of analysis and
synthesis. Repeatedly in the discussion below, grateful cognizance
is taken of the accomplishments of the author’s predecessors.
Still, the purposes of cumulative scholarship — the serious exami¬
nation and re-examination of the findings of one’s predecessors
— has resulted in an overall critique of the established historio¬
graphy on medieval South India. It is also to be recognized that
the present writer’s interests and his somewhat different theoretical
2 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

assumptions have led to the raising of questions and the elucidation

of findings which are antagonistic to some of the established his¬
toriography. If in nothing else, the concentration upon peasant
society and culture would have assured this dissonant relationship
with respect to much that has been written on medieval South
India.
The peasant societies of medieval South India are more ancient,
durable and, yes, elegant than most in the world. Yet, the rich
historical literature on South India affords few descriptions of
these peasant societies and almost none relating peasantry to other
social elements in the development of Indian society and culture.
References to agricultural techniques, landholding, crops, market
organization, and relations among peasant agriculturists and
others, including formal political authority, may be found scattered
throughout the historical literature, but only rarely is systematic
attention given to any of these matters save that of land revenue.1
In too many monographs and, of course, in the more general
histories of medieval South India, it is assumed that the relationship
existing between the web of social and cultural phenomena com¬
prising medieval South Indian peasant society and other sectors
of the social order was obvious and unchanging. It is as if events
and the historical process of which they are part moved past or
around agrarian arrangements, just as in the charming Indian
tradition of the peasant who worked his field while a battle raged
nearby because he knew that warriors were obliged, by their dharma,
to respect the cultivated field! Similarly, authors have seen fit to
treat with all agrarian matters in a chapter usually entitled 'land
revenue’ in which it is often stated that the ruler or dynasty under
study obviously recognized the importance of agriculture and took
considerable care to follow injunctions about the proportion of
revenue to be collected and the compassionate remission of revenue
during difficult times. At the same time, however, the ‘state’
or the ‘king’ is supposed to have collected revenue from microsco¬
pically small plots!
The naivete of this conception of the relationship between land
and society has been responsible for much poor history. To reduce
agrarian relations to a matter of land revenue and then simply to
1 Morris D. Morris and Burton Stein, ‘The Economic History of India’, Journal
of Economic History, v. 21, June, 1961, pp. 179-201, provides a general critique of
this characteristic of Indian historiography.
 Introduction 3

inventory a melange of taxes, as is often done, is to dismiss a whole

range of vital questions pertaining to the material basis of medieval
South Indian life. To be sure, these questions are not necessarily
the most important with which an historian can occupy himself.
However, the failure in the existing historiography on early South
India to seriously address the matter of agrarian organization
has had two obvious consequences. First, it is not possible from
the existing writing to formulate a progressive or cumulative under¬
standing of the South Indian agrarian order with reference to
which more recent developments could be understood. Second,
and obviously, without serious consideration to the agrarian
arrangements of the medieval age, many other aspects of medieval
society — most notably political arrangements — have been poorly
analysed.
The present study attempts to remedy these deficiencies. It also
attempts to provide the foundation for a broad, new interpretation
of medieval South Indian history based upon a central concern
with peasant society and culture. The spatial context of the study
is first considered and criteria set forth according to which the
'South Indian region’ is defined. Chapter II is a speculative essay
on the origins of the peasant agrarian system prior to the Chola
period. The next three chapters take up salient institutions of
peasant society from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries: the
basic ethnic-ecological unit, the nadu; the cultural and agrarian
significance of Brahman settlements, brahmadeya; and the bifurca¬
tion of middle and low ranked social groups into the dual division
of ‘right-hand’ and ‘left-hand’ peoples, valangai and idangai.
Chapter VI outlines a set of significant changes which can be
identified in the late Chola period of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. These changes and the processes which generated them
provide the basis for the society and culture of the Vijayanagara
period, the fourteenth to the sixteenth century; this latter period is
discussed in the final chapter, Chapter XIII. The nature of the Chola
state occupies a lengthy Chapter VII. The conception of the
Chola state and its successors as ‘segmentary’ is offered as an alter¬
native model of political organization to that which presently
exists because it more satisfactorily orders the existing evidence on
governance and because it incorporates a theory of political orga¬
nization which is consonant with the kind of peasant society
presented in the evidence on medieval South India.
4 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The central problem of this study is that of explicating the

agrarian basis of South India during the Chola age and later. It
has already been stated that a broader concern had originally
informed this study. The outline of this original conception has
been published elsewhere.2 In justification of the present, more
limited, study, it may be said that the Chola period is the necessary
starting place for any longitudinal interest in the agrarian system
of the Tamil plain and its extensions into the interior upland of
modern Salem, Coimbatore, portions of the Arcots, and major
portions of the Karnataka plateau and the Andhra plain. From
the ninth to the twelfth centuries, the foundation of a system of
agrarian organization was established which appears to have
endured through most of the subsequent career of the agrarian
order to the nineteenth century.
The duration and spatial scope of the Chola state ranks it as
one of the great states of India’s pre-modern age. Moreover,
thousands of stone and metal inscriptions of the Cholas have been
noticed in the annual reports of the Epigraphical Department of the
Governments of Madras and India, and those of several princely
states. The texts of about 3,500 Tamil inscriptions of the Chola
period have been published. Possibly half of these inscriptions
deal with land arrangements of some sort. In the sheer number
of historical inscriptions dealing with agrarian arrangements, the
several dynasties of medieval South India would — and do —
assume major importance. But one goes beyond this to observe,
finally, that during the Chola age we are afforded the first view
— though it is not always a clear view — of how wealthy and
powerful peasants, Brahmans, great chiefs and kings, and to some
extent those dependent upon these leaders of the society of the
time, shaped a highly variegated landscape to their distinctive
purposes. And the arrangements established regarding land
during the Chola period persisted into the modern age notwith¬
standing political, social, and cultural developments which trans¬
formed many crucial aspects of South Indian life.
The interaction of Brahmans and localized peasant folk consti¬
tuted the primary cultural nexus of medieval South Indian peasant
society. Mythologically and ideologically, Brahmans traced their
2 ‘Integration ot the Agrarian System of South India’ in Robert E. Frykenberg
(ed.). Land Control and Social Structure in Indian Historv, University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison, 1969, pp. 175-217.
 Introduction 5

origins to the pure Gangetic land of Aryavarta. Gotra names

preserve this element of spatially pure substantiality. The research
of modern scholars, most of whom have either been Brahmans or
Europeans partly disposed to Brahmanical views, has tended to
accept the mythology and ideology of Brahmans as strangers —
outsiders — to South India. At least that has been true until
quite recently when it became impolitic in South India to make
such claims. However, except in the sense that most peninsular
peoples are descendants of an archaic migratory folk who made
their way into the peninsula, there is no validity to the claim of a
primordial ethnic separateness of Brahmans from most others of
the southern peninsula. In fact, non-Brahman castes of the twen¬
tieth century often claim an equally remote origin. Thus, during
the medieval period and subsequently, Brahmans are best seen
as peninsular folk who, in the manner of Brahmans everywhere
in India, maintained and transmitted some portion of the totality
of esoteric and dharmic knowledge which aggregatively is the
Brahman tradition in India.
Certain portions of that total tradition have always been regarded
as uniquely southern, such as the White Yajur Veda school and
what is perhaps the most significant of the intellectual and ritual
elaborations of the Brahmanical tradition — e.g., Vedanta and the
Panchatantra agamic temple tradition. Medieval dharma texts
also recognize that the Brahmans of southern India differ from
northern Brahmans in some of their customs. This, in a somewhat
facile way, is seen as a consequence of cultural interaction; e.g.,
Brahmanical cultural traditions are seen to have transformed
Dravidian ‘folk’ culture. But, ‘folk’ is hardly an appropriate
modifier to apply to the often great elegance and depth of the
Dravidian culture revealed in Classical Tamil poetry. According
to this earliest evidence, both traditions modified each other.
When the relationship between peasant carriers of the ‘folk’
cultural traditions of South India and the Brahman carriers of
something called the ‘great tradition of India is considered, it is
an inescapable conclusion that the distinction is wholly cultural:
it is ideas, not distinctive origins; it is principles, not ethnicity,
which defines the nature of the interaction of the ‘great’ and ‘folk’
traditions of South India.
Nor can the relationship between what tends to be regarded as
Dravidian ‘folk’ traditions and the Brahmanical ‘great’ tradition
 6 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

be dichotomized in the structural categories ‘urban-rural’. That

has been touched upon above. Brahmans are no more people
of cities than non-Brahmans are carriers of the folk tradition. In
any case, cities — distinctively urban socio-cultural contexts —
are relatively unimportant in ancient India at least from the deep
antiquity of Harappan times. D. D. Kosambi spoke of ‘rustic’
Brahmans of the post-Gupta age in northern India in the sense of
being a metamorphosis of an earlier urban condition.3 Even
granting this conception of a fundamental disjunction in India’s
ancient historical period — the decline of its cities — by medieval
times it is no longer possible to make the kind of distinction which
occurs in many other peasant societies, and is considered to be
generic. The city for Kroeber and Redfield and others who have
discussed the cultural aspect of peasant societies has been seen as
a necessary pre-condition of peasant society; that other ‘part’
to which peasant society and culture are linked. The low order of
importance of urban areas in medieval South India has implica¬
tions beyond the cultural aspects of peasant society, of course. The
political system and the economic order took a different shape in
this non-urban society. But it is especially significant with respect
to the cultural interaction of peasants and others that the principal
custodians of the Sanskritic learned tradition in South India lived in
rural settlements with peasants. Not only were Brahmans ethni¬
cally indistinguishable from their peasant contemporaries, they
were their neighbours.
An inevitable outcome of millenia of social and cultural pro¬
pinquity and interaction of Sanskritic and non-Sanskritic cultures
in South Indian rural settlements was a single cultural system.
Until the thirteenth century perhaps, there were still attempts to
segregate certain cultural elements as Sanskritic and others as
appropriate to the Dravidian language traditions of peninsular
India. However, there could be no effective segregation of either
the language or of specific traditions conveyed in these languages.
From late Classical times, the interaction of ‘folk’ and ‘high’
traditions (sometimes stated as desi and marga respectively) was
evident-as a reciprocal process involving mutual transfers.4 At-

J D.D. Kosambi, The Basis of Ancient Indian History', Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 75, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 1955, p. 236.
4 See V. Raghavan, ‘Variety and Integration in the Pattern of Indian Culture',
Far Eastern Quarterly (Journal of Asian Studies), 15, no. 2, August 1956, p. 504.
 Introduction 7

tempts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to maintain a semb¬

lance of cultural compartmentalization within what had become a
single cultural system resulted in the crises of the Saiva Siddhanta
movement and the sectarian divisions among Vishnu worshippers.
While nominally theological, the issues in these sectarian crises
included the appropriateness — indeed the completeness — of
Tamil as a liturgical vehicle and the participation of non-Brahman
votaries as important ritual functionaries and teachers. After
the thirteenth century, the notion that Sanskrit and its Brahman
adepts were to be the sole custodians of a high tradition while
Tamil, or some other Dravidian language, and non-Brahtnans
were to be the custodians of folk traditions could no longer be
explicitly sustained.
The shared cultural systems of medieval South India may not
have included all who lived in the southern peninsula, but it did
encompass all who lived in the peasant settlements of the major
agrarian tracts of the southern peninsula and therefore included
Brahmans, non-Brahman cultivating groups, artisans and traders.
Even landless, agrestic labourers in peasant localities shared in
the general cultural system, if only negatively in suffering the
opprobrium of inferior, ‘polluted’ status, a condition which was
acceptable then as it has been until recently in exchange for the
survival benefits of being part of a relatively prosperous agrarian
economy.
A final element in the relationship between Brahmans, as the
transmitters of high cultural traditions, and the non-Brahman
peasantry, upon whose support Brahmans depended and with
whom Brahmans lived as neighbours, is political and ideological.
In the spatially circumscribed world of the South Indian peasantry,
as in the locality systems of peasants everywhere, great kingly
authority and the ‘state’ may be thought to be remote. This re¬
moteness would not be seen as a flaw, an imperfection, but a predic¬
table feature in a pre-modern political system lacking the technology
to close great distances.
Such an implication or conclusion is explicitly denied here.
As the title of this study announces, there is something called
‘the peasant state’ however dissonant such a conception may appear
to modern scholars of peasant societies. Two features — indeed,
defining attributes — of peasant societies for most scholars pre¬
suppose a conceptual and empirical separation of peasants from
8 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

those who rule them. One of these features is scale. Peasant

societies consist of small, local, often isolated communities; they
are physically as well as culturally distant from the ‘major’, ‘high’,
or ‘important’ institutions, hence, they are as Kroeber proposed,
part-societies and part-cultures. The other feature is explicitly
political, that is peasants occupy an ‘underdog’ position with
respect to the more powerful and dominant. Thus, Fallers speaks
of a peasant society as ‘one whose primary constituent units are
semi-autonomous local communities with semi-autonomous cul¬
tures’.5 The qualified autonomy of peasant produces salient
boundary characteristics such as to define ‘insiders’ and ‘out¬
siders’ :
On the one hand there is the local community . . . [hostile to outsiders,
sharing rights in land, submitting to and supporting institutions of local
government and social control] and on the other hand there is a hierarchy of
patrimonial or feudal relations of personal superiority and responsibility. . .
and subordinate dependence which link the local community and the wider
polity.6
In the light of these perceived features of peasant societies, the
idea of a peasant state is at least paradoxical, if it is not contra¬
dictory. However, this is what the state in medieval South India
appears to have been.
The medieval South Indian state is here considered a ‘segmentary
state’ in which political authority and control were local in several
crucial ways. The scope of the constituent units of the state was
limited to well-defined and persistent ethnic territories; its chiefs
were, in most cases, leaders or spokesmen of the dominant ethnic
groups of the local territory; and, perhaps most unique in South
India, corporate bodies representing the interests of various folk
of a locality participated in the public business of the locality.
Peasant localities in medieval South India were not uniform,
varying in their composition, wealth, and elaborateness in accord¬
ance with constraints or opportunities presented by nature to the
agrarian potentialities of the age. When and where there was
reliable moisture for irrigated agriculture, the largest concentra¬
tions of population were found, the greatest wealth, the most
social and cultural elaborateness. There, too, were the settlements

5'Are African Cultivators to be Called “Peasants"?', Current Anthropology,

v. 2, no. 1, April, 1961, p. 108.
6 Ibid., p. 109.
 Introduction 9

of Brahmans. Localities less favoured by nature, had less. How¬

ever, arching over the resource variation among localities given
by nature and hardened into valued practices and loyalties, was a
Brahman paradigm, a framework for the attainment of appropriate
society. The most authoritative interpreters of this ideological
framework as well as the 'gatekeepers’ to access to status and
authority were Brahmans. Power, order, legitimacy within the
locality world of the South Indian peasantry were mediated by
Brahmans. This was more true in those localities of wealth and
prosperous agriculture and trade than in those peripheral tracts
where people survived on hazardous, rain-dependent agriculture.
But, to some extent, it was true everywhere there was sedentary
agriculture.
The culture of caste as an element in the character of Indian
peasant societies does not end with the relationship of Brahmans
and non-Brahman peasants. Caste principles pertain to kinship,
marriage, and occupation as well as to matters directly involving
Brahmans. In South India, the relative isolation, or autonomy,
of peasant localities was reinforced by kinship and marriage
practices. The spatially restricting preference for cross-cousin
or maternal uncle-niece marriage has been a well-recognized
difference between North and South Indian marriage systems.
In the former case, with its different consanguinity rules, affinal
networks spread over a wider area. The factor of difference between
the marriage networks of North and South India, in terms of this
spatial question, has been estimated as great as ten in recent times.7
In this, caste, marriage and kinship codes can be seen as supporting
one of the generic characteristics of South Indian peasant society
— its localness and autonomy.
However, caste principles may be considered as antagonistic
to other presumed attributes of peasant society. One is the egali¬
tarianism of the peasant community. For some scholars who have
worked on peasant societies, the asymmetry which characterizes
the relationship of the peasant community and the powerful
outsiders to whom went a portion of peasant production contrasted
with the presumed egalitarian and cooperative ethic of the peasant

7 M.N. Srinivas and A.M. Shah state that the marriage field in South India for
rural castes is about twenty or thirty villages whereas that of North India is 200 to
300 villages. 'The Myth of the Self-Sufficiency of the Indian Village’ in The
Economic Weekly, 10 September 1960, p. 1376.
10 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

community. The contrast is easily overdrawn, resulting in a failure,

often, to recognize stratified relationships within many peasant
societies as well as giving expression to an idealization of social
harmony and human decency which is presumably endangered,
even destroyed, by the encroachment upon peasant societies of
archaic bureaucratic forms or the social, economic, and psycho¬
logical disruption of modern industrialized society.
Clearly, peasant societies vary in the degree to which internal
stratified relationships exist, but in most, and perhaps all, there
appears to be some of this. Caste principles of hierarchy and
inequality while contributing an important specific quality to
Indian peasant society cannot be thought to raise serious doubts
about whether this was a peasant society. To be sure, there is more
to the distinctiveness of the Indian variant of peasant societies
than the explicitness of its rules of hierarchic social relations. The
vulnerability of low caste landless labourers and many artisans
to crushing status deprivation and to economic exploitation
are real enough whether one accepts wholly or partly the recent
literature on the 'Hindu jajmani system’ and some studies of
contemporary Indian village life8 or whether one deals with the
often fragmentary evidence of the past. However, even in India
where caste codes often enjoin rigorous forms of segregation and
ranking within a peasant locality, the exigent requirements of
peasant life generate in India, as elsewhere, forms of economic,
social, ritual, and political cooperation and interdependence
among the diverse parts of a peasant community. Until there is
more systematic comparative research on peasant societies and
better means for assessing relative degrees of inequality within
peasant societies, it may be taken that Indian peasant societies
are not essentially aberrant in the inequality of their internal
constitutions; these peasant societies fit within what must be.
and perhaps one day will be, a dimensional schema along with
other features of peasant societies in the world.
x General discussions: T.O. Beidelman, A Comparative Analysis of the Jajmani
System, Association ot Asian Studies, Monograph, no. 8, Locust Valley, N.Y.,
1959, Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London. 1970, ch. IV, pp. 92-109. Village studies: McKim
Marriott, tillage India: Studies in the Little Community, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1955; M.N. Srinivas, India's Villages, Asia Publishing House,
London, 1960; Andre Beteille, Studies in Agrarian Social Structure OUP Delhi
1974.
 Introduction 11

Another presumed generic feature of peasant societies which

may be considered to test the degree to which caste principles
can be reconciled with most definitions of this sociological type
is the ‘multi-dimensionality’ of the peasant household. What
Shanin and others appear to mean by this is that the peasant house¬
hold is not simply, nor solely, involved in agricultural production
though this is, to be sure, its most important livelihood function
in the local as well as the general economy. The peasant household
in most places also produces many of its own tools and household
implements; it produces handicraft goods for its own consumption
and for exchange, and in other productive ways creates around the
family farm a high degree of material self-sufficiency. Correlated
with this ‘multi-dimensional’ aspect of the generic peasant house¬
hold is the presumption of a long apprenticeship which younger
members of the peasant family must undergo under the tutelage
of their elders. Among other consequences of this lengthy training
period, generational divisions — the emphasis upon seniority
_are strengthened. What, then, is to be made of the division ot
labour maintained in Indian caste codes?
Classically stated, caste culture segregates and ranks (at times
in an inexplicably arbitrary manner) occupational specialists in
the finally graded manner characteristic of Indian schema ol othei
kinds. Moreover, during the medieval period of South Indian
history, an agrarian settlement was considered a ‘proper’ village
only when there was a full complement of occupational specialists,
‘the eighteen castes’. These included not only those service castes
performing pollution related tasks, such as the washerman, the
barber and, of course, the sweeper, but also scribal functionaries
who actually enjoyed relatively high ritual rank; there was also
a set of persons whose skills and productive functions were obviously
important to a peasant settlement, e.g. potters, smiths, carpenters,
and weavers. „ _ . , ,,
The contrast of the Indian caste division of functions and the
presumed ‘multi-dimensional’, or non-speciahzed, character o
peasant households generally is easily overstated. Most peasant
communities everywhere in the world displayed some or con¬
siderable specialization among peasant households, and
presumed ‘multi-dimensionality’ of the peasant household in
most places differed only in degree from the complex, code-en¬
joined occupational system in India. The English peasantry o
12 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the thirteenth century is estimated to have been virtually landless

to the extent of one-quarter to one-third of its number, and a large
number were non-agricultural specialists.^ It is in this sense ot
specialization within a general framework of a peasant society
that Firth and others have called fishermen and merchants, ‘pea¬
sants’. There is reason to assert, too, that the occupational com¬
pleteness of caste rules was not realized in many cases. Pollution
norms required that high caste persons have access to washermen,
barbers, and others whose services were necessary for the mainten¬
ance of the pure state required for those of high ritual status. But,
beyond those few services, the prescribed array of occupational
specializations was probably seldom realized. Nor was this
necessarily a breach of code injunctions. Even Brahmans were
permitted to cultivate, if necessary, and where other specialists
were not available — as must have occurred — a condition of
necessity would have been considered to exist for Brahmans as
well as for ritually less fastidious non-Brahmans. A corresponding
relaxation of occupational restrictions can have been anticipated.
As in many aspects of caste culture, the fully elaborated codes
are to be understood as the logical and optimum condition, not the
existential condition under which Brahmans, especially, but others
too, were supposed to live.
For the historian, and particularly the Asian or Indian historian,
the concept of ‘peasant society’ is of the greatest significance.
Beneath the level of vast empires and great cities in Asia and India,
with their patent vicissitudes and often exaggerated competence
to control enormous territories, rural cultivators and those associa¬
ted with them have historically accounted for the overwhelming
mass of the population. They have provided the basic wealth
and manpower which sustained civilized institutions. This remains,
perhaps dismayingly, true in the present. For many of the problems
with which historians concern themselves, it is no longer possible
to ignore these major parts of polities and societies nor, what
amounts to the same thing, to assume that the rural, peasant world
was inert, passive, and unchanging. Contemporary social science

9 E.A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth

Century, Blackwell. Oxford, 1956, p.209. Kosminsky observes the ‘very abundant
and variety ol names indicating non-agricultural work reminds us forcibly that
our sources [their exclusive concern with cultivation] . . . give a far from full and
very one-sided picture of the English village.' (p. 229.)
 Introduction 13

research as well as increasingly sophisticated historical studies in

India and elsewhere make this impossible. The essence of the
peasant condition is and has ever been constant and significant
interaction with other parts of the social order.
Historical studies of agrarian arrangements in India are perhaps
among the earliest of the ‘modern scientific history’ undertaken
in Asia. The first serious and systematic studies of agrarian relations
and problems occurred over a century ago when British adminis¬
trators, bent upon better understanding, or perhaps simply justify¬
ing, revenue policies in British Indian territories, began to explore
the development of land relations, tenure, and related matters of
the past. These studies were published as bureaucratic reports
and minutes, as personal memoirs or, as in Madras, as parts of the
first district manuals in the late nineteenth century. These were
later utilized by such scholar-administrators as B. H. Baden-Powell
in his monumental, three-volume Land Systems of British India.10
Without denigrating these pioneer efforts which sought to make
sense of what appeared to many officials to be chaos, even during
the late nineteenth century, the results of their inquiries led as often
to a distortion as to a clarification of historical agrarian relation¬
ships. Rationalizing existing practices, principles, and policies in
the face of mounting criticism from a small group of educated
Indians as well as from critics in England could scarcely have led
to the best analysis of historical landed relationships. Yet, much
of the past record of these relationships was clarified and, without
doubt, some of the most felicitous moments in the career of the
British bureaucracy of nineteenth century India may have been
when some few Englishmen screened fragmentary agrarian records
through their intelligent and often sympathetic experience.
Studies of historical agrarian relations — narrowly by British
administrator-scholars and somewhat more broadly by historians
of India — have inevitably been strongly coupled with land revenue
organization. British administrators, concerned with revenue often
above all else, created this stultifying legacy, and it has been per¬
petuated by nationalist Indian historians concerned with attacking
British policies. Revenue is but one aspect of agrarian organiza¬
tion, but in the absence of effective, bureaucratic government — a
condition not attained in India until the nineteenth century —

10 Published in 3 vols, OUP, London, 1892.

14 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

revenue transfers beyond quite restricted localities was an un¬

important matter. Even under the Mughals, the most effective
pre-modern government in India, regular and routine assessment
and collection of land revenue for remittance to the ‘state' was
limited in a variety of ways. However, in contrast to revenue mat¬
ters, the broad historical relationship between agrarian organiza¬
tion and peasant society was a central one until very recent times
in India. This is so true that it may be wondered that with the
considerable interest in agrarian studies involving revenue, land
tenure, agricultural trade and debt, scholars should not have
engaged more directly the web of peasant social and cultural
relations with the land.
In part, at least, the reason for the neglect must be recognized to
stem from the vagueness, the potential omnicompetence, of the
concepts ‘peasant society’ and ‘agrarian system’. Real as cows,
manure, market places and prices, tax collectors, and cultivators
themselves may have been, the ways of analysing these and other
agrarian matters are artifacts of the analyst. The system of agrarian
relationships examined by the economist concerned with the pro¬
duction of a single unit of agricultural production, a field or farm,
is different from that of the economist concerned with the output
of all grain producers; and different from these two are the rela¬
tionships examined by the rural sociologist interested in voluntary
associations among rural families or an agronomist concerned with
plant diseases. Each will have a conception of agrarian relation¬
ships appropriate to his inquiry; each will examine a portion of
the totality.
Daniel Thorner writing on Indian land reform problems in
The Agrarian Prospect in India states that, ‘the agrarian structure
is, after all, not an external framework within which various classes
function, but rather it is the sum total of ways in which each group
operates in relation to other groups’. Notwithstanding this com¬
prehensive definition, Thorner is concerned with only a part of the
totality of relations he speaks of, namely those related to the politics
of contemporary land reform.11 The problem is not restricted to
India. The Soviet scholar, E. A. Kosminsky, in his Studies in the
Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century dealing
with the manorial system, could set aside issues obviously connected

11 Daniel Thorner, The Agrarian Prospect in India, University Press, Delhi, 1959.
 Introduction 15

with his problem — agricultural techniques, climate, soils, and the

relationship of livestock to cultivation — on the basis that they
did not bear centrally upon his topic of investigation.12 And so it
must be for any investigator; the choice of concepts and the mean¬
ings which are given to them must be suited to the problem at hand
and the requirements of the clearest possible exposition of findings.
The idea of the agrarian system in the present work focuses upon
peasant society and culture in relationship to land. Along these
lines, work on the Mughal period is the best in the small class of
Indian historical studies dealing with historical agrarian rela¬
tionships. By far the best is that of Irfan Habib, The Agrarian
System of Mughal India (1556-1707). One of the group of able
scholars at Aligarh Muslim University, Habib sought to critically
examine ‘not only [the], . . land revenue administration. . . but
also [the] agrarian economy and social structure’.13 Though he
corrects and amends earlier work on this period, notably that of
W. H. Moreland’s Agrarian System of Moslem India,14 Habib is
essentially concerned with the Mughal power structure rather than
the relationship of land and land control to the economy and social
structure of the time. Appropriately however, he discusses dif¬
ferent groups of the landed population in North India upon which
the century and a half of Mughal supremacy was based: an oppress¬
ed peasantry, various kinds of local intermediaries, especially zamin-
dars, and the Muslim warrior elite. Moreland’s v/ork, for all its
pioneering significance, was more narrowly focused than Habib’s,
being a discussion of the importance of revenue assignees upon
whom the main burden of agrarian control rested in all but a few
years of the long period of Muslim domination over the North-
Indian countryside. The idea of the agrarian system within which
both Habib and Moreland frame their inquiries reflect their con¬
centration upon political analysis. In both cases, the study of the
agrarian system was essential for understanding power relations
in this best-organized and most powerful of the states of medieval
India. And, if Habib is correctly understood here, his argument
is that the demise of the Mughal state in the early eighteenth century

12 Op. cit., p. viii.

13 Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, Asia Publishing House,
London, 1963. Note changes in his argument in subsequent publications.
■ 14 W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India, W. Heffer & Sons,
Cambridge, 1929.
16 Peasant Stale and Society in Medieval South India

was the result of a crisis in agrarian relations in which a substantial

portion of the peasantry, alienated by Mughal officials, threw in
its lot with pre-Mughal locality leaders.15
Peasant agrarian relationships are aspects of social and cultural
systems; they are human adaptations to the natural environment
within a social and cultural framework. In the Indian sub-con¬
tinent alone, one must speak of a very large number of historical
peasant societies and cultures over India’s long history. This is to
underscore the truism of Indian diversity from an early time.
Differences in languages and cultural traditions as well as in the
patterns of social relationships among Indians combined with the
differential constraints and opportunities afforded by the variety of
environmental settings of the sub-continent as a whole or any of
its sections — all of these would have contributed to the great
mosaic of cultural regions of medieval times and later. Among these
one would expect to find different patterns of development and
change resulting from the quite uniqu" historical courses through
which each went. However, this remains a largely theoretical
proposition, since only the most preliminary work has been done
on the classification of agrarian systems of modern India and even
less on historical agrarian systems.16 The latter task awaits two
scholarly developments. The first of these is more research on the
history of the middle period, especially social and economic history
of the sort which Habib has done for the Mughal period. But of
equal, if not prior, importance, thought must be given to the for¬
mulation for all or most of the sub-continent of those social and
cultural factors which, along with ecological factors, shape agrarian
systems whether contemporary or historical.
The major factors are generally recognized, and some have
already been briefly touched upon here. In economic terms, the
salient feature is cultivation of the soil and occupations related
to that — animal husbandry, artisanship to provide the basic
implements for agriculture and for peasant household use as well
15 Habib, op. cit.
16 Notice should be taken of the work of Dr Chen Han-Seng provisionally en¬
titled 'Agrarian Regions ot India and Pakistan' and based upon the Report of the
Royal Commission on Agriculture in India. Though forty-five years out of date,
the addition of some more recent evidence and the proposed publication of a sepa¬
rate volume ot maps make this project, being carried out in cooperation with the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne), important.
 Introduction 17

as to provide goods for more general exchange. These attributes

are shared by other kinds of economic orders — primitive ones,
archaic collectivist ones, and some modern ones, hence it is difficult
to speak of a 'peasant economics’ as distinctive. Some scholars
have, in fact, sought to differentiate significant aspects of peasant
economic operations.17 The difficulty of delineating something
called ‘peasant economics’ arises from the large and diverse number
of peasant relations, past and present, of which we have often
disturbingly fragmentary evidence. In part, too, the difficulty
arises from the fact that ‘peasant’ and ‘peasantry’ are not essentially
economic, but sociological categories. It is the nature of his social
relationships, where he lives and with whom he interacts, that most
authoritatively identifies the peasant. Notwithstanding these pro¬
blems of definition, it is possible to speak of peasant economic
orders as those in which the major forms of wealth are generated
from cultivation of the land by family-sized units and primarily
for their subsistence and where industrial and service activities
are relatively insignificant except as an adjunct to the cultivation
of land within circumscribed localities.
How land is made to yield this wealth varies in South India.
It may come from swidden tracts of relatively sparse population,
or from intensely irrigated agriculture in relatively densely popula¬
ted tracts, or some intermediate variant; this is culturally determined
within the possibilities of the natural setting of particular places
and times. How wealth, or ‘surplus’, is apportioned among culti¬
vators, among groups of non-cultivating dependents, and between
cultivators and those who exercise political power over them are
critical matters for those of the society as well as for those who wish
to understand that society. In economic terms, peasants are not
easily distinguished from others for whom land is the major source
of wealth. Always and everywhere, peasants, like any producers
must deploy a portion of their production to maintain and replace
their population, tools, houses, seed, and livestock in order to
17 The critical works on this question of whether it is necessary to consider a
special mode of analysis of peasant economics remain: Alexander Chayanov,
The Theory of Peasant Economy, ed. Daniel Thorner, tr. from the Russian by
R.E.F. Smith, American Economic Association, Homewood, 1966; Karoly Polanyi,
et at.. Trade and Markets in Early Empires (Free Press, Glencoe, 1957) which argue
the affirmative; contra: Raymond Firth and Basil S. Yamey, Capital, Saving, and
Credit in Peasant Societies, Aldine Press, Chicago, 1965. See Marshal Sahlins,
Stone-Age Economics, Aldine, Chicago, 1972.
18 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

survive. This is essentially a family responsibility in a peasant

society and may include several households within a peasant settle¬
ment. Similarly, peasants must, like others who live in communi¬
ties, invest some portion of their time, effort, and wealth in the
continuation of the social collectivity of which they are part. This
contribution appears to be a composite one of personal participa¬
tion and a transfer of family wealth. Finally, peasants, like others,
must make their terms with those whose superior power commands
tribute or taxes, rent or interest. This may be done by the individual
peasant household or, perhaps more often, by the peasant commu¬
nity as a whole. In a peasant society, the recipients of this payment
are often themselves local figures with whom some degree of face-
to-face interaction exists even if, as in some cases, that local person¬
age is an agent for or beneficiary of some less proximate authority.
What distinguishes the peasant solution to the problems of main¬
tenance and replacement of productive capability, of the preserva¬
tion of the community, and of meeting the share of the demands
from external authority is that the scope of these activities is highly
localized. In consequence, one of the most serious and characteristic
problems for the peasant community is that of balancing its internal,
local requirements against the external demands of powerful
warriors, agents of a powerful state, or members of protected
mercantile groups.18
External liens upon peasant production are the consequence of
asymmetrical power relationships, and for some analysts, or for
some problems, the terms of power between the peasantry and the
external world constitute the most important characteristic of
peasant society. Without denying the importance of this condition
under which all peasants necessarily live, undue stress upon exo¬
genous pressure has led to the distortion of two other aspects of
the political condition of the peasantry. The first is the degree
to which peasants manage most of their own community problems
without external interference. Thus, onerous, and at times grati¬
fying, and always important as the relations with powerful out¬
siders often are for its welfare, and ultimately for its survival,
the peasant community can and does retain control over most of the
essential activities upon which its society depends. And, except
in the most effectively organized state system — a condition which
These issues are clearly discussed in Eric Wolf, Peasants, Foundation of
Modern Anthropology Series, Prentice Hall. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966, p. 15.
 Introduction 19

is only infrequently achieved until very recent times — the residual

competence of the peasant community ensures that the relationship
between the peasant locality and those powerful enough to demand
a portion ot its wealth does not leave the peasantry entirely disarm¬
ed. This is the second, often underestimated, aspect of the political
context ol the peasant. 1 hrough coalitions of various kinds, the
ability of peasants to cope with the many kinds of externally power¬
ful can be formidable. The ultimate weapon of the peasant is also
his most difficult to use. That is, to abscond, to desert the lands and
jurisdiction of an overlord whose demands have come to exceed
the benefits of the protection of his overlordship. Resort may be
taken with other locality overlords under more promising condi¬
tions, or relief may be sought in forest and hill tracts with all of
their menaces. Desertion of established homesteads and lands,
however modestly endowed these may be, can never be lightly
undertaken, of course, nor can the other means which peasants
may have for countering excessive demands. Yet, in South India
there is early and continuous evidence of peasant movement of
which only part can be attributed to political causes. Outside
the deltaic regions, cultivating folk appear frequently to have
moved, often great distances, to improve their prospects. The
actual or potential mobility of peasants for whatever reason,
would compel any great or small overlord to come realistically to
terms with the requirements of the peasant community. Thus,
while the asymmetrical power relationship remains an essential
aspect of peasant society, it must be seen as qualified, as a balancing
of advantage and disadvantage between the peasant community
and the external world.
Attachment to some narrow locality is a, and for some purposes,
the salient characteristic of the peasant social system. This is at
once a source of strength and weakness in economic and political
terms. The web of relationships beginning with those within the
peasant family and extending, through kinship groupings and
coalitions, well beyond the peasant village constitutes strength
because it provides the peasant with a durable nexus for cooperation
and resource pooling at critical times. When there is personal
misfortune or community danger, these relationships may be
relied upon to blunt the full impact of misfortune upon any single
family. The assurance provided by this interwoven texture of
social, economic, and ceremonial relationships of the peasant
20 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

locality exacts a price, of course. Part of the labour and produce

of each household must be expended in maintaining these relation¬
ships; individual and family decisions regarding welfare would
weigh internal household requirements against outstanding obliga¬
tions to others within their large social universe.
Studies of such a complex universe may, perhaps must, con¬
centrate on only a part of the network of significant relationships
within the peasant community or on the nature and dynamics of
linkages between the peasant community and other parts of the
social and cultural order. According to the question being resear¬
ched, stress can be placed upon any viable aspect of the totality
of relationships which comprise peasant society, where the test of
viability is the most plausible explanation of what happened, or is
happening, and why.
Historians of Indian culture have typically concerned themselves
— when they have addressed the problems of the peasantry — with
the external linkages between the peasantry and the larger world
of which it is a part. Too often, the historian’s level of analysis has
seemed to require an assumption about the nature of the Indian
peasantry which, if not incorrect, reduces the probability of under¬
standing the complex and changing society of peasants. That is,
the assumption that the peasantry in any part of the sub-continent
is a single, undifferentiated, conservative (‘traditional’ is often
used) part of the social system in an almost constantly defensive
or compliant posture in relation to the aggressive world around it.
In this two-part model of peasant and other, there are few distinc¬
tions drawn among different groups comprising a peasantry at any¬
time and place, and there is an almost complete neglect of the pro¬
cesses governing the constant inter-relationships between the two
spheres. Granted that such simplifying assumptions, or sets,
about ‘the peasantry’ are frequently required by the nature of the
evidence, it is possible at certain times and in certain parts of the
historical Indian cultural sphere to make finer discriminations about
peasant life and society by attempting to perceive the system of
relationships between peasants and others and among peasant
groups themselves, as it were, ‘from the bottom'.
Focusing upon the peasant community in its relations with
others in the social order from this level requires a more complex
model of peasant society than most historians are accustomed or,
apparently, prepared to contemplate. From the outset, it is neces-
 Introduction 21

sary to envisage, and to the extent that evidence permits, to recons¬

truct a social system composed of a variety of groupings in a place
which is defined by a common set of bonds of these groupings to
some particular tract of land. That is the arena.19 In India, while
such groups tend to have quite different social positions, goals,
and styles, and often different contacts beyond the community,
reflecting the stratified and segmented nature of Indian social
organization, there is a strong commitment to the village and
locality as in other peasant societies. Corporateness is the con¬
sequence of joint concern with shared problems within the commu¬
nity and without; yet there may be quite different perceptions of
internal or external pressure by the various strata and segments of a
peasant community. Each must, however, come to terms with
that pressure within the framework of a common community
response.
External pressures themselves vary. Some pressures upon the
peasant community may generate internal responses by the com¬
munity and leave durable internal referents as markers or traces of
intrusions from beyond the community. Others may not. Thus,
a pillaging army in a peasant locality constitutes a more formidable,
immediate threat to welfare than a small band of warriors living
permanently in some nearby hills. The former may raid villages,
take all they can, and leave. No adaptive response is likely to be
effective or even relevant. However, the small warrior band which
cannot be adequately defended against nor extirpated must be
dealt with through means which satisfy the demands of the threaten¬
ing warriors without simultaneously incurring excessive dislocation
within the community. Each of these dangerous confrontations
may leave its mark: in devastated fields, dead defenders of the
village, or inadequate stock or seed against the needs of the im¬
mediate future, in the first case, and in the other case the consequen¬
ces may be more durable such as a new or modified set of land
arrangements, a modification of village and locality leadership,
and perhaps new village and locality names.
To deal with the complex internal structure of South Indian
peasant societies and the equally complex linkages among peasant
localities, the concept of ‘pyramidal segmentation’ has been adop-
19 The term ‘arena’ has been used by F.G. Bailey to provide a spatial dimension
to sociological relationships. Tribe, Caste, and Nation: A Study of Political Ac¬
tivity and Political Change in Highland Orissa, OUP, Bombay, 1960, pp. 269-70.
22 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

ted in the present work. This concept has been found most useful
in the discussion of the political organization of the Chola and
Vijayanagara states because of the manner in which political and
social elements were combined in medieval South India.
‘Pyramidal segmentation’ refers to persistent combinatorial
patterns among social elements which are distinct and often
opposed. Such distinct elements are regarded analytically as
social ‘segments’. These elements are parts of a social whole,
which ultimately extended to the peoples of the sub-continent,
to which the term ‘Indie’ may be applied; they are also parts of the
many cultural regions into which medieval India was partitioned.
In short, they are differentiated elements of a single, universal
moral system. In the usage of medieval dharma texts, these seg¬
ments, as generic categories, were called kula (agnatic or cognate
kinsmen), sreni (occupational groups consisting of several castes),
and gana or puga (territorial assemblies).20 Such segments com¬
bined to make up the numerous local social contexts of medieval
South India, and these segments also combined, or massed, to
form supralocal combinations, or pyramids, hence the term ‘pyra¬
midal segmentation’.
Within peasant localities (nadus) of Chola country, as discussed
in Chapter III, these social segments would include various groups.
Among these were cultivators who may have settled in a locality
as subordinate or client groups of the dominant peasant community
called ndt(ar \ other groups may have consisted of non-cultivating
people such as herdsmen or artisans; yet others might be persons
and groups assimilated into the expanding sedentary agriculture
of the time (often as dependents of established local groups) from
marginal tracts where they might have been swidden cultivators
or even hunters. Many of such groups could occasionally combine
as massed groupings of right and left castes (valangai and idangai),
an important feature of supralocal social organization in many
parts of South India from about the eleventh century; this is dis¬
cussed in Chapter V. The most significant aspect of the massing
of primary local segments as supralocal formations was politi¬
cal; it is the potential massing of local segments that provided the
foundation of states in medieval South India.

20 See the discussion of these terms and their variant meanings in P.V. Kane.
History of Dharmasasira (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law), 2nd.
ed., Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1974, v. 3. pp 280-1.
 Introduction 23

The Chola and Vijayanagara states of medieval South India

are seen as segmentary states’ in the discussion of chapters seven
and eight. This designation is adopted from a conception of politi¬
cal organization most comprehensively dealt with by the African
anthropologist Aidan Southall.21 Seen by many scholars as ‘inci¬
pient states or ‘proto states’, Southall proposes that segmentary
states comprise a major type of political organization not only in
Africa, where his work was done and where the concept of the
segmentary state has greatest currency, but in other cultural
contexts as well: European and Asian. In the segmentary state,
the parts or segments of which the state is composed are seen as
prior to the formal state; these segments are structurally as well as
morally coherent units in themselves. Together, these parts or
segments comprise a state in their recognition of a sacred ruler
whose overlordship is of a moral sort and is expressed in an essen¬
tially ritual idiom. It is precisely in such terms that South Indian
kings are best perceived, and it is for this reason that the concept
of segmentary state so commends itself for the present analysis.
Most scholars of Indian social structure have acknowledged the
segmentary character of localized Indian societies just as they
have acknowledged the profound imprint of peasant institutions.
But, some of these same scholars have treated such structural
realities — of the past as well as of the present — as secondary
considerations, as epiphenomena, before the commanding holistic
culture of caste, of Hinduism and, during the pre-modern era at
any rate, of great monarchical states. Here, the language of
‘segmentary’ or ‘tribal’, of ‘structurally relative’ (rather than
absolute) groupings in society; of ‘complementary opposition’
or ‘pyramidal segmentation’ would seem to have no place. Here,
the culture of caste, of purity and pollution, of hierarchy, of systems
of salvation, religions based upon highly sophisticated textual
sources, and of sacred kings closely identified with the great gods
of those religions would appear to make unnecessary such arcane
concepts drawn from analyses of distant Africa. And yet, this is
not true.
The theory of South Indian kingship as articulated in medieval
law texts (dharmasastra) and other literary works as well as in the
normative language of medieval inscriptions, especially the often

21 A.W. Southall. Alur Society, W. Heffer, Cambridge, 1956.

24 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

lengthy inscriptional preambles, speak of sacred kingship, not of

bureaucratic or constitutional monarchy as often construed by
South Indian historians. And, concrete historical evidence of the
activities of royal figures —whether these are military (and the
king is seen as a great conqueror), or religious (and the king is
seen as the greatest of devotees of gods whom he protects and upon
whom he confers rich gifts), or whether in the more rare royal
intervention as the upholders of law or dharma — these are the
activities of sacral and incorporative kingship. South Indian
kings were essentially ritual figures except in the often circums¬
cribed core territories of their capitals where they commanded
and managed resources and men by virtue of their compelling
coercive power (ksatra). They are the most important symbols of
the sacred, moral order to which all men must belong and, as such,
theirs is a sacred and moral authority (dharma) beyond the limited
territory of their ksatra. Given such a conception of kingship,
only a segmentary political order — one bound together alone by
the common allegiance of many chiefs to a sacred centre — can
be appropriate.
A constant factor in this analysis is technology. Techniques
and devices with which South Indian peasants manipulated their
environment in order to produce food and other valuable products
appeared to have remained unchanged over the several centuries
covered. Swamp cultivation of rice utilizing bullocks for plough¬
ing and riverine irrigation were well established in very early
South India. The greatest hydraulic works in some parts of the
South Indian macro region may date from before the earliest
period examined here. According to some historians, major
irrigation works were constructed in the Kaveri prior to the Cholas.
The most impressive of these was the Grand Anicut, seventeen
miles below modern Tiruchirapalli, a masonry dam over 1000
feet long, up to 60 feet thick, and 18 feet high.22 More technically
reliable estimates of the date of the Grand Anicut place it in middle
or late Chola times. It is notable that new, substantial riverine
construction here did not occur again until late in the nineteenth
century. As to ‘tanks’, the embanked reservoirs which cover a
major portion of the plain and part ot the South Indian upland
tracts, British irrigation specialists of the nineteenth century

22 F.E. Morgan, ‘Irrigation’, Southern India, ed. Somerset Payne, Foreign and
Colonial Compiling Publication Co., 1914-15, London, p. 285
 Introduction 25

frequently commented upon the virtual completeness with which

surface irregularities had been exploited for this purpose long
before their time and found little scope for the construction of
new ones.23 The appearance of unchanging technique in the
utilization of land — a limited set of implements and a fixed
repertoire of crops and cultivation practices — results, in part,
from a paucity of evidence. However, that is not entirely the case,
for there is considerable direct evidence that South Indian ‘peasant
ecotypes’ were not basically altered from perhaps the ninth to the
nineteenth century.
A peasant ecotype24 can be defined as a system consisting of
two sets of agricultural relationships within a range of ecological
possibilities. The first involves energy transfers among organic
elements including humans and animals and the stored energy of
crops which nourish men and animals. The second set of relation¬
ships involves inorganic agencies, or devices, which men have
used to assist in energy transfers. These include: implements,
fences, machines for raising water from wells or reservoirs, and
constructions for storing or draining water from cultivatable
fields. Organic and inorganic elements in combination with such
complex factors as soils, topography and, more transitorily,
water-balances tend to become relatively persistent systems which
are related to social and cultural concomitants either assumed by
a particular ecotype or the consequence of it.
The hazards of much peasant agriculture invariably produce
defensive agricultural strategies which make it appear to be un¬
changing. Proven techniques, tools, seed varieties, and timings
of certain operations are transmitted over time in songs and proverbs
so that a catalogue of agricultural proverbs can probably be com¬
pared to the Sanskrit literary genre, sutra, in being an outline
of reflective and orally transmitted knowledge. An ecotype is
thus not a ‘natural’ system, but a socio-cultural sub-system to be
understood within a larger socio-cultural context.

23 Reports of Major R.H. Sankey on Mysore irrigation in 1866 stated that

59.7 per cent of the princely state was under tank irrigation and estimated that
there was one tank and one village in every square mile: cited in Herbert M. Wilson.
Irrigation in India (U.S. House of Representatives, The Executive Documents of
the First Session of the Fifty-Second Congress, 1891-92), Government Printing
Office, Washington, v. 18.
24 The brief discussion of ecotypes by Wolt, op. cit., pp. 18 ff., remains one of
the best and most accessible.
26 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

There exists no ecotypology for South India, contemporary or

historical, and to develop one for modern South India would
require elaborate statistical and field studies. Extant historical
evidence would probably not support the formulation of an ecoty¬
pology for any time earlier than the eighteenth century, and then
only fragmentarily. To the extent that there has been an effort
to classify general cultivation systems in the literature on South
India, a simple threefold classification inherited from British
revenue usage has been relied upon: wet, dry, and 'garden agri¬
culture. Eleventh century Chola inscriptions refer to three slightly
different categories, namely dry land (kattarambam or puhcai,
modern ‘punjah’) wet land (nlrarambam) irrigated by a small
tank or riverine channels, and swidden plots (kummari) of 'forest
people' (vedar).25 These designations are gross indicators of
basic ecotypes, and their limitations are obvious.
British revenue and settlement records, even cursorily studied,
yield a long list of types of 'wet' cultivation, ‘dry’ and ‘garden’
cultivation for any South Indian district or part of a district.
There are, for example, fundamental differences among perennially
irrigated riverine tracts as those of the Kaveri and Godavari-
Kistna deltas, those tracts served by channels of minor tributaries
of these rivers, those irrigated tracts dependent upon the catchment
of run off from minor streams in tanks, and, finally, those tracts
which depend for their irrigation upon tanks which are wholly
rain-fed. Similarly, dry-crop or ‘garden’ cultivation carried out
at the fringes of perennially irrigated lands and therefore affected
by a higher water table is quite different from the full and hazardous
dependence upon rainfall alone as occurs in many parts of South
India. What constitutes ‘garden cultivation’ in British revenue
usage is perhaps the most variable category of all. Sometimes
‘garden’ refers to ‘semi-dry’ cultivation as in parts of Chingleput
and Coimbatore where one type of rice cultivation cycle begins
as a dry crop and changes to a wet crop if and when water availabi¬
lity permits. At other times, ‘garden’ may be used to designate

25 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, (Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, Madras.

1917, v. 1, pp. 351-2) discusses a Tamil inscription from Kolar District which has
received considerable attention. The text of the inscription is found in E. C.. v. 10.
Mulbagal Taluk, no 49a, with the Tamil transliteration on p. 102 and an English
translation on p. 86, in pt 2 ot the volume. In the Tamil text, line 17 refers to punsai
and line 18 to eri-ktl, or ‘under the tank'.
 Introduction 27

very extensive holdings as in parts of Chingleput, Salem, Coimba¬

tore, and the Arcots where a limited amount of assured moisture
is available for some part of a crop cycle. Still at other times
‘garden cultivation’ describes very small holdings adjoining house
sites everywhere.
It is not only that there are many kinds of‘wet’, ‘dry’, and ‘garden’
cultivation in all parts of South India, but combinations of these
in particular settings defy by their variety even the most tentative
classification. The presence or failure of an irrigation source
with its direct effect upon water balances in the locality can permit
or prohibit forms of dry or garden cultivation dependent upon
well water; the presence or absence of livestock affects manure
availability and the practice of compacting the germinating seed
in some forms of dry rice cultivation. And so on; there are an
almost endless combination of interdependencies for which there
is evidence in contemporary South India. Nor is this the end of
the matter: each of these combinations sets up unique decision
situations for the cultivator.
Agricultural strategies are drastically different according to
whether a tract is perennially watered, partially watered as in well
or tank irrigation, or completely dependent upon rainfall. In
the older riverine irrigated areas of the deltas, a basic strategy of
cultivation could be followed almost invariantly. Where special
conditions or problems existed, solutions could be routinized as
in the productive, low-lying areas of Tanjavur and Tenali in Guntur
where stagnant water presented special problems. Or, in the wet
rice cultivation of Kolleru (Collari) Lake in Kistna district and
along the banks of many of the larger tanks elsewhere on the Coro¬
mandel plain, cultivators developed plant varieties capable of
rising with the filling of the lake or tank after the south-west mon¬
soon rains, and they developed techniques for harvesting from
boats. Garden cultivators relying upon irrigation from wells for
part of their overall moisture requirements are faced with a wholly
different strategic regime. They are required regularly to rotate
crops so as to provide the optimum balance of soil use and nutrition.
But more importantly, they have had to establish contingency
plans for the timings of certain cultivation systems of the garden
class. That is, where some irrigation could be relied upon, there
was a wide range of options open to the cultivator, and decisions
were constantly required. Where cultivation strategy may appear
28 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

most crucial is where there is no reliable source of moisture and

operations are entirely rain-dependent. In such situations, ironically
cultivation strategy is most likely to be defensive to the point
of drastically limiting possible options. Here is found a reliance
upon hardy millets, sown at a high seed rate (ratio of output to
seed input), so as to maximize a return under the most difficult
circumstances. Therefore, the general classification of ‘dry’ cul¬
tivation, in which there may appear to be the maximum scope for
and need of optimizing strategies because there is too little water
available for the practice of highly routinized swamp cultivation,
becomes almost as routinized as fully irrigated cultivation precisely
because there is insufficient moisture available to permit anything
but defensiveness in the dry cultivator. Cultivators of the inter¬
mediate category, ‘garden’ crop cultivators, with their experience
and modest stock of wealth, were perhaps the most peripatetic.
Even these gross variations in the strategic component in South
Indian agriculture suggest certain significant social and political
concomitants. In tracts where there was little need to make constant
judgements about when to plough and what to plant, where cultiva¬
tion operations were relatively secure from the vagaries of rainfall
or, conversely, relatively defensive and invariant because of them,
the important management decisions were quite different from
those of cultivators for whom even a limited supply of water was
reasonably assured. Where conditions of adequate moisture supply
and adequate storage facilities permitted swamp cultivation of
rice, cultivation practices were sufficiently routine to be left to low
status labourers for the most part. Here, the crucial issues for de¬
cision were those involving the maintenance and expansion of
lands for which the requisite annual seventy-five inches of water
could be obtained. In most tracts of this kind, an elite without
cultivating skill or experience could dominate local life effectively.
Examples ot this are the Brahmans of the Chola period and forest-
bred warriors, such as the kallar or maravar, who came to control
delta land during the Vijayanagara period. Where, as in parts
of the upland areas of Coimbatore, Salem, and parts of the Kar¬
nataka, conditions favoured reliable water availability for what
has been called ‘garden’ or ‘semi-dry’ cultivation, social and
political patterns have tended to reflect the dominance of groups
who retained, even as they do today, close management of cultiva¬
tion operations. Here, a different elite structure emerged from
 Introduction 29

that of the deltaic areas, thus constituting a significant variant of

South Indian society and culture. In those tracts where moisture
was so scarce or unreliable as to make doubtful the survival of even
the most hazardous settlement of agricultural communities, agri¬
culturists remained, materially at least, at the margins of the mains¬
tream of South Indian life until means were discovered of converting
these lands to productive wet or garden cultivation. These means,
in many cases slowly, became available during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.
Such social and cultural factors associated with various ecotypes
can only rarely be documented in the earliest periods examined in
this study; the relationships generated by them must therefore
be assumed. Thus, in holding that agrarian technology remained
unchanging over the course of almost a thousand years and that
the array of major ecotypes remained fixed in the same period,
there is no assertion that the full complement of medieval ecotypes
is perfectly known or understood. That kind of assessment lies in
the future. For the present argument, this assumption provides
a way of focusing on the social and cultural factors which operated
over a portion of that long period of a thousand years to give the
South Indian agrarian system its shape and continuity. If there
were significant changes in technology or in the repertoire of basic
ecotypes of South India within the period, if new ways of combining
organic and inorganic factors related to agriculture were developed,
then these left no trace in the evidence currently available.
 CHAPTER I

South India: The Region

South India as considered here is a complex, composite region

consisting of diverse physical, social, and cultural components.
Definition of its distinguishing characteristics constitutes a crucial
and, often, difficult problem. To a large extent, the difficulty is
conceptual. That is, delimiting the distribution of some element
or related elements which distinguish one segment of the time-
space continuum from another requires both adequate and relevant
distinguishing elements chosen to constitute the region. The ade¬
quacy or relevance of the elements according to which a region is
defined are related to and are alone justified by the problem at
hand. Naively conceived spatial units of study have been called
Traditional’ or ‘historical’ regions, and it is in a naive sense that
terms like ‘Bengal’ or ‘Andhra’ or ‘Maharashtra’ have frequently
been used. The choice of such spatial units may of course be per¬
fectly adequate and relevant if properly defined. But they ought
not to be selected for the same reason that men climb mountains
— because they are (or at some time were) there.1
The difficulty of treating broad regions as units of study as done
here in the case of ‘South India’ is obvious. If it were not obvious,
a review of the early historiography on the Deccan would make it
so. Since R.G. Bhandarkar,2 around the turn of the century, the
‘Deccan region’ has received the serious attention of historians
who have studied the vast, highly differentiated expanse as a
single spatial entity. The presumed validity of treating the entire
peninsula as a unit of study arises primarily from physical facts.

1 The author acknowledges the benefits to his thinking about the issue of regions
and regionalism of the seminar convened at Duke University, May 1966 and the
subsequent publication by Robert I. Crane (ed.). Regions and Regionalism in South
Asian Studies: An Exploratory Study, Monograph no. 5, Program in Comparative
Studies on Southern Asia, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. 1967.
2 R.G. Bhandarkar, Early History of the Deccan (Collected Works), Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute. Poona, 1972.
1-1 The South Indian Region
 South India: The Region 31

Thus, the northern face of the Deccan plateau — the Vindhya -

Chota Nagpur line — has been treated as an effective barrier to sub¬
stantial population movement from the Gangetic plain southward.
The double impasses of the Vindhya and Satpura hills backed by
the Narbada and Tapti rivers, on the western side of the peninsula,
and the dense jungle and deeply cut landforms in the east, justify
the widely recognized status of the peninsula as a major natural
region. Discontinuities in topography cannot, of themselves, how¬
ever, create viable regions for the purposes of the historian or most
other scholars. There are few significant social, linguistic, artistic,
political, or administrative elements with which these topographic
discontinuities are reliably and explicitly associated. Even as
early as Ashoka, and perhaps the Mauryan precursor, Mahapadma
Nanda, Gangetic military power had moved south-westward,
and possibly south-eastward as well, to the coasts of the peninsula
thus bypassing a large portion of the jungle-covered territory on
the northern and southern faces of the double peninsular barrier
and establishing outposts in the Godavari-Kistna basins. These
extensions of Gangetic power were probably prompted by the
availability of gold, iron, and copper. Subsequently, kingdoms
of the Deccan from the Satavahanas of the first century a,d. to the
Marathas of the eighteenth century a.d., looked as often north¬
ward, beyond the natural barriers of the plateau, as southward
for the extension of their tributary regions and for cultural contact.3
While it is true that there has been a relatively lower order of
contact and interaction between the peoples and cultures of the
Deccan (taken as the northern portion of peninsular India) and
those of the Indo-Gangetic plain or the Coromandel coast, as
opposed to interaction among peoples within these latter two
spheres, historians have probably exaggerated the extent to which
differences have been the result of the physical barriers. The
positive attraction of the major continental and southern penin¬
sular river basins have been overlooked. Thus, if one focuses
3 G. Yazdani (ed.). The Early History of the Deccan (2 vols), OUP, London, 1960.
This otherwise valuable work is flawed precisely in that most of its contributing
authors ignore contacts between the ‘Deccan’ and the northern, continental parts
of the sub-continent, on the one side, and the southern peninsula on the other. See,
especially, the essays in v. 1 by H. Raychaudhuri, The Geography of the Deccan’,
pp. 1-65 and Gurty Venket Rao, ‘The Pre-Satavahana and Satavahana Periods’,
p.p. 65-149.
32 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

upon the nodal attraction of the two great basins of the Ganges
and the Kaveri rather than upon the peninsular barrier to substan¬
tial population movement, a different conception of north-south,
sub-continental discontinuity emerges. This conception affects
how one will view the entire peninsula as a unit of historical study
and the relationship of portions of the peninsula to the whole and
the rest of the sub-continent.
W.M. Day does as much in conceiving of the sub-continent as
harbouring two perennial cores of civilization: the Gangetic plain
with its extension into the Chambal basin, or 'Hindu-Aryan
India’, and the Coromandel plain with its extensions to the table¬
lands of the interior peninsula, or ‘Hindu-Dravidian India'.4
Each of the cores consisted of great populations and each attracted
the interests of quite distant people. What separated these primary
cores of civilization was not simply the upthrusting Deccan plateau,
but a broad cultural and political zone between the Kistna in the
south and the Kaimur Range in the north. This intermediate
zone between the two, primary cores of civilization has its own
ancient historical career which was consistently influenced by the
developments of the Gangetic and Coromandel cores and little
affected by natural barriers. It is not contended that this con¬
ception of what is, in effect, a trizonal (north-central-south) rather
than the conventional bizonal (north-south) division of the sub¬
continent overcomes the basic difficulties of using gross division
of this sort. However, for the problem at hand, this kind of dis¬
tinction may serve to focus attention more clearly upon the peren¬
nially influential character of the Coromandel plain for a major
part of the sub-continent. Moreover, it is ultimately to recognize
that, for many historical purposes, it may be most useful to con¬
centrate upon nodal regions or cores, rather than upon uniform
regions, or boundaries.
The term 'South India' has been used at times to designate the
entire peninsula, but that is not its meaning here. In this study,
‘South India’ refers generally to that portion of peninsular India
south of the Karnataka watershed (excluding modern Kerala)
on the west, and the Kistna-Godavari delta on the east. Within
this portion of the peninsula, there has existed a region charac¬
terized by a high degree of sharing of significant social, cultural,

4 Winifred M. Day, ‘Relative Permanence of Former Boundaries in India'.

The Scottish Geographical Magazine, 65, no. 3 (December 1949), p. H4.
 South India: The Region 33

and political elements and an order of interaction such as to con¬

stitute a viable unit for the study of certain problems.
Delineating what might be called the ‘macro region’ for this
study that portion of the peninsula which lies south of an imaginary
line from about thirteen degrees north latitude, at the Western
Ghats, to about eighteen degrees of north latitude on the Bay of
Bengal, still leaves a complex, composite region. It includes
most of what has been called the 'Dravidian culture sphere’ follow¬
ing the linguistic usage first suggested by Francis W. Ellis in 1816
to describe a family of languages in the southern peninsula.5
Spate employs the term ‘Dravidian S[outh]’ to refer to this part
of the sub-continent and sees it as consisting of a group of‘perennial
nuclear regions’ of which he lists: Kalinga country or Orissa,
Andhra or Telugu country, Chola and Pandya parts of Tamil
country, and the isolated south-western littoral of Kerala or
Malabar.6 A.H. Dani has also spoken of the portion of the penin¬
sula south of the Kistna River as a paleographic region.7 In social
terms the southern peninsula has also been recognized as dis¬
tinctive. Irawati Karve delineates a separate southern zone of
kinship organization which includes Karnataka, Andhra, Tamil-
nadu, and Kerala;8 Marriott, in his discussion of caste ranking
among Coromandel peoples has also suggested that parts of
Karnataka and Andhra share Coromandel characteristics.9 Such
general attributions alone do not justify the usage ‘South India’
adopted here, but they do support the definition of macro region
used here by indicating its broad cultural and civilizational corre¬
lates.
Within that macro region, primacy may be accorded to the
Tamil plain as a major source of the influence of civilization.
The Tamil poetry of the first several centuries a.d., better than
anything symbolizes this primacy, for classical, or Sangam, poetry

5 T. Burrow and M. Emeneau, A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, Clarendon

Press, Oxford, 1961, p. v.; hereafter D.E.D.
6 O.H.K. Spate, India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography, Methuen
& Co.. London, 1954, p. 148.
7 Indian Paleography, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, p. 193.
8 Kinship Organization in India, Deccan College Monograph Series, no. 11,
Deccan College, Poona, 1953, p. 180.
9 McKirn Marriott, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions
of India and Pakistan■, Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Poona,
1965, p. 53.
34 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

— in the anthologized form we have it today — are creations guided

by a highly sophisticated poetic canon, and the resultant poetic
corpus establishes the Tamil language as the most enduring,
living classical tradition in India.10 Institutions of Sanskrit and
Prakrit learning were contemporary with the production of most
classical Tamil poems and clearly influenced this latter poetic
tradition. The very term sarigam to designate this poetry derives
from a Jaina learned community (sahgha) established at Madurai
during the late fifth century that provided not merely grammatical
models to Tamil poets, but gnomic ones as well. Ghatika-s and
other institutions of high learning in the Tamil plain of this time
and later attracted men from everywhere in the South Indian
macro region, even those from distant Banavasi in northern Kar¬
nataka from whence Mayurvarman, founder of the Kadamba
dynasty, came for education in Kanchi (Kancipuram). In this
south-eastern coastal lowland, from the fifth century, a civilization
developed whose social and cultural forms profoundly influenced
people over a great portion of the southern peninsula. A substantial
part of this influence was carried by people of the Tamil plain as
the peasant agrarian system there expanded during the Chola
period. In fact, the macro region is almost conterminous with
the maxima! extent of the Chola overlordship, and the provenance
of Tamil language inscriptions of this period helps to define the
macro region as much as other evidence. Thus, a part of the modern
state of Karnataka — its heartland consisting of the modem
districts of Mysore, Bangalore, and Kolar — once comprised
an area of Tamil influence called Karmandalam, a name which
persisted in Tamil usage long after the time when the territorial
name Gangavadi replaced it among Kannada speakers. There
were similar extensions of dominance by Tamil speakers — peasant
settlers and warriors — northward over the Andhra plain to the

10 Recent scholarship on this tradition includes: K. Zvelebil, The Smile of Muru-

gan, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1973; George L. Hart III, The Poems of Ancient Tamils,
University of California Press, Berkeley. 1975 and K. Kailasapathy, Tamil Heroic
Poetry, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968. David Ludden, in a personal communi¬
cation, has pointed out that the exclusion ot Kerala from the macro region defined
here is scarcely justified during the Saiigam Ages since much of the poetry of the
time was composed in Kerala. The point is certainly well taken for in this early
period, however, except lor Venadu (erstwhile Travancore State) most of the rest
ol Kerala has been as isolated from the inteiior peninsula as it was linked with parts
of the Western littoral and the Arabian Sea from the tenth century a.d.
 South India: The Region 35

delta formed by the Kistna and Godavari rivers. Modern Nellore

was within the overlordship of Rajaraja I and. under the last of
the great Chola overlords, Kulottunga I, the Kistna-Godavari
delta was firmly within the overlordship of the Cholas based in
the Tamil plain. The scope of Chola authority — which will be
discussed as 'ritual sovereignty’ below — culminated a century
of efforts by its rulers to incorporate within their overlordship the
potentially rich Kistna-Godavari delta in which Tamil-speaking
peasants had come to represent an important segment of the
population. Along with this expansion of peasant peoples of the
Tamil plain and the Chola overlordship into territories contiguous
to the coastal lowland, including portions of modern Karnataka
and Andhra as well as the uplands of modern Coimbatore and
Salem, went many elements of culture and society. Such elements
were transformed, of course, especially in interaction with Andhra
and Karnataka cultures. These other Dravidian language cultures,
though less ancient or refined in literary terms, and without a
corpus of literature of classical antiquity such as existed in Tamil,
underwent continuous development during the medieval age.
Each of these South Indian cultural traditions so changed as to
constitute distinctive subcultural variations, each substantially
and, over time increasingly, different from the early Tamil culture
of the plain proper. Even after these cultural traditions had
emerged as mature after the thirteenth century, there were continued
influences from the core of Tamil civilization in religion, for
example, while a reverse flow of political power emanating now
from the northern territories under the Vijayanagara overlords
w’as carried by peasant warriors who were possibly, in many
cases, descendants of the earlier migrants to the north. Such
interactions between the core of Tamil civilization in the coastal
plain with those territories which had been extensions of the plain
produced a supracultural zone and contributed to the distinctive
macro region and directly influenced the peasant society ol South
India.
Physical elements of the macro region are complex. The southern
portion of the peninsula shares with the northern portion a penin¬
sular configuration. Both parts of the peninsula are linked by
the old and stable Deccan plateau formation comprising the core
of the entire peninsula. The plateau has affected the pattern of
settlement over much of the peninsula because, as a result of its
36 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

geomorphological character, fertile lands capable of supporting

relatively dense populations were scattered and isolated nodes
of prosperity and civilization surrounded by forest clad uplands
capable of supporting small, and often predatory, populations.
Spate’s four ‘perennial nuclear regions’ of the ‘Dravidian South
alerts one to this scatter configuration. However, within each of
these four regions — Kalinga, Andhra, Chola, and Pandya coun¬
tries — further sub-regions may be delineated consisting of small
clusters of sedentary, advanced peoples amidst forest and hill
peoples. Spatial relationships resulting from the pattern of isolated
settlement and one other major factor — the significance of the
sea — have critical historical importance for the macro region
under discussion; these characteristics are shared by both portions
of peninsular India (i.e. ‘South India’ and the Deccan) in contrast
to most of the continental portions of the sub-continent.
Within ‘South India’ itself, the most important element relating
to historical agrarian relations is the Coromandel plain on the
eastern littoral, extending from the tip of the peninsula to the
northern edge of the broad delta of the Godavari and Kistna
rivers.11 Never deeper than one hundred miles, in the Kaveri
basin, this lowland is moulded into a complex structure by the
rocky extensions of a'broken range of low hills that parallel the
coast, called the ‘Eastern Ghats’, and by patches of lateritic soils
and rocky marine deposits. The Coromandel plain is traversed
by streams draining these broken hill ranges as well as those of the
more imposing highland blocks of the western side of the peninsula,
the ‘Western Ghats’, including the Nilgiris in the north and the
Annamalai, Palni, and Cardamom hills in the south. Peaks of
this western highland attain an elevation of 8,000 feet. The most
important streams are the Godavari, Kistna and Kaveri, each of
which forms extensive, fertile deltas; other important rivers are
the Penner (or North Penner), Palar, Ponnaiyar (or South Penner),
Tambraparni, and Vaigai. The unfolding of this plain to its full
contemporary extent, in agrarian terms, was gradual; it was not
completed until the late nineteenth century when Kaveri canal

11 Spate, op. Cit. chapters 24 and 25 contain a good discussion of the plain and
its features; also see K. Ramamurthy, 'Some Aspects of the Regional Geography
of Tamilnad', Indian Geographical Journal, v. 23, no. 2 (April-June, 1948). pp. 1-137;
no. 3 (July-Sept., 1948), pp. 20-61; no. 4 (Oct.-Dec., 1948), pp. 23-33; v. 24, no. 2
 South India: The Region 37

irrigation brought the south-eastern corner of Tanjavur into

irrigated cultivation. This phased opening of the Coromandel
plain provides one of the important factors of agrarian periodiza¬
tion for South India, and the gradual settlement of the plain with
sedentary peasant communities is as important in the historical
development of the southern part of the sub-continent as the
settlement of the Gangetic plain was in the northern part of the
sub-continent. Both plains were prime loci of Indo-Aryan civiliza¬
tion; both were the prizes to be won by warriors and cultivators
from near and far.
The full impact of the seaward boundary of the Coromandel
plain is yet unclear in agrarian terms. However, the influence
of the sea is very ancient and has led some scholars to speculate
that the basic ethnic composition of the peninsula may have been
just as influenced by overseas immigration as the continental
portions of the sub-continent were by ancient overland migrations.12
Further, the impressive maritime activities of the Pallavas and the
Cholas were but continuations of the earlier Satavahana interest
in overseas trade.13 Maritime trade dating from the early years
of the Christian era is dramatically, if incompletely, documented
from mainland and insular South-east Asia.14 The cultural impact
of the Pallavas is monumentally preserved in the Cambodian

12 Noted by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Cultural Expansion of India. G.S. Press,

Madras, 1959, pp. 66-7; 1. Karve, ‘India as a Cultural Region', in Indian Anthro¬
pology. T.N. Madan and Gopala Sarana (eds.). Asia Publishing House, Bombay,
1962, pp. 328-35; and T.N. Subramaniam, The Pallavas of Kan chi in South-East
Asia. Swadesamitran, Madras, 1967. Associated with this is the idea of ‘Lemurian’
or 'Gondavana' land forms which supposedly connected South India, Sri Lanka,
Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and East Africa. See K.K. Pillay, South India
and Ceylon. University of Madras, Madras, 1963, pp. 5-7.
I? Classical and other references to this trade are found in K.A. Nilakanta Sastri.
Foreign Notices of South India: From Megasthenes to Ma Huan. University of
Madras, Madras. 1939. A Satavahana coin depicts a two-masted ship as do some
coins of the same period from further south. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Sources of
South Indian History. Asia Publishing House, Madras, 1964, p. 63.
14 Sastri, Foreign Notices . . . , R.C. Majumdar. Ancient Indian Colonization in
Southeast Asia. M.S. University of Baroda, Baroda. 1955. Notice should also be
taken of the growing critical literature of the ‘Greater India' view ol Indian scholars
as expressed early in J.C. Van Leur. Indonesian Trade and Society. Institute ot
Pacific Relations, New York, 1955, pp. 91-104 and Paul Wheatley, ‘Desultory
Remarks on the Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula', in John Bastin (ed.),
Malayan and Indonesian Studies: Essays Presented to Sir Richard Winstedt, Claren¬
don Press. Oxford, 1964, pp. 41-3.
38 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

kingdom of Angkor,15 and the military impact of Cholas in Sri

Lanka and the Indonesian archipelago is documented in some
lengthy and important inscriptions.16 Whatever is made of the
fragmentary facts of this early maritime interest and activity
ultimately, and there is yet much for scholars to do, some of the
more conspicuous manifestations of it may be suggested.
From an early time until perhaps the fourteenth century, the
sea presented an opportunity for South Indians to trade and to
pillage. Chinese records identify Kanchi (Conjeevaram, Chingle-
put District) as an important trade centre from perhaps as early as
the second century b.c.17 Other important entrepots on the Coro¬
mandel coast are mentioned in western classical sources; these
include Kaveripatnam (Roman sources; Camara), Shiyali Taluk,
Tanjavur; Puduchcheri (Pondicherry) (Rom.; Poduca); Markanam
(Rom.: Sopatma), Tindivanam Taluk, South Arcot; and Machli-
patnam (Rom.: Masalia). From these ports, South Indian mer¬
chants organized in guilds (e.g. manigrdmattdr) sailed to the
entrepots of the Kra Isthmus or directly to other South-east Asian
ports with wares collected from throughout the southern peninsula
of India. And to Coromandel ports came merchants from South¬
east Asia whose commercial and cultural activities, if the recent
and persuasive research on early South-east Asian history is to be
accepted, were largely responsible for many elements borrowed
from South India.18 Whatever historical assessment is made on
the major directionality of influence and agents in the early trade
and cultural relations between South India and South-east Asia,
the existence of trade centres on the coast as well as in the interior
certainly constituted points of a vast commercial network reaching
ultimately to China.
This trade system tying South Indians to a wider world persisted

l? Lawrence P. Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire, Transactions of the American

Philosophical Society, v. 41, pt 1, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia,
1951.
1<s Pillay, South India and Ceylon, op. cit.; K.A. Nilakanta Sastri. The History
of SrTvijaya, University of Madras, Madras, 1949; George Coedes, The lndianized
States of Southeast Asia, East-West Centre Press. Honolulu, 1968 (trans. Susan
B. Cowing, ed. Walter F. Vella); George W. Spencer, The Politics of Plunder: the
Cholas in Eleventh Century Ceylon’, J..4.S . v. 35 (May, 1976), pp. 405-19
17 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘The Beginning of Intercourse Between India and
China’. Indian Historical Journal, v. 14 (1938), p. 386.
lx Van Leur, op. cit., and Wheatley, op. cit..
 South India: The Region 39

from the beginning of the Christian era to the fourteenth century

when the character of South Indians' participation in it changed.
Two developments contributed to this change. One was the deepen¬
ing Muslim control over Indian Ocean trade which favoured the
commercial ascendancy of Muslim traders from western India,
by this time under greater control of Muslims. Coromandel
Muslims, mostly converted Hindu traders, continued to partici¬
pate in the Indian Ocean network, but the role of Coromandel
diminished relatively after this time while that of western India
grew.
Coupled with the extension of Muslim control over trade lanes
between India and South-east Asia, and the diminished role of
South Indian Hindus was the breakdown of the guild structure of
trade in South India. From about the ninth century, wealthy
and prestigious guildsmen, trading over extensive portions of the
southern peninsula and beyond, were an important element within
the existing agrarian system. Itinerant guilds provided one of the
means by which the scattered, advanced agrarian communities
of the period were linked together. Basic changes in South Indian
society after the fourteenth century diminished the ability of
itinerant guilds to maintain their former functions. These changes
included vastly more powerful and larger-scale political units;
both reduced guildsmen to a congeries of localized merchant
groups in the internal trade while Muslim traders on the coast,
better able to fit into the Muslim-dominated trade system of the
Indian ocean, handled most of the external trade. Until the four¬
teenth century, therefore, overseas trade must be seen within the
context of the South Indian agrarian system; after the fourteenth
century, Coromandel trade and the general influence of the sea
upon agrarian institutions was significantly diminished.19
The sea boundary of the South Indian macro region attained
its greatest early politico-military significance during the Chola
period. Then South Indian soldiers established temporary holds
in Sri Lanka and beyond. Rajaraja Chola (a.d. 985-1014) and
his son, Rajendra Chola (a.d. 1012-44) undertook these daring
military expeditions. Rajaraja, according to a Tanjavur inscription
of late in his reign, claimed conquests in many parts of South

■ 19 See author’s ‘Medieval Coromandel Trade’, in Merchants and Scholars, ed.

John Parker, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1965.
40 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

India as well as Sri Lanka (Ilamandalam) and the Maldives;20

Rajendra in the Tanjavur inscription of his nineteenth regnal
year, boasts of the same conquests as his father, and also his own,
perhaps most daring, raids upon Kadaram (Kedah, modern
Malaysia), the northern portion of the Srivijaya kingdom.21
These expeditions are of interest in this discussion — whatever
may be made of them in more general historical terms — because
the composition of the Chola armies reflects something essential
about the organization of contemporary society and because the
probable purposes of such expeditions suggest something essential
about the nature of Chola government and kingship. It is the
latter point which is of some concern here.
For the Chola overlords, a prime objective was to extend their
overlordship to the full extent of the Coromandel plain from their
central position in it. In part, this was achieved through warfare
and resulted in the recognition of Chola dominance by warriors
of northern sections of the plain at the Kistna-Godavari delta,
or the territory of Vengi, as well as the southernmost portion of
the Tamilnadu plain, or Pandya country. But. this expansion of
the Chola overlordship under Rajaraja and Rajendra from their
core domain in the Kaveri basin to the entire Tamil plain and its
adjacent upland was not achieved nor was it maintained by military
means alone. Chola kings of the tenth to the thirteenth centuries
were exemplars of medieval South Indian kingship and models
of appropriate rulership for chiefs of the macro region; it was
less the might of the Chola rulers than it was their moral appro¬
priateness that provided the basis of Chola rule over the Coro¬
mandel plain.
Different from this extension of Coromandel authority over
territories close to the Kaveri were the Chola actions as far afield
as the Raichur Doab to the north-west, the Mahanadi basin in the
north-east, Malaya, and Sri Lanka. These were pillaging raids
meant to yield rich booty and nothing more permanent. Such

20 India, Archaeological Survey ot'India, South-Indian Inscriptions [S.I.I.] (Madras,

1890) v. 2. pt 2, no. 65, 252-9; V R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, Selected South
Indian Inscriptions [5.5././.], University of Madras, Madras, 1952, pp. 34-44. The
same prasasti appears in other Rajaraja inscriptions of the period, viz., Ukkal
(North Arcot District), S.I.I.., v. 3, pt 1, no. 4, 6-8, and Merpadi (North Arcot
District), ibid., no. 15, 22-4.
21 S.S.I., v. 3, pt 1, no. 20, pp. 105-9 and 5.5.7./., pp. 70-6.
 South India: The Region 41

far-ranging raids were a part of the pattern of Indian overlordship

and a central aspect of Indian kingship. Where the realization
ot state revenue through an ordered administrative system was
absent except in quite localized territories, Indian rulers, great
and small, depended for a major portion of their income on raids
upon neighbours or, in some cases, upon distant, rich, overlords.
The Gupta king Samudragupta, of the fourth century, provided
the classic template for such predatory expeditions; more modest
versions were the cattle raids of contemporary hill peoples upon
plains villages. Often. rationalized by historians as logical ex¬
pansions of territory, Chola raids, particularly those beyond
the sea frontier, have a patently predatory purpose. Detailed
knowledge about distant, small, rich, kingdoms, probably borne
by contemporary venturesome Coromandel merchants, would
have served to justify the risks of these undertakings. The sea thus
provided the opportunity and the means to extend the region
from which wealth could be extracted beyond the peninsula itself,
and it may be suggested that the wealth won in such daring raids
was utilized to widen the Chola power base in the central Coro¬
mandel region.22
The western or interior boundary of the Coromandel plain is
more difficult to define, consisting as it does of a great variety of
transitional physical situations. These range from slight modifica¬
tions of the plain to sharp topographical breaks caused by up-
thrusting hills and ranges. In general, however, the western defini¬
tion of the plain was marked by intrusions of the plateau formation.
This ancient upland derives its agrarian significance not only in
marking the edge of the coastal plain, but also in containing ex¬
tensive cultivable land. However, tracts of such land are discontinu¬
ous owing to the deep cutting rivers and formidable rocky stratum
bared by these rivers during their turbulent traverse to the plain.
Also, upland ecotypes are hazardous: the rainfall regime there is
adversely affected by the rain-shadow effect of the western bloc
and the highly variable monsoonal effects upon the peninsular
interior. Most parts of the interior are, however, within easy
access of the plain at many points, and it is to the broad, fertile

22 Note is taken of the important work of George W. Spencer on this question;

see his Ph.D. thesis 'Royal Leadership and Imperial Conquest in Medieval South
India: The Naval Expedition of Rajendra Chola I, c. a.d. 1025'. Department of
History, University of California, Berkeley, 1967.
42 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Coromandel plain that people of the upland have been oriented

since the ninth century.
The 1,000 foot contour is a relevant indicator of agrarian poten¬
tial north and west from near Kanya Kumari (Cape Camorin)
to the Palghat Gap. West of this line, between 8 0 05' and 10 ° 30'
north latitude, rise the western highlands consisting of the Annama-
lai, Palni, and Cardamom mountains. North of the Palghat opening
and the Ponnani river which drains this gap area to the west, loom
the highest of the western bloc, the Nilgiris, which extend to 10 c40'
north where they fall to the Mysore plateau at about 2,000 feet.
North, beyond the Nilgiris, the 1,000 foot contour is deceptive
as an indicator for it disguises important socio-cultural relation¬
ships. It obscures the extent to which the southern Mysore plateau
at 2,000 feet and higher, and the Coimbatore plateau with its
extension across the Kaveri into the portion of modern Salem
south of the Shevroy Hills and the Toppur divide, at between 500
and 1,000 feet, have been linked to the Coromandel plain. Access
to these uplands from the plain is attained with considerable ease
in most places, but with difficulty in others where the gradient is
steep and precarious.
Between the Coromandel plain and the bloc of highlands to the
west, crested by the Nilgiri peak of Dodabetta at 8,000 feet, the
tableland constitutes a secondary agrarian core of South India.
The uplands of Coimbatore and southern Salem are ringed about
by a series of broken hill ranges at between 2,000 and 4,000 feet
— the Shevroy, Kollamalai, Pachamalai, Kalrayan. and Javadi
— whose foothills mark portions of the western edge of the plain.
Other hills which rise to 2,500 feet separate portions of these up¬
lands from each other. The Baramahal, which constitutes modern
northern Salem, is separated from its southern portion by difficultly
traversed passes at 1,500 feet. Deeply cut river courses also divide
the upland internally. The Kaveri has comprised a long-recognized
internal boundary between southern Salem and Coimbatore;
the Palar and Ponnaiyar too have also divided portions of the
uplands. However, each of these major streams, besides providing
focuses of significant population clusters, have served to connect the
uplands with other, more densely settled tracts; the Kaveri with
the southern Tamil plain, the Ponnaiyar with the northern Tamil
plain. Modern Coimbatore town occupies a strategic place on the
trans-peninsular axis of the Kaveri and Ponnani through the
 South India: The Region 43

Palghat gap thus constituting one of the tenuous links between

the two coastal plains of the peninsula.
The Mysore plateau, though geomorphologically different from
the Coimbatore and southern Salem uplands in being more closely
linked to the core of the Deccan plateau formation, has historically
been a continuation of these interior Tamil uplands connected
with the Tamil plain. The agrarian heartland of the Mysore
plateau has been the maidan, or ‘open country1, southward of
the watershed which crosses Karnataka between thirteen and
fourteen degrees north latitude. The Karnataka heartland has
been connected with the Coimbatore and southern Salem uplands,
and through these with the Coromandel plain by way of the Kaveri
in the south and the Palar in the east.23 North of the watershed,
an irregular line running west from Hassan to Kolar, the Mysore
plateau has long been an area of marginal population and agri¬
culture constituting a transitional zone to the dry Bombay-Kar-
nataka and the Deccan lavas of Maharashtra. Northern Salem,
or the Baramahal, has, in effect, acted as a pivotal tract connecting
the eastern portion of the Karnataka maidan with the Coimbatore
plateau on the south, and the coastal plain in the east.
The entire upland complex of Coimbatore, southern Salem,
northern Salem, and southern Karnataka not only share general
topographic characteristics, in contradistinction to the plain,
but climatic ones as well. It is a dry area with a rainfall pattern
variable in quantity and timing. The range of precipitation is
between about twenty-seven and thirty-five inches in a pattern
resembling neither the classic monsoon of the west coast nor the
so-called ‘retreating South-west monsoon’ of the coastal plain in
the east. Some parts of this upland are subject to high unreliability
of rainfall such as most of Coimbatore district where unreliability
exceeds thirty-five per cent.24
The northern boundary of the coastal plain does not end abruptly
at the rough hills which mark the northern edge of the Godavari
trough. Skirting the coast at this point is an important routeway
which the British called the ‘Northern Circars’ including, in addi¬
tion to the deltaic districts, the modern districts of Vishakapatnam

23 B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government (Rev. Ed.),

v. 1, London, 1897, pp. 4-5.
24 Government of India, vol. IX, ‘Madras’, pt IX, ‘Atlas of the Madras State ,
Madras, 1964, map no. 8; ‘Rainfall Reliability, 1911-1960’.
44 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and Srikakulam and those of Ganjam and Puri. This attenuated

extension of the Coromandel lowland, properly the Andhra plain,
constituted a channel through which trade and people moved from
the eastern portion of the primary core of Indian civilization, the
Gangetic plain, to the second such core in the south-eastern penin¬
sula. There is also some evidence of a reverse flow of religious
influence and interaction from the Tamil plain to Orissa as in the
a.d. 1396 stone inscription from Bhubaneshwar recording a gift
of land to the Siddhesvaramatha to support ascetics from Chola,
Pandya, and Kanchi country.25 Moreover, there were times,
brief to be sure, when this northern portion of the Coromandel
plain figured prominently in the affairs of the peninsula south of
the Godavari-Kistna delta region.26
The appropriateness of including portions of the Andhra and
Orissa coastal plains in the macro region designated as ‘South
India’ presupposes non-physical criteria. These should be made
explicit. There are two such criteria which serve to delineate the
macro region being considered here. One consists of a set of
interrelated political, cultural, and social elements which differen¬
tiate the region from others in the sphere of Indian culture. The
other criterion is interactional, that is, the recognition of a qualita¬
tively different order of interrelations among parts of the macro
region than between any part of the macro region and places beyond
it.
The medieval South Indian political system was based upon
states which were ‘segmentary’. In this sense it cannot be differen¬
tiated from the political system of most of the sub-continent at the
time. Localized political units were capable of being linked,

25 Madras, Archaeological Department, Southern Circle, Annual Report on Epigra¬

phy [A.R.E.] 1955-1956, p. 8 and no.117 relate to an a.d. 1396 bilingual inscription,
Oriya and Tamil. Full text of this: India. Archaeological Survey of India, Epigraphia
Indica [E.I.i\ v. 32, no. 6 (April 1958), 2291T.
2(1 Rajaraja I according to an inscription at Tirukkovalur in a.d. 1012 claimed
the title of 'Gajapati' by which the overlords of Kalinga were known, indicating
a successful expedition against Orissa; see T.N. Subramaniam, South Indian Temple
Inscriptions [S.I.T.I.] Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras. Madras
Government Oriental Series, no. 157, 1957, v. 3, pt 2, 14-15. During the Vijaya-
nagara period, Krishnadevaraya struck at the Gajapatis along the same corridor,
wresting all of the delta south of the Kistna in 1512; see S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar,
Ancient India and South Indian History and Culture, v. 2, Poona Oriental Series,
no. 74, Oriental Book Agency, Poona, 1941, pp. 136-9.
 South India: The Region 45

loosely and symbolically, to kings whose sovereignty might for a

time be recognized by local chieftains. Kings whose overlordships
were so recognized were in all cases effectively in control of but a
small portion of the macro region, but the legitimacy of their
hegemonic claims — which were ceremonial rather than real
in any case — could be recognized by those far-removed from this
core of real power. What was insisted upon by those who extended
recognition to an overlord was a style of dharmic kingship. South
Indian kings and dynasties of the medieval age, beyond the localities
of their own power, were symbols of authority and legitimacy for
a vast number of chieftains throughout the macro region. It did
not matter that Chola rulers, for example, were Tamilians for their
sovereignty to be recognized among Kannada-speaking or Telugu-
speaking chiefs. Nor was it important that the Hoysala or Vijaya-
nagara kings were not Tamils for their authority to be accepted
by local chiefs in Tamil country as attested by numerous inscrip¬
tions. It mattered only that the idea of legitimate secular authority,
as symbolized in the concept of kingship, exist for the system of
localized, segmentary political units to function as part of a king¬
dom.
These characteristics of kingship have considerable antiquity.
From the Classical Tamil literature of seven hundred years before
the great Cholas, three kingships were recognized and, during the
medieval period, references continue to be made to the Three
kings’ (mu-vendar)27 in the titles of prominent men, mu-venda-
velar. Then, and even earlier, in the time of Ashoka, the three
kingships were called: ‘Chola, Chera [or Kerala] and Pandya.’28
While there is some question about the location of Chera kingship29
it would appear to be what is now southern Kerala or, somewhat
earlier, Travancore State. In medieval times, this area was called
venddu. Another possibility considered by some, including Arokia-
swami, and rejected, is that Chera kingship had its locus in the
upper Kaveri basin, modern southern Karnataka and northern
Coimbatore. These kingships of Tamil antiquity do little more than

27 [Tamil Lexicon], (University of Madras, Madras, 1936) v. 6, p. 3332, mu-

ventar.
28 Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Maury as, OUP, Oxford, 1961,
pp. 251, 255-6.
29 M. Arokiaswami, The Kongu Country, University of Madras, Madras, 1956.
pp. 3-12.
46 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

recognize the principle of monarchy. It is only with the later

Pallavas and especially the Cholas that the medieval institution
of kingship is established, and this is a monarchical form which
does not vary whether the state is avowedly Hindu, as in the case ot
the Pallavas and the Cholas, or Jain, as in the case of the Gangas
and early Hoysalas of southern Karnataka.
The character of the South Indian medieval state as a form ol
‘segmentary’ state is dealt with in chapter VII. For purposes of
delineating the macro region, it is sufficient to propose that this
form of state is perhaps best exemplified by the Chola state of
Rajaraja the Great and his son, Rajendra, in reigns covering the
period from a.d. 985 to about 1045.30 This and other South Indian
states of the medieval period were integrated primarily by the
symbolic or ritual sovereignty which attached to the king, not by
the effective power possessed by him. In a polity where coercive
means, or military capability, was not monopolized by the kingly
centre, but possessed by every peripheral, local unit in greater or
lesser measure, there could be no centralized monarchy in terms
of real power. However, these many localities and locally powerful
men were linked to kings in Tanjavur in their recognition of the
ritual sovereignty acknowledged in the tens of thousands of stone
and metal inscriptions which have been discovered in the macro
region. These inscriptions do more than tell us about ritual sove¬
reignty; they are crucial component elements of that sovereignty.
Inscriptions exist everywhere in the Indian cultural sphere, of
course. However, in no other parts of India, except perhaps
Bengal during the medieval period, do they appear to have con¬
stituted the expressive linkage mechanism of ritual sovereignty
as they do in medieval South India. Moreover, whatever the diffi¬
culties of using inscriptional evidence,31 part of their great value
is that they can be located in time and space with considerable
precision. Most inscriptions are documents recording gifts (ddna-
sasana) to Brahmans or temples from wealthy and powerful
persons of groups of a locality. Yet, such documents often have
an introduction, frequently in Sanskrit, referring to the reigning
king, his genealogy, conquests, and dharmic rule. This introduction
adds nothing to the gift document which, in the case of most

30 For a discussion of the final years of Rajendra, see Nilakanta Sastri. The
Colas, University of Madras, Madras, 1955. p. 221.
31 D. C. Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, University of Calcutta. Calcutta, 1965, pp. 23-30.
 South India: The Region 47

copperplates is usually in another local language. The introduc¬

tion or prasasti, is all-important, however, as a statement of homage
to a great king by those locally prominent persons who instituted
such gifts. Under Rajaraja 1, Chola prasastis were standardized,
kept current on an almost annual basis, and even provided with
an identifying label of a few words, meyklrtti, which could be used
in place of the full introductory portion of a grant. Here, then,
was a powerful symbolic medium used in the political system.
Inscriptions called upon the skills of literate and erudite men and
expressed the symbols by which the particularistic loyalties,
interests, and affiliations of powerful local persons were merged
as a segmentary state within a spatial zone of legitimate overlordship.
A more widely recognized distinctive feature of medieval South
Indian states was the primacy of assemblies of all kinds in the
governance of the numerous localized societies of contemporary
South India.32 It was an assembly of some sort which most
consistently articulated and took responsibility for the decisions
to allocate agrarian resources to various purposes, at least from
the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. With regard to agrarian
resources, the polity was less one of regal, or Kshatriya raj, than
one of assembly, or sabha raj.
The political structure in the South Indian macro region was
distinctive by the almost total absence of the Kshatriya institution.
Sastric norms related to formal political authority and, to a signi¬
ficant extent, to the actual practices followed in many parts of
northern India were predicated upon the existence of a warrior
class which enjoyed high ritual status, its marriage and descent
rules resulted in broad territorial groupings of warrior lineages,
and who possessed a monopoly of coercive competence beyond
that of individual ethnic units (castes or tribes) and other corporate
entities such as village communities, guilds, and religious bodies.
Kshatriya institutions, variable though they were over northern
India, represented a warrior elite whose authority was maintained
through extensive agnatic and affinal relationships and whose
primary function was that of ruling a small territory, a domain
which at times could be expanded by warfare into a large realm
under able military leadership or could be reduced by succumbing
to the expanding overlordship of some other regal lineage. Rarely

■32 Noted by A. S. Altekar, among others, in A History of Village Communities

in Western India, OUP, Madras, 1927.
48 Peasant State and Soeiety in Medieval South India

was this system of political organization capable of being moulded

into a great kingdom covering even a portion of the Gangetic
plain and then only under the quite extraordinary military capabi¬
lities of a Samudragupta or a Harsha. The normal political condi¬
tion in northern India during ancient and medieval times was its
division into a great number of small territories under kin-linked,
warrior families of high status. Such was the nature of Kshatriya
raj.
The macro region of southern India was without such high
status warrior groups, and it would be difficult to reconcile such
a pattern of authority with two of the salient social structural
characteristics of the macro region: Brahman secular authority
and the narrow territorial segmentation of social relationships
and loyalty.
Only in Kerala did there emerge warrior lineages whose rule
over relatively large territorial units persisted through substantial
periods. It is important to note that these warriors never lost
their identity as "Nayars’, the bulk of whom were regarded by
Brahmans at least as Sudras. Nayar ‘Kshatriyahood’ has thus
been a case of enriched Sudra status. However modest an accom¬
plishment, the investment of sections of the dominant non-Brahman
population with durable Kshatriya status was not replicated in
other parts of the southern peninsula except in very remote and
miniscule hill tracts. This is an important reason for excluding
Kerala from the macro region.
The exclusion of Kerala from the macro region on this, or on
any, basis may appear unjustified; it would appear to present the
regional argument in a weak form even though it does serve to
emphasize an important discontinuity within the Indian cultural
sphere. To state this politically distinctive factor in more positive
terms, within the macro region the most persistent feature of
political organization was the alliance between sections of Brahmans
and representatives of the dominant land-controlling population
of Sudra rank. This constituted a political arrangement consistent
with and contingent upon the high secular authority of Brahmans
acting corporately as assemblies (sabhds) and an arrangement
basically different from that of northern India where Kshatriya
rule existed. In the latter case, power relations and conflict were
the exclusive concern of recognized warrior lineages struggling
for dominance among themselves within a territory or coping with
 South India: The Region 49

the armed intrusion of warriors from neighbouring territories.

The crucial element for victory, apart from individual military
ability, was the capacity of a warrior leader to mobilize a large
contingent of armed kinsmen and their retainers to defend against
or to aggress upon a neighbour. In the South Indian macro region
during the earliest period surveyed here, the political context was
also confined to a small territory in which Brahmans and high
(satvik) non-Brahmans shared authority over the population of
lower caste people, whose major political function it was to dispose
of the corporate interests expressed by various kinds of groups in
formal assemblies.
The political culture of the macro region until the fourteenth
century would have permitted no other dominant political arrange¬
ment than that of sabhd raj. Large and populous villages of the
macro region provided an efficient and legitimate means of govern¬
ing the affairs of diverse social groups through assemblies whose
entire constituencies inhabited a single territorial unit. The terri¬
torially segmented structure of social relationships among numerous
social fragments and the absence of Kshatriyas form the basic
determinants of the region’s political organization.
Rule through assemblies may have been inherently more peaceful
than Kshatriya-dominated areas elsewhere, but violence and
warfare occurred. Defence against hill and forest people was a
regular problem in this period and later, and predatory wars against
neighbours did occur along with daring pillaging expeditions far
from the region itself. The great Brihadesvara temple of Rajaraja I
in Tanjavur, for example, was constructed and maintained through
demands by Rajaraja upon villages throughout the Kaveri delta
core of Chola power as well as from ‘the booty in the conquests
of Chera and Pandya kings. . .’ and the Chalukya king Satyasraya
as described in the ‘Larger Leiden Plates’ of Rajaraja.33 Such
warfare tended to enhance the prestige of a few warriors, and this
was an important secondary objective of the activity, but it also
brought fame and fortune to the corporate groups who made up the
armies led by such warriors — soldiers of the left and right divisions
of castes, certain artisan groups, guilds — thus it strengthened
the vigorous corporate structure of South Indian political relations
until at least the fourteenth century.

33 E.I., v. 22, no. 34.

50 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the political structure

of the macro region was altered by the introduction of a new order
of warrior control in all of its parts. Warriors from the northern
fringe portions of the macro region established themselves in
many parts of the southern portions and, where these ‘northern
men’ (vadugan) did not establish their control, there arose locality
leaders from within to end the era of sabha raj. Yet, the warriors
who came to dominate territories previously under the control
of the assemblies of Brahmans and other corporate groups in
South Indian society did not establish themselves as Kshatriyas
whom they may superficially have resembled. While destroying
the system of corporate assemblies, the new warrior elite preserved
the older Brahman-^dt-Sudra alliance. The latter groups provided
a ready pool of collaborators with the new order, and they were
rewarded by enhanced functions as village and locality leaders.
As for Brahmans, the new warrior elite of South India sought and
obtained a required moral standing or legitimacy in return for
support of new sacred temple centres of Brahmanical authority.
For all of their considerable efforts however, most new warriors
failed to establish either durable or extensive networks of kinship
and stability within the social structure of the macro region.
Kaljar and Maravar rulers of many parts of the southern peninsula
and Tanjavur were exceptional in this respect, but their political
networks conformed to pre-existing clan-like control of many of
these parts of South India. However, neither achieved high ritual
status, though they often claimed high non-Brahman (i.e. Vellala)
rank.
When the British extended their territorial power in the south
during the eighteenth century, this shallow-rooted warrior elite
was found not to constitute a landed class through which Company
objectives of stability, peace, and tribute could be realized. Called
‘ poligar ’ by the British (Tamil: palaiyakkarar, or ‘men of military
encampments’) these warriors had not developed the client relation¬
ships of, say the Oudh talukdars or that group of landed
agents who were called ‘zamindars’ in Bengal; they had failed to
create for themselves an integrated place within the social structure
of the south essential for the intermediary functions which the
British required. In the face of British expansion, ‘poligars’ could
only fight to retain their unstable overlordships and thereby risk
annihilation, or they could forego their prized positions and accept
 South India: The Region 51

the uncertain status ol village renter or later, zamindar under the

Company. Many warriors chose the former, and the late eighteenth
century witnessed the liquidation of this class of low caste military
leaders which had failed to alter the earlier structure of society
sufficiently to provide viable places for themselves during the
course of four centuries when they had power. The Brahman -
high non-Brahman alliance thus remained intact to almost 1800.
Perhaps, as in none of the mature sub-cultures of the Indian
sub-continent in medieval times, the Sanskrit language and ideas
derived from its texts were balanced by non-Sanskritic cultural
elements in South India. Social, religious, and political categories
from Sanskrit sastras and purdnas were utilized in the inscriptional
and literary sources of the age, often when these categories had
little sociological, ritual, and doctrinal, or political reality. How¬
ever, in the macro region under study here, and especially among
the Tamils, there was a prominent place given to the languages,
symbols and usages of the indigenous, Dravidian cultures as well.
To state the matter in this way is to suggest two independent
traditions — Sanskrit and Dravidian — which is a false concep¬
tion, for even in classical Tamil literature the two are so inextricably
interwoven as to defy disaggregation into autochthonous, interact¬
ing phenomena. Yet, an effort was made to preserve some degree
of formal independence of the two traditions as shown in the
bi- and sometimes tri-lingual inscriptions of the medieval period
and the tendency in inscriptions — the major public documents
of the time — to use Sanskritic and Dravidian language forms.
Related to this balance of Sanskritic and Dravidian elements
was the place of Brahmans as the major cultural arbiters of the
culture of the macro region. The high visibility of Brahmans in
their distinctive settlements (brahmadeyas) over much ol the
Tamil and Andhra plains, in their religious and instructional roles,
and in the significant political duties they carried out, are noted
immediately below and elsewhere in this study. What may be
emphasized at this point is that the cultural role of Brahmans in
the medieval South as here delineated is not that of an exogenous
influence upon essentially Dravidian societies of Tamilians,
Kannadigas, or Telugus. Brahmans were as integral to these
respective traditions as were non-Brahmans. As prime custodians
of Sanskrit knowledge, they are easily identifiable, of course,
but it is important to recognize that Brahmans as learned indivi-
52 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

duals perhaps most perfectly incorporated the balance of Sanskritic

and non-Sanskritic elements which are given saliency here.
Brahmans were not alone in this ability, however. It becomes
increasingly clear that from among the dominant non-Brahman
peoples of Tamil country at least there were an impressive number
at any time who were adept in Sanskrit learning as well as, with
Brahmans, custodians and transmitters of non-Sanskritic cultural
forms. And, while the evidence of tension between Brahman and
non-Brahman savants and religious teachers becomes manifest
in the thirteenth century, and lays the foundation for some of the
conflict between the two in the twentieth century, the tension is
not that between maintainers of an indigenous culture against
external intruders, but largely that of cultural variants and their
upholders seeking the greatest favour from those in a position
to support them.
There are, finally, social forms which give distinctiveness to the
macro region designated as South India here. While sastric
models of Indo-Aryan society are in no part of India perfectly
realized, historically or at present, the social structure of the South
Indian macro region has long provided a unique and persistent
variant of Indian society.
The uniqueness of this variant of Indian social structure is
based upon three persistent and related characteristics: the great
secular authority and significant secular functions of South Indian
Brahmans; the dual division of lower social groups; and the
territorial segmentation of all social hierarchies in the South Indian
macro region.34
Brahman secular authority over the entire period of this study
appears to stem from two conditions in South Indian society.
Brahmans were strongly entrenched in the localities where they
lived as a result of the prestige which attached to their sacerdotal
functions, and this prestige was backed in many places by the
power which they possessed by virtue of their direct control over
land and those dependent upon land. In the matter of prestige
associated with sacral functions. South Indian Brahmans did
not differ from priests in most other parts of India. This is strongly
suggested by caste ranking in all parts of the sub-continent. There
is no reason to suppose that the high rank ubiquitously enjoyed by

34 Marriott, Caste Ranking . . . , pp. 45-53, notes these factors as does Karve,
op. cit.
 South India: The Region 53

priestly castes during the last century, when data for reasonably
reliable ranking has been available, was diflerent in earlier times.
However, in respect to Brahman locality power associated with
land control. South India appears quite unique. In no other
portions ot the sub-continent did elaborate and powerful Brahman
villages, hrahmadeyas, exist as they did in the Coromandel and in
many parts of the contiguous tableland during the period.35 Simi¬
larly, in no other parts of the Indian cultural sphere were there so
many Vedic temples with substantial control over endowed villages,
devaddna, as in South India from about the fourteenth century
to the eighteenth century. South Indian temples of the medieval
period were unique in the degree to which they provided the means
for Brahman temple functionaries to exercise not only ritual
primacy over all other castes and religious institutions, but also in
that temples were the headquarters of hhakti sects through which
organizations the religious allegiances and ritual activities of most
Hindus were ordered. The relatively comprehensive ritual, social,
and agrarian functions of medieval South Indian temples resulted
from many factors.
As compared with Hindu temples elsewhere in India during this
period, the fact of being outside of the control of Muslim power,
and possibly reacting to the threats of that power, was very impor¬
tant. However, ritual developments within hhakti Hinduism were
an equally important reason for their flourishing condition in
South India. As custodians of these religious centres, Brahmans
were in a position to enjoy great secular authority, compensating,
to some degree, for the contemporary decline in influence of Brah¬
man villages under the altered political conditions of the fourteenth
century and after. Finally, the early period of British rule in
South India provided opportunities for the maintenance of powerful
secular positions by Brahmans. As beneficiaries of early British
land policies in South India, Brahmans were invested with pro¬
prietory rights over some of the richest, best irrigated lands in the
presidency of Madras. Simultaneously, Brahmans became the
most dependable servants of British officials in both collectorate
and provincial offices of the Presidency. In these ways they were
able to protect their ancient secular authority and, in some ways,
even to enhance it by the early nineteenth century. Brahman

3? This point is stressed by Altekar, Village Communities in Western India.

54 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

secular authority was not uniform throughout the macro region;

it was greater in places like Tanjavur than in Salem and Coimbatore.
But, in contrast to the secular authority and functions of Brahmans
elsewhere, it is a most striking phenomenon in South India.
The second persistent characteristic of the social structure of the
South Indian macro region was the bifurcation of lower social
groups. The terms for this dual division of lower castes are not
consistent over the macro region, being referred to by the right
and left hand designations among Tamil and Kannada speakers
and by these, as well as by sect designations (Vaishnavas corres¬
ponding to the right-hand division and Saivites corresponding to
the left-hand castes elsewhere). Nor is the composition of this
fundamental division easily specifiable because of variations
in time and place.36 However, in most cases the right-hand castes
(Vaishnavas among lower Telugu castes) are associated primarily
with agricultural production and local trade in agricultural com¬
modities while left-hand castes are associated with mobile artisan
production and relatively extensive trade in non-agricultural com¬
modities.37 These divisions of lower castes appear to operate
as supra-local systems of alliance from which are excluded the
two other, and most powerful, social strata of South Indian society.
Brahmans and high non-Brahman castes.
For at least the last five hundred years it has been possible to
identify a tripartite horizontal division of all South Indian castes
in most parts of the macro region. These are Brahmans, respectable
agricultural castes of acknowledged high ritual rank, and lower
castes, the last group of castes being divided into the bifurcated

3(1 Marriott, in Caste Ranking . . . , uses the term 'faction' most often in his dis¬
cussion of this structural characteristic, and only rarely the term ‘alliance’ as on
p. 51. An excellent, recent reconsideration of the matter is found in Ar]un Ap-
padurai, 'Right and Left Hand Castes in South India', The Indian Economic and
Social History Review, v. 11, nos. 2 and 3 (1974). pp. 216-60.
37 This is supported from a wide range of evidence: C.S. Srinivasachari, 'The
Origin of the Right and Left Hand Caste Divisions', Journal of the Andhra His¬
torical Research Society, IV (1929), pp. 77-85; J. H. Nelson. The Madura Country:
A Manual, Asylum Press. Madras. 1888, pp. 4-7; N. Subbha Reddi. 'Community
Conflict Among the Depressed Classes of Andhra’, Man in India, v. 30, no. 4 (1950),
pp. 1-12; Government of Madras, Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, 1796, 16.
20 and 27 June; 14 and 18 July; 4, 8, 22, and 25 August. Manual of Administration
of the Madras Presidency, v. 3, 'Glossary', Government Press. Madras, 1893,
pp. 1036-7.
 South India: The Region 55

groupings. Piior to the fifteenth century, and possibly as early

as the eleventh century, the dual division of lower castes was an
important factoi in South Indian society, but the deeply competitive
and conflict-ridden nature of relations between the two divisions
of the Vijayanagara period and later appears to have been largely
absent. Why and under what conditions the change from the
relatively peaceful and integrated relations of the earliest period
to the violent and competitive relations occurred is discussed
below. But, whether peaceful or violent, the dual division of
lower castes is a distinctive marker of the caste organization of
the macro region.
Territorial segmentation of society and culture in the South
Indian macro region is the third characteristic of social structure,
the distribution of which contributes to its definition as a region.
This characteristic relates to the marked extent to which social
groups have tended to maintain a low order of significant and
persistent relationships with groups at any substantial distance
from their locality as compared to the often extensive network
of group relations maintained in other parts of the sub-continent.
Locality loyalties and parochial relationships of all kinds are
attributes of peasant society and culture to which the Indian
cultural sphere is not excepted. However, marriage and descent
systems in South India operate in quite narrow territorial arenas.
This is related to the preference for cross-cousin marriage and
maternal uncle-niece marriage within narrow marriage 'kindreds’
as well as to the tendency for village and village clusters to be more
populous in South India than elsewhere. Also related to the
territorial segmental feature is the precocious development of
locality institutions by the Pallava period which provided the
institutional framework through which the numerous nuclear
territories of the Coromandel lowland functioned.
Territorially differentiated units of culture and society are
deeply imbedded in the earliest Dravidian culture of the Classical
period. According to one of the Classical works of this early
period of Tamil literature, possibly the third century a.d., social
groups in Tamil country were divided into five situational types
on the basis of natural sub-region and related occupational patterns.
The Pattupattu enumerates these territorial segments (or tinai)
as follows:
56 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

1. Maruta makkal or tribes of ploughmen (ulavar) inhabiting

fertile, well-watered tracts (panai) and living in villages
called ur;
2. Kuravar makkal or hill people who are foresters, make
charms, and tell fortunes and may come out of the forest
to work in the panai;
3. Mullai makkal or pastoralists, also called aydr (cowmen),
kovalar (shepherds), and idaiyar (cowherd or shepherd);
4. Neytal makkal or fishing people living in large coastal
villages called pattinam or small ones called pdkkam; and
5. Palai makkal or people of the dry plains called eyinar.
maravar, and vedar who are hunters of both the dry plains
and the forest.38

This five-fold division of ancient Tamil speakers is interesting for a

variety of reasons. As a richly elaborated poetic scheme, it provides
a pool of images which gives these poems much of their expressive
power. Beyond that, as a description of spatial categories of Tamil
subcultures they are important cultural concepts. Finally, these
categories suggest a ranking postulate comparable to the varna
concept elsewhere in the Indian cultural sphere. It is clear from
Classical literature that the people of the first category, those of the
panai who lived by the plough enjoyed a special place in the affection
of the greatest Classical poets who were, for the most part, men
of the ‘thriving soil’ of the panaid9 It is easy, of course, to make
too much of this element of‘ancient’ Tamil culture. For one reason,
the chronology of the literature containing these cultural categories
is still controversial, with one group of scholars favouring the
period from the sixth to ninth century and another larger group
favouring the earlier period.40 Also, the relationships between the

38 S. Vithianathan, The Pattupattu: A Historical. Social, and Linguistic Study',

unpublished Ph D. thesis, University of London. School of Oriental and African
Studies, July 1950. These terms have been examined by numerous scholars: see
V. Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago, Higginbotham & Co.,
Madras, 1904; Srinivasa Iyengar, op. cit.; N. Subrahmaniam, Pre-Pallavan Tamil
Index, University of Madras, Madras, 1966 and his Sahgam Polity, Asia Publishing
House, Madras, 1966.
_,y Vithianathan, op. cit., p. 140. That Sangam poets were in most cases men of
the panai is suggested in the authenticated or putative authors, compilers, and
patrons of the anthologies as provided in Subrahmaniam, Pre-Pallavan Index,
pp. 1-16.
40 Nilakanta Sastri, Sources of Indian History, pp. 54-7; Zvelebil, Smile of
Murugan, ch. 3, pp. 23fT.
 South India: The Region 57

culture of a people, as reflected in a body of poetry collected and

selected as anthologies centuries after being composed, and actual
social patterns may be easily distorted.
These political, cultural, and social attributes and their dis¬
continuous distribution over the southern peninsula permit the
delineation of an historically significant macro region. However,
there is another criterion which is important, an interactional or
transactional one.
It is proposed that a portion of the southern peninsula may be
demarcated on the basis of persistent and important interrelation¬
ships over most of the medieval period. In political, cultural,
and social terms all of Tamil country and the southern parts of
Karnataka and Andhra may be seen as bound together by the
movement of peoples of all kinds — from Brahmans to the most
vulnerable of landless folk — cult practices, and shifting patterns
of overlordship. The outcome of these diverse interactions was a
region which, while complex in language, some aspects of social
structure, and cultural forms, was a uniformity which sets it off
from other, physically contiguous territories. It is moreover clear
from these historical interactions that the Kaveri basin — the
seat of Chola power — constituted a core to which most of the
southern people of the Indian cultural sphere looked for sources
of political, cultural, and social developments in their own, often
distant, homelands. Finally, the boundaries of the macro region
which found the Kaveri as its prime locus are conveniently demar¬
cated by the Chola overlordship in the time ot Rajaraja I and
Rajendra I. At the zenith of Chola power, that part of the southern
peninsula which fell under the Chola overlordship was the macro
region. This should not be understood to mean that the macro
region was created by Chola conquest, but rather the opposite.
The extensive overlordship claimed by the great Chola rulers and
validated by hundreds of inscriptions ot the time of these rulers
was made possible in large part by the broad agreement about the
legitimacy of certain symbolic relationships. The Chola king was
a ritual centre, a political, cultural, and social reference point for
the organization of medieval South Indian society.
Using the attributional and interactional markers discussed
above, it is possible to delimit the macro region ot South India
as understood here from other parts of the southern peninsula.
Specifically, this study will not deal with what is now most of the
58 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

state of Kerala, nor with Telingana, nor with the northern portion
of what is now Karnataka state or what the British called 'the
Bombay-Karnatak’.
The west coast of the southern peninsula has long constituted
a special problem for scholars of South India. Its isolation behind
the high scarp of the Western Ghats has resulted in well-recognized
discontinuities with respect to its social structure, its culture,
and its settlement patterns.41 Yet, however unique it may be —
even considering the diversity of India — its society and culture
possess elements of Dravidian India, and it cannot be summarily
dismissed. Two factors weigh heavily in excluding most of the
west coast of the peninsula from the macro region under study
here. First, though modem and medieval Kerala is a part of the
general South Indian cultural sphere, its interactions with the
Coromandel lowland and with interior uplands of modern Coim¬
batore and Salem as well as with southern Karnataka have been
of a low order and sporadic. Physical separation has never been
overcome except in the case of the Venadu tract of the extreme
south which was in continuous and close contact with other parts
of the macro region.42 The second factor is that the historical
evidence of this isolated portion of the peninsula is too meagre
and insufficiently synthesized at this time to permit analysis of its
peculiar agrarian characteristics for any time before the nineteenth
century.
Exclusion of Telingana is based upon similar considerations.

41 Karve, op. cit., p. 252, states, . . Kerala represents a land of isolation where
ancient customs have been preserved and where immigrants soon lost contact
with their homelands and made strange adaptations to the customs of the native
population, thus themselves adding to the peculiarities of the land'. Dr Joan
P. Mencher makes the same point in terms of settlement and ecological factors
in her ‘Kerala and Madras: A Comparative Study of Ecology and Social Structure’.
Ethnology, V, no. 2 (April 1966). pp. 135-71.
42 This seems very clear from the work of T. K. Velu Pillai (The Travencore
State Manual. Vol. II. History, Government of Travancore, Trivandrum, 1940,
pp. 50-118) when discussing the period from the ninth century to the time of Ravi
Varma Kulasekhara in the early fourteenth century. It is also clear from the case
of the important Venadu (southern Travancore) Saivite temple of Sucindram
where Tamil Brahmans maintained control through their control oveF the village
assembly ot the place until the fourteenth century when they were replaced by
Nambudris; moreover there was no state interference with the operations of the
temple until the middle of the sixteenth century. See K. K. Pillay, The Sucindram
Temple, Kalaskshetra Publication (Adyar), Madras, 1953, pp. 153, 167.
 South India: The Region 59

This tract between the relatively fertile trappan lands of the Bombay-
Karnatak, seat of the ancient power of the Chalukyas and Yadavas,
and the rich deltaic lands of Vengi provided such a poor basis for
settlement of agricultural peoples that it was not until the middle
of the twelfth century that something like an organized state
emerges from the confusion of warring minor chiefs.^3 This state,
when it does come into existence is a doubtful version of the seg¬
mentary state system of other parts of the macro region. The
Kakatiya kingdom of Telingana was not an operative state except
for the late part of the reign of Ganapatideva (a.d. 1199-1261)
when the congeries of previously independent minor chiefs of
the area recognized the overlordship, or the ritual sovereignty,
of this king. It appears quite certain from the records of the
period that without the vigorous military activities of Ganapatideva
even this brief period of overlordship could not have been achieved.
Thus the Kakatiya ‘kingdom1 existed as a recognized polity for
too brief a time before the Muslim conquest in the fourteenth
century to inspire confidence that it was really a ‘state1 at all.
A final reservation about the inclusion of Telingana is that the
inscriptional evidence pertaining to the ‘kingdom1 shows little
of the balance of Sanskritic and non-Sanskritic elements charac¬
teristic of the inscriptional records of other states of the southern
peninsula. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Sanskrit
forms are dominant in the glimpses we are permitted of this area;
there is no evidence of self-conscious Telugu culture as one finds
contemporaneously in the neighbouring Vengi region. In time,
a balance of Sanskritic and Telugu elements does emerge, even
through the veneer of Muslim forms, but the process is a slow one.
Telingana, in short, was a shatter region during almost all of the
medieval period; it serves to mark one of the boundaries of the
macro region of medieval South India.44
Reservations about the inclusion of what during the British
period was called ‘Bombay-Karnatak1 are based upon attributional
and interactional factors. What are now the Karnataka districts
of Bidar, Gulbarga, Bijapur, Belgaum, Raichur, and parts of
Dharwar and Bellary were in medieval times linked to the Deccan

43 N. Ramesan, Copper Plate Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh Government Museum,

Hyderabad, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 1962. v. 1. p. 96.
44 N. Venkataramanayya and M. Somasekharasarma, 'The KakatTyas of Waran-
gal’ in Yazdani, op. citv. 2, pp. 5751T.
60 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

cultural sphere rather than South India. Kannada is, to be sure,

a Dravidian language on the basis of which the districts mentioned
above were joined with the princely state of Mysore in 1956.45
However, there is a well-recognized and major dialectical break
between northern and southern Kannada districts, the Dharwar
and ‘Mysore' dialects respectively.46 The dialectical isopleth is
said to lie along the Tungabhadra River, but that is an imprecise
designation.
This dialect division conforms to a basic division ol the Mysore
plateau by a watershed ‘Crossbelt’ which traverses the entire
Karnatak area and divides the drainage basin of the Kistna system
to the north and that of the Kaveri to the south.47 A ridge line
runs irregularly across that portion of modern Karnataka state
below the Tungabhadra, beginning at around 12°30’ north latitude
near the 76 degree meridian and extending to about 78 degrees
where it merges with a complex, river system formed by the northern
and southern Penner and the Palar rivers. North of this ridge
line, the drainage is northerly toward the Kistna; south of the line,
the drainage is to the Kaveri, and this area constitutes the upper
Kaveri basin. The eastern extension of this divide merges with
the riverine systems of the Tamil plain.48
The dialectical variation of Kannada follows this topographical
division and so do other important cultural elements. In the
introductory chapter on cultural geography in Ananthakrishna
Iyer’s Mysore Tribes and Castes, these cultural discontinuities
are noted and roughly mapped. They include: the incidence of
Tamil inscriptions,49 the distribution of Vira Saivite sectarians,50
and the distribution of the most numerous castes of Karnataka.51

^JSpate, op. cit. p. 645. cites the 1931 Census to report that Kannada speakers
on a district basis were: Mysore district, 93%; Hassan, Chikmagalur, Shimoga,
Charwar, Bijapur, and Bangalore, 75-90%; Chitaldrug and Raichur, 72% and
64% respectively; and Bellary and Gulbarga. 49%.
46 W.C. McCormack, Kannada: A Cultural Introduction to the Spoken Styles of
the Language, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 1966, p. 3.
47 L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes, Mysore University,
Mysore, 1928-35, v. 1, p. 84 and map on p. 80; Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled
for Government, pp.4-5.
4» Ibid., ch. 2, pp. 8Iff.
4t) Ibid., p. 115, Fig. 8.
so Ibid., p. 120. Fig. 12.
51 Ibid., pp. 123-4, 126; Figs. 17-20, 21. 23. 24. 27-32.
 South India: The Region 61

That these cultural elements are not abruptly discontinuous in

their distribution needs no emphasis, of course; however, what
is significant about the distributional gradient between the northern
and southern portions of the princely state of Mysore (i.e., prior
to the addition of the Bombay-Karnatak districts in 1956) is that
much of Karnataka is best regarded as a transitional zone between
the Kaveri core of the macro region which is delimited here and
the Deccan culture area whose southern edges touch the Kistna
basin.
A social element which demonstrates the transitional character
of Karnataka and supports the exclusion of the Bombay-Karnatak
is the attenuation of the dual division of castes into groups of the
right and left hand as one moves northward from the southern parts
of Karnataka. This characteristic social structural marker of the
macro region is noted in early nineteenth century reports on
Mysore and continue to be referred to in the censuses of the late
part of the century. Oddly, there are no references in medieval
inscriptions to the right hand (balagey) and the left hand (edagey)
castes and, while these terms are used during the nineteenth century,
the census reports remark that the term phana, was preferred to the
reference to 'hands’. The 'Eighteen Phanas' referred to castes of the
right hand, and the 'Nine Phanas’ to those of the left hand. Ac¬
cording to the Census Report of 1901, the word phana was a corrup¬
tion of the Kannada word, hanna, itself a corruption of the Sanskrit,
varna.52 In the same 1901 Census, it is noted that the dual division
utilized 'eighteen’ and ‘nine’ as conventional numbers since all
but a handful of non-Brahman castes were to be regarded as either
of one or the other phana, and of those not included in the two
conventional divisions, it was noted that some numerically signi¬
ficant castes declared themselves to belong to a new ‘twelve phana
category. Thus, in 1901 this division of castes in Mysore appears
to have become a confused category.
However, earlier, in 1891, a larger number of persons reported
themselves as affiliated with one or the other of the divisions
(approximately one-half of the population), and these affiliations
were tabulated on a district basis. It is strikingly clear that the dual
division was more significant in the Kaveri oriented districts of

52 Census of India, 1901, v. 24, Mysore, pt 1, 'Report’ compiled by T. Ananda

Row, Bangalore, 1903, pp. 508-10.
62 Peasant Stale and Society in Medieval South India

Mysore, Bangalore, Tumkur, Kolar, and Hassan than in the

northern districts of the then Mysore princely state: Shimoga,
Kadur, Chitaldrug.53 Moreover, the acknowledged leaders of the
'Eighteen Phana' group (halagey, or right hand castes), the Banajiga
in or seriously diminished incidence of the distribution regional
traders, were concentrated in the southern Kaveri oriented, dis¬
tricts of Mysore state.54 This is further confirmation of the break
markers along the Karnatak watershed. North of this watershed,
there begins a transitional zone which crosses the Tungabhadra
into the Deccan. Thus, the ‘Bombay-Karnatak’ is treated here
as another shatter-zone boundary of the macro region.

^ Census of India 1891; Mysore, v. 25, pt 1, 'Report’. Bangalore, 1893, pp. 308-11.
"4 Ananthakrishna Iyer, Mysore Tribes and Castes, v. 1, p. 124. Fie. 24.
 CHAPTER II

Formation of the Medieval

Agrarian Order
Brahman and Peasant in Early
South Indian History1

An agrarian system being a social arrangement involving the uses

of land and its products, it is to those persistent and normative
relationships among social groups that one turns first. The core
of social relationships involving the land in medieval South India
was that between Brahmans and peasants. It is this nexus, despite
variations over time and over the complex macro region, which
provides a fundamental defining characteristic of the medieval
period. Modern conditions and a misplaced emphasis upon the
role of the medieval South Indian state have led most scholars
to consider the ‘state’, or formal governmental institutions, to
comprehend most salient aspects of agrarian relations. Such a
view is explicitly rejected here. Operations of the Pallava, Chola,
and other states did not touch the core of agrarian relations in
medieval South India, though the political framework established
by these states had an obvious relationship with agrarian arrange¬
ments of the age. In general, the segmentary states of medieval
South India assume, rather than create, an agrarian order main¬
tained and managed by dominant peasant groups, their chiefs,
and prestigious communities of Brahmans. This has been true
from the time of the Pallavas when the basic structure of agrarian
relations were first clearly exposed by contemporary documents.
What is revealed in these Pallava documents is an agrarian order
which endured for a millenium.
The period of the Pallavas associated with the line of Simha-
yishnu (c. a.d. 575-900) has been identified as transitional in a

1 This discussion, in altered form, was first published, as ‘Brahman and Peasant
in Early South Indian History’, The Adyar Library Bulletin (Dr V. Raghavan Feli¬
citation Volume), v. 31-2 (1967-8), pp. 229-69.

63
64 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

number of important ways related to the development of South

Indian society and culture. Among these are: the monumental
building, the foundation of devotional (bhakti) sects upon the
sacred hymns of the Saivite and Vaishnavite devotees (ndyanar
and alvar), the efflorescence of essentially rural Brahmanical insti¬
tutions as loci of Sanskrit learning and culture, and the establish¬
ment of kingship based upon the cakravartin model of rule over
a territory consisting of diverse peoples. With these changes, an
era in South Indian history was brought to a close. The pre-Pallavan
era, though it continues to be vague in its specific social and cultural
content, was characterized by quite different and distinctive
elements. The most important of these were orthogenetic elements
including the Tamil language, territorially segmented2 peoples under
tribal chieftains, folk religious beliefs and practices reflecting
territorially segmented cultures, and a certain degree of urbaniza¬
tion in a few widely separated core areas of advanced agrarian
and commercial organization. Coexisting with these pre-Pallavan,
orthogenetic, or as sometimes called, ‘Dravidian’, elements were
heterogenetic styles of marriage, music, and games as well as a full
complement of religious forms — Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina
— drawn from all parts of the sub-continent. The Classical lit¬
erature3 of the early Christian era conveys the sense of a lively,

2 ‘Territorial segmentation' refers to a characteristic of social structure in which

important social relationships persistently conform to a particular and usually
circumscribed territory. It is one of the ways in which social arrangements occur
in many societies, but the degree to which such significant relationships as marriage,
caste, and political relations reflect territorially within the Indian cultural sphere
nowhere exceeds that of South India. Cf.M. Marriott, Caste Ranking and Com¬
munity Structure in Five Regions of India and Pakistan, Deccan College Monograph
Series, no. 23. Poona, 1960, especially pp. 31-6; J.S. Shahani, ‘A Comparative
Study of Traditional Political Organization of Kerala and Punjab', unpublished
Ph. D. thesis, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1965;
F.G. Bailey, ‘Closed Stratification in India', Archives Europeennes de Sociologie,
4, no. 1 (1963), pp. 107-24; Stephen Fuchs, The Gond and Bhumia of Eastern Mandia,
Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1960. especially pp. 133-41.
3 The term 'Classical', is used here in preference to sahgani, following the usage
ot Professor George L. Hart. ‘Sangants’, or literary academies, of which there were
allegedly three, create the sense ot an institutional context which probably never
existed and a false impression of the sources ol the numerous poems which were
anthologized a time long after their composition. See Hart's ‘Ancient Tamil Litera¬
ture ; Its Scholarly Past and Future’, originally presented to the Second Con¬
ference of the Society lor South Indian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 7-9 April,
1970 and published along with other papers in Burton Stein (ed.). Essays on South
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 65

rich, and increasingly heterogeneous cultural milieu in which

these elements — endogenous and exogenous — thrived.
There has been a tendency among South Indian historians to
emphasize the disjunctive character of Pallava society and culture.
The reasons for this are understandable. First, there is the fact
that Pallava society was manifestly different from that portrayed
in the Classical works mentioned above. Secondly, Pallava ins¬
titutions provided the nascent forms of those institutions with
which we identify Chola society of Rajaraja Chola, Rajendra
Chola, and Kulottunga Chola I. Finally, there is the rather re¬
markable paucity of information about South India between the
often vague and always poetical depictions of life in the Classical
literature and the relatively more reliable information in Pallava
inscriptions. This hiatus together with the operation of retrospec¬
tive vision — that is, seeing in Pallava institutions the foundation
of Chola society — has served to emphasize differences between
the society and culture of the Classical age and those of Pallava
times. As a result, our understanding of South Indian historical
development has tended to fix the Pallava period as one of great
change and disjuction.
Against this view of radical change resulting from the establish¬
ment of the Pallava line of conquerors from the northern edge of
the Coromandel plain, if not beyond, a different reading of the
evidence plausibly suggests a slower, less disjunctive course of
social change.
This proposed more gradual development of the society and
culture of South India is based upon a somewhat different evalua¬
tion of extant evidence. The evolving social order appears dimly
in the earliest Prakrit records of the Pallavas, more clearly in their
Sanskrit records, and finally quite clearly in the Sanskrit and
Tamil inscriptions of the Cholas. Such a proposal must lay heavy
stress upon the processes of accommodation and assimilation
among a variety of forms, indigenous and foreign, to the Tamil
plain. Many of these forms are already evident in the Classical
literature. These processes continued to operate, acquiring in¬
creasing cultural loads and contributing to the evolving character
of Tamil and South Indian culture.

India, The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1975, and Hart’s recently pub¬
lished, The Poems of Ancient Tamils: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counter¬
parts, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975.
66 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The character of social change inherent in this gradualist

view is more congenial to our notions of how changes occur in
most societies at most times; it also accords better with those
facts which we possess in the particular case of the pre-Pallavan
and post-Pallavan periods in South Indian history. Thus, the
view that Pallavan kingship, architecture, Brahmanical language
and culture were all the consequences of deliberate state policy
seeking to remould the social and cultural forms which we know
from the Classical works must be reassessed. Pallava military
power was sufficient to the task of achieving an extensive over¬
lordship in the Coromandel plain. However, Pallava power was
not capable, in itself, of transforming social and cultural institu¬
tions as they existed in this vast territory. To produce such re¬
volutionary changes would have required of a government those
military and political techniques known in the present century,
but clearly beyond the capacity of ancient Indian rulers. Nor is
there evidence of a massive invasion or migration from the ‘North’,
wherever that may be considered to be.4
On the contrary, there is very good evidence that the general
process of ‘Sanskritization’5 was already well advanced several
centuries before Pallavan power was extended southward. In

4 While the presumed origin of the Pallavas from the north-west portion of the
sub-continent, as suggested by V. Venkayya (Annual Report, Archaeological Survey
of India, 1906-7) and others has been abandoned, there is still disagreement about
Pallava origins in such standard monographs as R. Gopalan, History of the Pallavas
of Kanchi, The Madras University Historical Series, 3 University of Madras. Madras,
1928; C. Minakshi, Administration and Life under the Pallavas. University of Madras.
Madras, 1938, and T.V. Mahalingam. Kancipuram in Early South Indian History,
Asia Publishing House, New York, 1969. Y. Subbarayalu, who has undertaken
a revision of Gopalan's work, states his conviction that the Pallavas were indigenous
to the Andhra plain (personal communication).
5 Sanskritization or, its cognates, ‘Aryanization’ and ‘Brahmanization" are
problematical terms, and though there is a growing critical literature on such
terms, some convenient way is required for referring to the interaction between
Dravidian elements, or other sub-cuitural variants within the Indian cultural
sphere, and the set of elements with which the ‘Great Tradition' of India is associated.
Cf.M.N. Srinivas, 'A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization', Journal of
Asian Studies, v. 15 (August, 1956), pp. 481-96 and A.P. Barnabas, ‘Sanskritiza-
tion’, Economic Weekly, v. 13, no. 15 (1961), pp. 613-18. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri
uses the term in his recent The Culture and History of the Tamils, F.K.L. Mukho-
padhyay, Calcutta, 1965, p. 18. Hart in his ‘Ancient Tamil Literature_’, p. 33,
suggests that there is as much validity in speaking of the ‘Tamilizations’ of Brahmans
as the Sanskritization by them.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 67

the seveial centuries preceding the Pallavas, this syncretic culture

was linked to the dominant position achieved by peasant society
over other and older cultural forms. The achievement of dominance
by peasant peoples over others in South India and the firm establish¬
ment of those social and cultural forms reflecting and supporting
this dominance must be considered one of the most important
developments in ancient South Indian history. It was a condition
which was to endure for a millenium and contributed to the identity
of one of the most durable peasant culture areas in history. The
Pallava period did not mark its beginning; it was then in a relatively
advanced state of the evolutionary process around which the
present re-evaluation of the period centres.

II

A major feature of Pallava society and that of the succeeding

Chola age was that it was organized into a large number of localities
of peasant society and culture. While the other elements of the
Pallava period mentioned above have been recognized by historians,
the fact of a prosperous, if dispersed, peasant society has tended
to be overlooked.6 This peasant society, though dispersed, may
be called the dominant social and economic form of the age. By
this is meant:

(1) most people appear to have lived in settled agricultural

villages;
(2) peasant agriculture provided the principal means of liveli¬
hood for most of the population, directly, or indirectly, through

6 An identification of the localities of advanced agriculture in the Coromandel

plain during the Pallava period is suggested in the map of Brahman settlements.
Map IV-1. The basic technique for the identification and mapping of such places
involves the assumption that the brahmadeya is a valid marker of advanced agri¬
cultural organization in a locality since these villages of substantial Brahman
population required income for their maintenance and the construction and opera¬
tion of temples and mathas which only prosperous peasant villages could meet.
In general terms, the distribution of brahmadeyas conforms to the distribution
of those environmental factors required for advanced peasant cultivation, especially
hydrological factors connected with tank and canal irrigation. The pattern which
emerges, thus, is one of four major clusters: in the Kistna delta, central Tondaiman-
dalam in the basins of the Palar and Ceyyar rivers, the Ponnaiyar basin, and, of
course, the Kaveri basin. Subsidiary clusters of the Vaigai and Tamraparni appear
to remain stable until after the fourteenth century. Cf. ch. IV.
68 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

related service occupations, and peasant agriculture was responsible

for the overwhelmingly large source of wealth to the society at all
levels;
(3) the structure of social relations for most people conform
to those of peasant societies in general including:
(a) asymmetrical relations with those powerful enough to
demand a part of peasant production,
(b) well-developed corporate groups within peasant settlements
and localities, and
(c) effective alliances amongst various corporate elements.7

It is thus necessary to see the linguistic, architectural, religious, and

broad cultural and political changes with which Pallava society
have been associated against the position already achieved by the
Coromandel peasantry1 in order to perceive the period in proper
perspective.
Many of the peasant tracts in the Pallava heartland of Tondai-
mandalam, if not opened in Pallava times, were brought to their
full maturity as significant agricultural territories during the
Pallava period. Then, large-scale, tank-irrigation projects were
carried out to convert the central Tamil plain from a region of
forest and hazardous dry crop agriculture to one of reliable wet
cultivation capable of supporting a dense population.8
Older riverine tracts of the southern Tamil plain had attained
this condition long before when the Kaveri and the western portion
of the Vaigai basins had become the major centres of peasant folk,
and there were isolated concentrations of peasant settlements in the
central plain of equal antiquity judging from the early prominence
of Kanchi.9 The urban centres of Kaverippattinam, Madurai,
and Kanchi which had earlier flourished in these older tracts of
7 An excellent discussion of peasant society is that of Wolf, Peasants. Because
it is a general work on the subject it cannot be expected to deal with the implica¬
tions of caste more than cursorily, and there is little attention given to the rather
unique problems of an expanding peasant system because the work is addressed
to anthropologists.
x This significant aspect of the Pallava period is mentioned by Minakshi, op.
cit., pp. 94-100; Gopalan, op. cit., p. 155; and K.R. Subramanian. ‘New Light
on the Pallava Period , Maharaja s College Magazine, Vizianagaram, v. 6. no. 1. n.d.
pp. 1-9.
y K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘The Beginnings oflntercourse between India and China',
The Indian Historical Quarterly, v. 14 (1938), p. 386, presents evidence for Chinese
trade with Kanchi in the second century b.c.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 69

advanced agriculture continued to exist as important centres,

but there was a decisive shift during the Pallava period from such
isolated territories with their cities to new agricultural tracts and new
rural centres. By the time of Kulottunga Chola I, the Coromandel
plain between the two deltaic regions of the Kistna-Godavari and
the Kaveri had become a region of peasant agriculture and society
constituting a primary zone of influence over the propinquitous
interior upland in the same way that the Gangetic plain did for
major portions of northern India. However, even earlier, during
the Pallava period, the northern and southern portions of the
plain were linked and the basic formation of the greatest southern
variant of Aryan civilization achieved. Here, in the Coromandel
rural setting of the Pallava period, Sanskrit and Brahmanical
knowledge were firmly established, the bulk of the Brahman
custodians of this knowledge lived, the saints of Saivism and
Vaishnavism spent their lives, and a large population of peasants
lent their support to the maintenance of this culture.
The basis of close co-operation between the peasant cultivators
of the Coromandel plain and the Brahmans who lived as their
spiritual preceptors and neighbours can best be understood as an
alliance. Peasants, generally, are related to non-peasants in three
broad ways. First, there are relationships with those whose power
is sufficient to successfully demand a part of the proceeds of peasant
cultivation. Second, there are more complex asymmetrical re¬
lationships between peasants and those in subordinate positions.
Such subordinately related people would include non-peasant
peoples brought into the lower strata of peasant society by the
expansion of that society into previously forested and dry tracts;
other subordinate people were those in peasant settlements whose
occupations were of low value or even considered antagonistic to
an expanding and increasingly powerful peasantry, such as mobile
artisan-traders were for a considerable time. Somewhat less subor¬
dinately related to any localized peasant groups were various other
cultivating groups, agricultural traders, and artisans closely linked
to agricultural production. In contrast to these asymmetrically
linked relations of peasants and others was a third set of relations
with rural groups that were more nearly symmetrical. These relation¬
ships took the form of temporary coalitions, as when peasant groups
of propinquitous localities combined to achieve some common
endeavour (e.g. defence), or such relations might be moie enduiing
70 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

as in the case of relations with Brahmans. In this case, the term

‘alliance’ seems appropriate.
To reconcile this classification of essentially power relationships
based on political and economic factors with caste relationships
is not easy. Even in the Classical period, there was a system of
ranked relationships among groups, and certainly, in the Pallava
period, ranked relationships according to ritual purity, as enjoined
by the sastras, were extolled. But alliances do not require equality
among the participants; an agreement about common ends and
mutually congenial means suffices. The fact of caste relationships
cannot be ignored even in early Pallava times, but such relationships
can be discussed within the classification of power relations in¬
volving the Coromandel peasantry at the time.
Relations between Coromandel peasants and those with a
sufficiency of power to demand a regular portion of peasant pro¬
duction were distinctive when considered with respect to other
parts of India and other peasant societies. The idealized system
according to which such relationships operated in India was that
involving Kshatriyas. In northern India, this ideal was realized
to a large extent after the seventh century, but not so in South
India. Elsewhere in India, rural dominance was the prerogative of
groups of warriors enjoying high ritual status, whose locality
power was maintained through extensive networks of agnatically
and affinally related warrior families. In South India there cer¬
tainly was awareness of Indo-Aryan, varna-organized society
in which decisive secular authority vested in Kshatriyas. However,
apart from certain great royal lines of warriors — such as the
Pallavas, Cholas and Vijayanagara where cakravartin status was
claimed and a royal style maintained — few locality warrior
families achieved the extensive, prestigious, kin-linked organiza¬
tion of northern warrior/kingly groups.10 Why the Kshatriya
institution never challenged the secular authority of Brahmans
and dominant peasants, the alliance between whom formed the

10 There is a basic difference, of course, between the cakravartin and Kshatriya

ideals ot rule, and, at best, the two models cannot be more than complementary,
though historically that balance has not been achieved often. In South India, the
cakravartin model was important from Pallava times, but Kshatriyas, that is locally
based warriors with ritual status sufficiently high to share high status with Brahmans
did not emerge. Lacking high ascribed status in a society where this was significant,
peasant warriors or those ot interior origins were always dependent upon Brahman
co-operation.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 71

keystone of local South Indian societies, is too complex an

issue to be considered more than briefly here. The persistent
importance of quite narrow territorial segmentation of significant
social relations, which inhibited widespread marriage networks,
appears to be involved here. Also important was the fact that
most locality warriors of South India, in Pallava times and some¬
what later, were obviously of peasant origin and derived a part
of their local authority from their continued identification as
such; many other warriors of lower social origins (e.g. hill people
on the fringes of peasant society) appeared to have been content
to rise to the status of respectable peasants. In addition, there
was no conquering elite which might seek to preserve its identity
through putative Kshatriya rank. But perhaps the most important
reason for the failure of a Kshatriya tradition to emerge in medieval
South India was the entrenched secular power of Brahmans.
Collaboration with would-be Kshatriya warriors could not streng¬
then, but only weaken Brahman secular authority. Since Brahmans
were firmly anchored in a satisfactory alliance with localized peasant
groups and their chiefs, there would have been no inducement
for Brahman collaboration with aspirants to Kshatriya status.
The Coromandel peasantry constituted a social system of
significantly stratified interactions. Because this peasantry was
constantly expanding and assimilating non-peasant peoples of the
forests and dry plains who were often regarded as inferior, the
matter of superordinate-subordinate relations within the peasantry
is important. Though the evidence is sparse, it may be supposed
that there was a constant process of social grading among the
various groups of the established peasant tracts in the Coromandel
plain in which the more powerful land-controlling groups sought
to differentiate themselves from other agrarian groups. According
to the late Classical works, including the Cilappadikaram (possibly
of the fifth or sixth century), there was a rudimentary hierarchical
ordering of social groups in which ulavars, or cultivators, were
regarded as the first people. Beneath the ulavars, also called
vellalar and karalar, were ranked cowherds and shepherds (ayar
and kovalar), hunters (vedar), various artisan groups, armed men
(padaiyacciar) and, in the lowliest stratum, fishermen (valaiyar)
and scavengers (pulaiyar)d1 The precise nature of status dif-

11 V. Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago, Higginbotham &

Co., Madras, 1904, pp. 113-14; P.T. Srinivas Iyengar, History of the Tamils; From
72 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

ferences suggested in these literary works cannot however be

ascertained. Another, somewhat less ambiguous, vantage point
on ranked relations in the early peasant society of South India
occurs with the full development of that characteristic feature of
social structure; the bifurcation of middle and lower castes into
what among Tamil and Kannada speakers has been called castes
of the right-hand (valangai-balangai) and castes of the left hand
(idangai-edangai).12
Always in the background of these competitions among segments
of localized rural groups, was the slow accretion of new people.
As new tracts of land were opened by peasant colonists, those who
had formerly occupied the land either fled more deeply into the
forests and hills or found a place in the new order. Places had to
be found for the latter within the expanding peasant tracts of
Coromandel because the conversion of dry tracts or forest to wet
field cultivation required the labour of many. Of the new people,
some by their industry and good fortune overcame the stigma which
must have attached to their previous non-peasant way of life and
eventually acquired land of their own; others found or possessed
a skill which was needed in the new settlement; most of the new
folk, however, attached themselves to those with enough land
to command a following of dependents — a mark of power and
respectability then, as now, among Indian peasants.13

Ill

Surpassing all other relationships within the peasant society of

this ancient period, however, was the close co-operation between
Brahmans and respectable cultivating groups. Their alliance,
their sharing of control in the numerous localities of advanced
agriculture into which the Coromandel plain was divided, was
the distinctive social and political element up to the fourteenth
century. Moreover, there can be no question that the relationship

the Earliest Times to600 A.D..C. Coomaraswamy Naidu. Madras. 1929, pp. 565, 602.
12 The subject of the dual division is discussed above, ch. V.
13 Agricultural labour groups attached themselves to either Brahman or Vellala
landed groups trom an early time. Cf. E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern
India, v. 5, Government Press, Madras, 1909, p. 473 and Manual of Administration,
v. 3, p. 1037.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 73

between Brahmans and dominant cultivators was entirely voluntary

and recognized as mutually beneficial. The benefits to Brahmans
are most obvious inasmuch as they are recorded in thousands of
inscriptions on the walls of temple buildings which themselves
are monuments of the scale of this peasant support. That the
gifts of money, of a regular portion of income from peasant villages
or of labour involved the invocation and ostensible ratification of
the Pallava rulers, their immediate families and officials or, more
often, local warrior chiefs, does not diminish the essentially volun¬
tary nature of the gifts from locality folk who commanded them
in the first instance. The determination by local people of how
their resources were to be apportioned is one of the clearest features
of Pallava times.
Another point, which has been inadequately appreciated with
respect to peasant support of Brahmanical institutions in numerous
rural settings during Pallava times and later, is that the towns of
the Coromandel region were bastions of Jaina and Buddhist
influence. This fact is attested by the inscriptions of such places
as well as by the accounts of Buddhist pilgrims like Hsuan-tsang.
Lavish support extended by townspeople to these heterodox
faiths, if it did not reflect hostility towards Brahmanical institu¬
tions, certainly must have appeared to Brahmans as proceeding
from a dangerous ecumenical sentiment. Thus, it should be recog¬
nized that for learned Brahmans and their ritual colleagues, it was
the Coromandel countryside which offered the best, if not the only,
situation for support of the multifarious activities associated with
resurgent Brahmanism during the Pallava period. Other benefits
to both parties in the alliance will be discussed more fully below.
The Coromandel countryside had passed through several
centuries of important change by the Pallava period. Peasant
societies had implanted themselves over much of the plain and had
been subjected to stern challenges from non-peasant peoples.
The most distinctive characteristic of the Coromandel plain north
of the Kaveri basin, the oldest and most dense region of peasant
agriculture and settlement in the region, was that of numerous
and scattered peasant localities separated by large and small
tracts of inhospitable land. Excessive slope, aridity or forest
cover and other factors would have reduced the suitability of these
tracts for peasant agriculture. In such inhospitable places, non-
74 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

peasant peoples could and did live.14 The highly variegated and
discontinuous physical character of the southern peninsula and
the social adaptations to it had produced a set of quite stable
social forms in early South India. These are prominent in Classical
literature where a fivefold classification of man-nature situations
(tinai) was recognized.15 In the early centuries of the Christian
era, these physiographic categories may be considered as culturally
significant with respect to settings in which men of the south¬
eastern peninsula lived. Then, peasant folk, ulavar, of the marudam,
were only one among several territorially segmented social and
cultural subsystems. Each of these were different in essential
ways, yet all comprised a single general culture area with shared
linguistic and other cultural elements. By the ninth century,
peasant society had become dominant over, without entirely
eliminating, the hunting, fishing and pastoral peoples, and without
reducing the territorially segmented social organization which
continued to exist — even flourish — as a structural factor of
great importance in South India. A recurrent poetic theme accom¬
panied the rise of peasant groups and settlements. This theme was
the fear and loathing which men of the hills and dry plains inspired
in those of the plains. The Kalittokai of perhaps the fourth to
sixth centuries refers to the maravars of the dry plains and hills
in the following terms:

14 The general distribution of plains and forest and/ or upland tracts in Tamil
country may be found in: K. Ramamurthy, 'Some Aspects of the Regional Geo¬
graphy of Tamilnad’, Indian Geographical Journal, 23, nos. 2, 3, 4 (1948) and 24,
nos. 2 & 3 (1949); also see B.M. Thirunaranan, ‘The Traditional Limits and Sub¬
divisions of the Tamil Region’, in K.V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration
Volume, G.S. Press, Madras, 1940, pp. 159-69. The social aspects of this relation¬
ship in South India is very unclear still, but its general features may be presumed
to follow patterns which have been suggested in the following works on India:
D.D. Kosambi, ‘The Basis of Ancient Indian History’, in two parts in Journal of
the American Oriental Society, v. 75, nos. 1 & 4 (1955) and B.A. Saletore, The Wild
Tribes in Indian History, Motilal Banarsidas, Lahore, 1935. For important dis¬
cussions of the problem in Southeast Asia, see, for example, E.R. Leach, Political
Systems of Highland Burma, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1954,
and Robbins Burling, Hill Farms and Padi Fields in Mainland South-East Asia,
Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965.
15 P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar, History of the Tamils; From the Earliest Times to 600
A.D., University of Madras, Madras, 1929, pp. 3-12 and passim; also S. Vaithiana-
than, The Pattuppattu: A Historical, Social, and Linguistic Study’, unpublished
Ph D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1950.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 75

Of strong limbs and hearty frames and fierce looking as tigers, wearing
long and curled locks ot hair, the blood-thirsty mamvars armed with
bow bound with leather, ever-ready to injure others, shoot their arrows
at poor and helpless travellers, from whom they can rob nothing, only
to feast their eyes on the quivering limbs of their victims. . . . The wrath¬
ful and furious maravar ... the loud twang of whose powerful bow
strings, and the stirring sound ol whose doubleheaded drums, compel
even kings at the head of large armies to turn their backs and fly. . .16

In The Hunters' Song’ of the Cilappadikaram a priestess chides

the maravar and eyinar hunters for failing to keep their vows to
destroy the gardens of their enemies and for ceasing their practices
of plundering passersby as a result of which hill villages suffered
and those of the plain prospered.17
These literary references alert one to the hostility which appears
to have existed between the lowland plain people, whose power
increased in pre-Pallavan times, and the dangerous people of the
hills and dry plains. By late Classical times, wealthy and populous
peasant communities had probably succeeded in assimilating most
pastoral and fishing groups. To the latter, substantial advantages
could be offered by the peasantry even as the superior resources
of the peasants of the fertile lowland proved attractive to and
resulted in the assimilation of hill and dry tract people on the
fringes of peasant settlements. However, a substantial population
of non-peasant folk remained in scattered, isolated pockets.
Between the peasants and their associates and these non-peasant
people there existed the same prolonged tension as between plains
and hill people elsewhere in the sub-continent as well as in many
parts of South-east Asia.
Though there are important parallels in the relationship of
peasant folk to non-peasant folk in remote hill settlements in
South India with those in other parts of Asia, the duration of
antagonism between the two in South India appears notable.
Peasants were obliged to deal cautiously with such non-peasant
people even after peasant society and culture had become dominant
in South India. One reason for this lengthy struggle was the fact
of dispersion. The discontinuous pattern of peasant settlement
made peasant localities particularly vulnerable to raids. Efforts
to clear hill tracts of their fierce occupants had to be considered

16 Cited in Kanakasabhai, op.cit., pp. 42-3.

17 Cited in Raghavan, "Notes . . .’.
76 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

circumspectly. Even as late as the sixteenth century, the great

Krishnadeva Raya counselled diplomacy and caution in dealing
with the people of the hills and dry forests.18
A somewhat ironic factor accounting for the existence of tension
between peasants and those of hills and dry plains in South India
was that most of the latter shared to a greater extent than similar
peoples elsewhere the culture of the peasantry. They were never
a people apart — to be ignored or massacred — as in parts of
South-east Asia. A measure of this shared culture has been the
ease with which non- or partially-peasantized warriors of hills
and dry plains were able to establish themselves as masters over
peasant peoples until the nineteenth century. During the pre-
Pallava period, when conditions were fluid and the peasant frontier
constantly expanding, physical and cultural proximity provided
the opportunity for close interaction even within a generally
hostile and competitive context.
A turning point in the relationship between the peasant peoples
of the plains and their non-peasant adversaries may have come in
the still mysterious period before the seventh century. According
to the scanty literary and inscriptional evidence relating to that
period, peasants of the Coromandel plain, especially in its southern
extremity, were subjected to the control of a people or peoples
who were recalled with terror.19 When, for how long, by whom
and which of the Coromandel peasantry were thus subjugated
is not clear. Whether it was a single conquering people from beyond
the Tamil plain, as has been suggested, or from within the region,
and whether the conquest was that of a single people or many,
are queries unanswerable from the extant evidence. The name
most often associated with these conquering people is kalabhra
(Pali : kalahba) of whom it was said they abused families of local
chiefs of the plain and the Brahmans of the villages: another name
is kalavar,20 While they were different from the plains people,

ls A. Rangasvami Sarasvati, ‘Political Maxims of the Emperor-Poet, Krishna¬

deva Raya', Journal of Indian History, v. 4, pt 3 (1925), pp. 61-88; also cited in
Saletore, Wild Tribes in Indian History, p. 12.
19 The sources are reviewed by Nilakanta Sastri in The Colas, v. 1, University
of Madras, Madras, 1935, pp. 119-21 and include as most important, the Velvikudi
grant of the late eighth century and Buddhadatta's Manual. Cf. Srinivasa Iyengar,
op cit., pp. 436-7.
20 Attempts to link the Kctktbhras and kahivars with the kallars of the southern
Tamil plain have not been generally accepted: cf. ibid., pp. 437-8, 535.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 77

these conquering folk are, at least later, were admired by some

Tamil poets as upholders of some Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina
institutions.21
This ‘Kalabhra interregnum', as it is sometimes called, may
mark a point where non-peasant people made their strongest bid
to control some, at least, of the lowland, peasant population; this
may have been in the very southern portion of the peninsula since
Pandyan inscriptions are the source of the most vehement
judgements of Kalabhras. Whether in Pandya country alone or
elsewhere, this onslaught appears to have been the culmination
of a long period of non-peasant, armed resistance to the expansion
of peasant society, and it was distinguished by the attempt of the
'interlopers’, as Nilakanta Sastri has called them,22 to establish
their sway over peasants without, apparently, adopting substantial
elements of Coromandel peasant culture. This attempt failed,
and with the assertion of Pallava warrior control over the northern
and central portion of the plain and that of the Pandya rulers
over the southern Tamil plain by the late sixth century, the domi¬
nance of the peasant people and the society which they maintained
was never again lost. True, warriors from the hills continued to
raid and plunder peasant settlements at the fringes of peasant
core areas, and they occasionally set up durable power among the
peasant people — as did the Hoysalas in Karnataka23 — but
such durable power was facilitated by the adoption of the two
elements rejected by the Kalabhras: respect for and support of
Brahmanical institutions and Hinduism as well as recognition of
locality chiefs who were, in most cases, members of the dominant
peasant group of the locality. After the seventh century, confirmed
in military dominance and cultural superiority, peasant society
continued its steady encroachment upon non-peasant peoples,
at times slowly, at other times rapidly. *
The full implications of the so-called ‘Kalabhra interregnum’
and the establishment of Pallava power over much of the Tamil
plain have only recently begun to be appreciated from the cultural
and social point of view. Nilakanta Sastri has stated :

We may perhaps surmise the Kalavar-kalabras were a widespread tribe

whose large scale defection to the heretical faiths [Jainism and Buddhism]
resulted in a political and social upset lasting over some generations.24
21 Ibid., p. 535.
22 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 1, p. 121.
78 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

That this intrusion upon the expanding order of peasant peoples

had important consequences seems quite clear. The reference
above to ‘heretical faiths’ is significant because the Kalabhra ruler
and conqueror of Madurai, Accuta Vikkanta, is said by the writer
Buddhadatta to have been his patron. Some of the songs celebrat¬
ing this Accuta are reported by Amitasagara, a tenth century Jaina
grammarian.25 Moreover, in the centuries between the Classical
works and the Pallavas of Kanchi, the zenith of Jaina and Buddhist
influence in South India was achieved. During this period, the
influence of Aryan cults, the earliest evidence of which are found
in caves of about the third to the first century b.c. bearing Tamil-
Brahmi inscriptions,26 increased in South India. This contributed to
the increasing tempo of cultural change.27 It also appears that during
the same period these cults coexisted peacefully with each other and
with indigenous forms of religion and that the Jaina and Buddhist
sects of South India were as successful as Saivite and Vaishnavite
sects in winning the allegiance of leaders in South Indian society.28
Reference has already been made to the support of urban people.
Among warriors, Accuta Vikkanta Kalabhra was probably a
Buddhist, and Mahendravarman I, the Pallava ruler of the late
sixth century began his reign as a Jaina and is supposed to have
persecuted Siva worshippers until the time of his conversion by
the Saivite saint (nayandr) Appar (Tirunavukkarasu). As a result
of the support of the powerful, Jainas and Buddhists could boast
of a number of impressive monastic establishments in many parts of
South India.29 The Chinese pilgrim, Hsiian-tsang, in the middle

23J.D.M. Derrett, The Hoysalas, O.U.P., Madras, 1951, pp. 16-19.

24 Nilakanta Sastri, Culture and History . . ., p. 19.
25 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 120 and his Culture and History . . ., p. 19; also
Srinivasa Iyengar, op. cit., p. 528, dates Buddhadatta in the late fifth century.
26 K. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan, E.J. Brill, Leiden, pp. 140-1.
27 Srinivasa Iyengar, op.cit., p. 18.
28 Evidence of this is massive: cf.M.S. Ramaswami Ayyangar and B. Seshagiri
Rao, Studies in South Indian Jainism, Hoe & Co., Madras, 1922 and the works of
of P.B. Desai. It is of interest that perhaps the earliest, important Tamil inscription
records an endowment to a Jain teacher: K. Zvelebil, Tamil in 550 A.D.: An Inter¬
pretation of Early Inscriptional Tamil, Oriental Institute, Prague, 1964.
29 Appar himself, as a Jaina monk, before his reversion to Saivism, served in
a monastery at Cuddalore, South Arcot. Scholars have pointed to the significance
ol the number 63 used first by Jainas, then by Saivites for the most honoured saints,
and the transformation of niches of Jaina shrines to hold Saivite shrines when the
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 79

seventh century, commented on such establishments in various

parts of the Coromandel plain, and the latter reported that his
own Buddhism was giving way to Digambara Jainism.30 These
accounts, plus numerous inscriptions, including early Tamil
Brahmi ones and others of the sixth century, bear eloquent testi¬
mony to the widespread support enjoyed by ‘heretical’ centres
from the powerful and the wealthy.
Under the circumstances of apparently peaceful competition
among the religious cults in pre-Pallava times, the ‘heretical’
sects of Buddhism and Jainism were in thriving condition. Scholars
have noted with surprise that Hsuan-tsang, in a.d. 642, seemed
completely unaware of the bhakti revival which was being carried
forward by Saivite and Vaishnavite hymnists. To assume that
his indifference to this movement was a consequence of this Chinese
pilgrim’s prejudice for or a preoccupation with Buddhism may be
justified, but he did report the relative and growing success of
Jainas — and may have faithfully reflected the favour which
Jainism found with warriors prior to and during the early years
of Pallava rule in South India.31 There is also good reason to
believe that the worship of Jaina goddesses (yakshinis) inspired
popular support.32
It hardly seems possible to separate the ‘Kalabhra interregnum’,
or what is perhaps better understood as the extension of non¬
peasant, warrior control over the plains, from the favour shown
by these warriors to Jainism. Rather, it seems appropriate to
suggest that the attractiveness of Jainism was that it permitted
a warrior to achieve legitimacy and ‘Aryan’ respectability without
necessarily accepting the elements of contemporary peasant culture
with which Hindu sects had become associated at the time. Among
such elements would have been the high secular place accorded
to Brahmans and the primacy of sedentary peasant agriculture.
Certainly, the correlation of non-peasant warrior power with

buildings were taken over by the latter, as at Madurai. Nilakanta Sastri, Culture
and History . . . , pp. 109-10 and Ramaswami Ayyangar, op.cit., p. 78. Also see:
P.B. Desai, Jainism in South India, Jaina Samskrti Samkaksha Sangha, Sholapur,
1957, and R. Champakalakshmi, ‘Jainism in South India’, unpublished M. Litt.
thesis, Department of History, University of Madras, 1958.
30 Nilakanta Sastri, Culture and History . . . , pp. 113-14.
31 Minakshi, op.cit., pp. 213-38.
32 This is argued by P.B. Desai, op.cit., pp. 38-40, 72-4.
80 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Jainism compels a consideration of Jainism not so much as a

'heretical' sect but as an ideological element in the critical period
of struggle between the militarily formidable non-peasant people
of South India and perhaps peasants of dry, and mixed dry and
wet ecotypic situations in South India against the increasingly
prosperous and important agricultural people of the riverine
plains. Just as the ascetic or monastic figure of the Jain monk
symbolized one form of sacredness and the grhastha Saivite or
Vaishnavite Brahman symbolized an alternate form of sacredness,
the morally complete and ritually independent Jaina king re¬
presented one kind of royal legitmacy and the ritually dependent
Hindu king, with his Brahman purohita and royal sacrifices re¬
presented another kind.33 The bitterness and violence with which
sectarian controversy erupted by the seventh century suggests
an ideological component of considerable importance.
During the seventh and eighth centuries, the tolerant relations
among religious sects in South India had clearly come to an end.34
Mahendravarman I persecuted Saivites until his conversion; then
he turned on Jainas.35 Later, the Saivite saint Sambandar who
converted the Pandyan ruler, is celebrated in an annual festival
at the Minaksi temple of Madurai which commemorates the
impalement of 8,000 Jaina heads at the young saint's urging.36
Still later, in the eighth century, Nandivarman II Pallavamalla,
an ardent Vaishnavite, carried out persecution of Jainas and Bud-
33 This statement is fully elaborated in an essay by the author entitled. 'All the
Kings’ Mana: Perspectives on Kingship in Medieval South India’, in a volume
of essays, entitled Kingship and Authority in South Asia, under the editorship of
John F. Richards by the Center of South Asian Studies of the University of Wisconsin
in 1978. The terms ‘ideology’ and 'ideological' inevitably present difficulties.
Ideology is taken to be rhetoric, or persuasive speech which pertains to moral issues
in social arrangements. It is therefore a form of moral reasoning intended to provide
a basis for adjudicating conflicting claims or justifying particular arrangements
in a society. Ideology contrasts with theology in its concern with conflictful relations
among men rather than among gods or conceptions of deity.
34 This proposition seems generally accepted among Pallava historians even
though Minakshi, op. cit., p. 170, could state after reviewing the evidence of Pallava
persecution: '...Pallava monarchs as a class [?] were tolerant towards these
religious sects.’
35 Subramanian. ‘New Light . p. 7.
3<> Reported by Nilakanta Sastri, Culture and History . . . , op. cit., p. 110. He
could not credit the notion that the saintly Sambandar conceived this horror, but
acknowledged that the festival continues to be celebrated.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 81

dhists, and his contemporary, the Vaishnavite hymnist Tirumangai

is said to have plundered the Buddhist vihara at the town of Naga-
pattinam using the golden image to finance the construction of
walls around the principal shrine at Srirangam and other benefices.37
Another aspect of this complicated interplay of religious acti¬
vities and power relations throughout the Coromandel plain
during the pre- and early Pallava period is that of the bhakti
movement. Hymns of Saivites (Tevdram) and Vaishnavites (Nalayira
Prabandham) were the works of those from all social strata, from
Brahman to untouchable. At a time when Siva and Vishnu worship
was apparently still dominated by Brahman votaries of the jhaha-
yoga tradition, these works reflect an impressive cult devotionalism.
Between the chaste religion of jnahayogins and the ‘excesses’ of
such Saivite cults as the Pasupatas, Kapalikas, Kalamukhas,
and others,38 bhaktas of the hymnal tradition presented a religion
apparently suited to the peasant society which was achieving
supremacy over the non-peasant peoples.39 Theirs was a religious
tradition well-rooted in the devotional faith of peaceful people
of the plain. It had other advantages as well. It was congenial
to Brahman religious leaders in its philosophical presuppositions,
and it offered a powerful theological and ideological counter to
Jainas and Buddhists. Indeed, many of the Saivite hymns condemn¬
ed Jainas and Buddhists and the Nalayira Prabandham of the
Vaishnava bhaktas castigated Jainism.40 The attack upon Jainism
and Buddhism attained its philosophical culmination in the work
of Sankara by which time, for all practical purposes, the victory
of the new, devotional orthodoxy over Jainism and Buddhism
had been assured as a consequence of the assimilation of folk
religion and by the crucial shift of popular support to the puranic
cults of Siva and Vishnu.
The tension between peasants and non-peasants, the ‘Kalabhra
interregnum’ as an event in that prolonged and hostile relationship,
and the ideological significance of religious controversy in connec¬
tion with the competition between peasant and non-peasant powers
in the Coromandel plain are all factors which appear to be related

37 Ibid, pp. 112-13 and Minakshi, op. cit., pp. 170-1.

38 D.N. Lorenzen, The Kapalikas and Kalamukhas; Two Lost Saivite Sects, Uni¬
versity of California Press, Berkeley, 1972.
39 Nilakanta Sastri, Culture and History .... pp. 111-12.
40 Minakshi, op. cit,., p. 170.
82 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to the peasant-Brahman alliance of the Pallava period. To the

extent that scholars have concerned themselves with Brahman-
peasant relationships heretofore, two different kinds of explana¬
tions have been favoured. The first has presumed that the con¬
quering Pallavas instituted not only political-military changes
assuring ascendancy over the people of Tondaimandalam, but
simultaneously they set into motion the linguistic, architectural,
and comprehensively ‘Brahmanical’ changes of which mention
has been made. It is further implied that the Pallava state used
force, or the threat of force, as well as its command over the wealth
of the territory, to establish landed Brahman settlements throughout
the central Coromandel plain. An alternative line of explanation
advanced to explain the manifestly voluntary nature of peasant
support to Brahmans is that peasants, recognizing the special
learning, piety, and probity of Brahmans, subordinated their
institutions such as the peasant village assembly (ur) to those of
Brahmans, such as the Brahman assembly (mahasabha) and allo¬
cated a substantial portion of their wealth as well.
Both of these explanations are somewhat flawed. If Pallava
rulers were powerful enough to have brought about the changes
attributed to them — a highly doubtful proposition in itself —
why would they have permitted such complete self-government,
including the right of Brahman villages to dispose of not only their
own resources but those of dependent villages as well? Were the
Pallavas so different from other Indian warriors and overlords
that resource-control meant less to them, or were they more deeply
pious than others? Could not their piety have been served as well
by making direct endowments for specific Brahmanical under¬
takings without surrendering such a substantial degree of political
and social control? This was done in other times in South India
or in other parts of India. As to the putative piety of Coromandel
peasants, it is clear that there had existed for several centuries
prior to the establishment of Pallava power a sympathetic rela¬
tionship between peasants and Brahmans; certainly, Brahmans
had lived among and upon the generosity of the peasantry in those
centuries, and even if Brahmans shared religious functions and
material rewards with others, including ‘heretical’ teachers and
non-Brahman ritual functionaries, they held an esteemed place
in Coromandel society. Moreover, there is no convincing evidence
that the Pallavas ever achieved sufficient power or organization
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 83

to assert their authority effectively over the powerful local institu¬

tions of Brahmans and peasants of which we have considerable
evidence.
Since an alliance is a voluntary association to achieve particular
ends, the most plausible answer to the question of why an alliance
existed — or why people or groups who were not constrained to
act together, did so — is in the identification of the interests which
appear to be satisfied by the alliance. The Brahman-peasant alliance
of the Pallava period was based upon the convergence of important
interests which came to exist between those who cultivated the
land along with their dependents and those who by their sacral
functions possessed a powerful ideological capability. The bene¬
fits were mutual and alliance durable. For Brahmans, the ad¬
vantages were the following. Jaina and Buddhist sectarians had
positioned themselves strongly in the towns of Coromandel and
among many warriors, especially those beyond the core areas of
peasant society where tribal organization remained important.
The remains of early Jaina shrines in many ancient peasant villages
of the plains suggest, moreover, that the Jaina goddess (yakshini)
cult was held in high favour by many peasants. Brahmans, on
the other hand, were perhaps most securely situated in the many
peasant villages and localities of the plain and had already estab¬
lished close relations with dominant peasant groups many of whose
ritual requirements they met. The expansion of peasant society
before the seventh century provided Brahmans with the most
promising basis for maintaining and extending their position.
Moreover, adoption of devotional, temple-centred forms of
ritual by Brahmans required a new scale of support which peasants
of the plains could best provide. In this connection, one cannot
overlook the relationship between the ritual requirements of the
devotional religion and the need for large concentrations of Brah¬
mans in the Coromandel type of brahmadeya which makes its
appearance during Pallava times. Apart from towns, and these
were relatively few and inhospitable to Brahmans for a long time,
wealth sufficient to support devotional temple-based Hinduism
existed only in prosperous peasant villages. For reasons ot their
own, dominant peasant groups were ready to deepen the existing
relations with Brahmans supporting the Brahman claims to ritual
primacy and the norms of stratified interaction required by caste.
The corresponding interests of the Coromandel peasantry
84 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

appear to be the following. Having come through a period when

non-peasant power seriously threatened their security — of which
Kalabhra control, especially in Pandya country, was perhaps only
the clearest example — peasant groups may have felt considerable
need for greater ideological coherence as a means of unifying the
diverse segments of peasant society against similar threats in the
future. Some protection was certainly afforded by Pallava rule
after a.d. 550, and the Pallavas had broad peasant support in
recognition of that protection. Beyond this threat of conquest,
the leading cultivating groups were also faced with the need to
assimilate new people to the peasant order and to preserve their
own place of ascendacy in that order. The means for accomplishing
these objectives could be found in the system of stratification
according to ascribed ritual purity in which the respectable and
powerful cultivators were acknowledged to be next only to Brah¬
mans in moral standing. They were accorded the status of satvik,
or men of a respectable way of life, and thus distinguished from
lower orders of the population. When added to the economic
and military position of Vellalas and other similar cultivating
peoples, Brahmanical caste relations provided the means for
internal regulation of established peasant localities as well as new
tracts open to peasant occupation. Changes in prevailing Brah¬
manical religious forms to those more congenial to the devotional
religion of peasants made the alliance easier to achieve and sustain
— a factor which should perhaps be given greater weight in our
understanding of the bhakti movement.
For the Coromandel peasantry, the gains in the alliance were
extremely important. Devotional sects provided expanded op¬
portunities for participation in Hindu ritual for at least the highest
and middle status groups living in villages around hrahmadeyas.
One cannot speak of this as a new activity, for Brahmans had lived
among peasants for centuries ministering rituals associated with life
cycle and village ceremonies. However, the shift of religious rjtual
increasingly to Brahmanical temples sheltering Vedic gods and the
elaboration of devotional forms must have been addressed as
much to the religious requirements and beliefs of this peasant
population among whom Brahmans lived as to the canons of
Brahmanical orthodoxy. Ancient folk deities were assimilated
- Seyon, or Murugan, ot the hill regions (kurihji) became identified
with Subrahmanya, and Mayon, the black god of the pastoralists,
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 85

was readily transformed into Krishna;41 Agamic prescriptions

were altered or created to facilitate the inclusion by Brahmans of
many new folk elements and the partial exclusion of others such
as animal sacrifices and excessively erotic religious customs.
Devotional religion from the early Pallava period onwards,
insofar as it involved the sacral activities of Brahmans, did not
include the participation of all segments of the peasant population.
Specifically, it excluded those whose status was below the broad
and complex strata denominated by Brahmans as ‘Sudra’. As
a social category, Sudra has been even less relevant in South India
than elsewhere in the Indian cultural sphere, but with respect to
ritual participation it continued to have currency. In the religious
activities of Pallava times, the first signs of what was to become the
enduring pattern of social stratification in South India became
evident. Three strata, comprised of Brahmans, respectable or
‘clean’ non-Brahmans, and low castes, seem to have been recog¬
nized for ritual purposes, and each of these was a complex ag¬
gregate of groups with some mobility between strata. While each
strata, even that of Brahman, could not be considered closed,
corporate entities such as those idealized in the varna conception,
the middle strata was perhaps the most complex and least stable.
Occupying this level were most of the peasantry with some claim
to land or to an agrarian-skill which was valued, and ranking within
the category was so competitive and indeterminate that the dual
division into right and left-hand castes became an important
structural ancillary. It appears that the right-hand division of
castes — of whom we learn something during the Chola period
— were those whose relations to the peasant agrarian system were
most direct, including, as it did, cultivators and those artisans and
merchants directly involved in the agricultural economy. The
left-hand division appeared to provide an association of groups
less directly involved with agriculture. As suggested above, the
most important cultivating groups, such as the Vellalas, Reddis
and Kammas, sought to remain above the dual division, along with
Brahmans. To accomplish this would have required more than
landed wealth alone; it required a special relationship with Brah¬
mans based upon ritual opportunities not shared by other non-
Brahmans. In later medieval times, especially among Srivaishnavas,

41 Srinivasa Iyengar, op. cit., pp. 76-7, 355, 612.

86 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

such people often achieved considerable, if insecure, prominence

in temples, and there were some castes of non-Brahman Saivites
about whom little has been written, that enjoyed a special relation¬
ship with Brahmans for substantial periods. Given the system of
ritually protected stratification which caste has been, and given
the profoundly greater evidence of Brahmanical influence during
and after the Pallava period, it appears probable that the most
powerful and established cultivating groups in any of the numerous
peasant localities of Coromandel would have sought to use the
prestige of association with Brahmans as a means of stabilizing
their position with respect to other groups within the localized
peasant societies of the plain.

IV

This analysis of the Brahman-peasant alliance of the Pallava

period and the presumed reasons for its existence has sought to
emphasize factors which are perhaps inadequately appreciated
by many Indian historians. These factors are mundane, and
because the alliance conception proposed here may be seen to
distort or to pervert what most historians of South India continued
to view as a purely religious development, the proposal requires
clarification.
There are probably few historians of early South India who would
disagree that an enduring and symbiotic relationship between
dominant cultivators of the most productive and prosperous
zones of agriculture and Brahmans had come into existence in
pre-Pallavan and Pallavan times. Nor would there be disagreement
that this relationship deepened and elaborated through subsequent
historical periods. But these same scholars might cavil at the idea
that this relationship could be called an ‘alliance’ or that hhakti
Hinduism of the South Indian macro region, in any important
sense, reflected the quite worldly concerns of peasants and priests.
Religious change, especially such fundamental change as the
displacement of sacrificial forms of the Brahmanical religion and
Jainism and Buddhism, tends to be seen conventionally as the
evolution of or a dialectical process involving an ancient religious
devotionalism of Tamils in relation to ancient theological or
philosophical conceptions long present in Brahmanical thought.42
42 See the forthcoming essay by Friedhelm Hardy, ‘Ideology and Cultural Con-
 Formation oj the Medieval Agrarian Order 87

Such a perception of religious change as independent of social

contexts and processes is generally difficult to consider; in India
this notion of religious thought and institutions as compartmen¬
talized, as somehow isolated from the nexus of social, political,
and economic relationships, is certainly doubtful, if not wholly
unacceptable. Therefore, it is quite essential to specify how and
why religious and non-religious factors interacted to shape both
religious and non-religious ideas and institutions in early South
India.
In emphasizing the ideological component of Hinduism as a
factor in the alliance of Brahmans and peasants, it is not denied
that quite genuine piety motivated the actions of many peasants
nor that many Brahmans whole-heartedly subscribed to the popular
and devotional tenets of bhakti faith. However, in seeking to
understand the factors involved in the balanced and durable
alliance of Coromandel Brahmans and peasants, piety appears
a weak analytical reed. For, when the Brahman-peasant alliance
changed after the fourteenth century, are we to suppose that piety
ceased or changed? Where, as in Hinduism, we have a religion
which is not compartmentalized but comprehends a 'total way
of life’, we must expect to find in religion symbols and dispositions
much which we do not regard as essentially religious. We should
expect to find injunctions about basic patterns of livelihood,
power, social relations, and those systematically related, morally-
valenced, and publicly-expressed (in inscriptions) secular ideas
which constitute the ideology of any people. And when, as in
Pallava times and later, the premier religious functionaries are
found to be linked to powerful peasant groups, the ideological
component of religion should assume a high order of priority
in our understanding of agrarian relations. Religion was made
to serve the Brahman-peasant alliance which constituted the under¬
pinning of localized, self-governing territories in South India
from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries. In the succeeding period
of agrarian organization, when Muslim pressure upon the northern
edges of the Coromandel plain created the conditions for the
expansion of the highly martial Telugu warriors of the Vijayanagara
period, religion again served to provide an essential cohesion to

texts of the Srivaisnava Temple’ in a symposium on South Indian temples (edited

by Burton Stein) by The Indian Economic and Social History Review, v. 14 (Jan.-March
1977), pp. 119-51.
88 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

different fundamental relationships in South Indian society.43

Prevailing interpretations of the Pallava period as one of signi¬
ficant, disjunctive change have tended to ignore the steady ex¬
pansion of peasant society and culture from the Classical period.
This expansion over the entire Coromandel plain and the ultimate
emergence of powerful peasant peoples fundamentally altered
relationships among peoples of the society of South India as des¬
cribed in the early poems of the Tamils. In particular, it set the
peoples of the river plain and their subordinate allies, the pastora-
lists and fishing folk, against the non-peasant peoples of the forests
and dry uplands, matching the superior populations and wealth
of the former against the military capabilities of the latter. It is
suggested that the 'Kalabhra interregnum’ may be recognized
as a period of momentary success on the part of the non-peasant
peoples seeking to achieve control over the plains of the Southern
peninsula and that the establishment of Pallava rule may be taken
as the ultimate triumph of the wealthy plainsmen. It is further
proposed that the social and cultural changes associated with
Pallava rule in Tondaimandalam and eventually the entire Tamil,
Karnatak, and Telugu plains are to be understood as a part of the
effort of the peasant people of this macro region to achieve and
consolidate that victory. To this end, the Coromandel peasantry
supported Pallava kings as cakravartins who were rulers over a
territory not over a people as in older forms of kingship and who
were committed to the prosperity and protection of the peasantry.
Similarly, the South Indian peasantry supported the development
of devotional Hinduism not simply from reasons of piety or respect
for its Brahman functionaries but for the contribution religion
could make to the ideological cohesiveness of the plains people.
Great settlements of Brahmans became centres of the revitalized
religion just as they served as centres of the peasant culture of the
plains in other ways, and these centres, for all of their ostensible
domination by learned and pious Brahmans displayed many
signs ot the association with the peasantry', including the devotional
folk elements of the religion and the continued strength of peasant
43 Ibid. Another essay in the temple symposium is Arjun Appadurai’s ’Kings,
Sects and Temples in South India: 1350-1700 a.d.’; this essay deals with Telugu
warriors' successful integration into temples of Tamil country.
 Formation of the Medieval Agrarian Order 89

corporate group life. Situated in the most developed peasant

tracts of the Coromandel plain, these great Brahman settlements
could not but show themselves to be bastions of plains culture
reflecting the close collaboration ^between Brahmans and peasants.
 CHAPTER III

Peasant Micro Regions:

The Nadu

The macro region defined above was comprised of numerous

distinctive localities which increased in the period from the ninth
to the twelfth centuries with the expansion of peasant society.
Varying according to ecological conditions, proximity to established
older cores of peasant settlement, and their social composition,
these micro regions were the enduring and basic units of South
Indian peasant society. Most predated the Cholas and most,
while retaining their identity and organization, were capable, at
times, of being aggregated as larger territorial entities under
various kinds of overlords. Occasionally, this massing of locali¬
ties was carried out by members of the Chola royal family, especially
in the Kaveri delta, but more often by chiefs, themselves locality
notables and closely linked to the dominant peasantry of the
place. From the Pallava period until quite recent times, these
micro regions constituted the basic 'arena’—to use F.G. Bailey's
term—of the functioning peasant society.1 That is, the peasant
locality was an interactional region defined by relatively dense
interrelations among social groups with common interests in some
tract of cultivable land.
Nadu is the term which designated the micro region. It is also
used in the Chola period to designate an assembly of the micro
region. Etymologically, nadu refers to agricultural land in con-

1 Quoted from F.G. Bailey, Politics and Social Change in Orissa' in Politics
and Society in India, ed. C.H. Phillips, London, 1962, and commented upon by
Barun De, ‘A Historical Perspective on Theories of Regionalisation in India’, in
Regions and Regionalism in South Asian Studies' An Exploratory Study, ed. Robert
I Crane, Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia, Duke University,
Monograph no. 5, Durham, N.C., 1966, pp. 54-5. See also Bailey’s discussion in
his. Tribe, Caste, and Nation; A Study of Political Activity and Political Change in
Highland Orissa, O.U.P.. Bombay, 1960, pp. 269-70

90
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 91

trast to kadu, a Dravidian word for forest or other land not suited
to cultivation.2
In Classical poems, nadu appears to have been consistently
contrasted to hill and forest country as in the Purandnuru where
a Chera king is said to rule over the hills, the forests, and the nadu,
and where the Chola Karikala is said to have ‘made nadu'(nadu
akkT) by ‘clearing forests’ (kadu konru) ,3 Most nadus are identified
by the name of some village from as early as the Classical period.
In Tondaimandalam another term, kurram, is used along with
nadu. Kurram, in some inscriptional contexts appears to be
equivalent to nadu though this is the subject of some controversy
among scholars.4 The term kottam also occurs in Tondaiman¬
dalam and may not have been a simple equivalent of nadu ; kottam
appears to designate physical sub-regions of the central Tamil
plain marked by the topographically prominent distribution of
hills to which the root of the word, kot-, may refer.5
Nowithstanding differences among scholars regarding possibly
meaningful distinctions among these various terms, there is general
agreement that the territorial term nadu has primacy as the funda¬
mental building block of rural organization during the Chola
period.
Long ignored by historians of the Chola period, the nadu has
recently been the subject of a serious and able study by Y. Subba-
rayalu, a substantial portion of whose monograph on Chola
country from a.d. 800 to 1300 is devoted to this territorial unit.
‘The Nadu’, Subbarayalu writes, ‘is the very key to political
geography of the Chola country. It was a very important limb
of the administrative system of the period . . . and it was the basic
unit of the then agrarian society.’6 Treating the territorial unit
kurram as synonymous with nadu, Subbarayalu has identified
and mapped 140 in Cholamandalam and sixty-five in the territory
immediately north of Chola country, Naduvil-nadu, as of about

2 D.E.D., no. 3012, p. 242, ‘natu.

3 y. Subbarayalu, Political Geography oj the Chola Country, Tamil Nadu State
Department of Archaeology, Madras, 1973, p. 32.
4 B. Suresh, ‘Historical and Cultural Geography and Ethnography of South
India with Special Reference to Cola Epigraphs’, unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, Deccan
College, University of Poona, 1965, p. 30 (hereafter: HCGESI). Also Nilakanta
Sastri, The Colas, p. 465; Subbarayalu, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
5 Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 25-6.
6 Subbarayalu, op. cit., p. 19.
92 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

a.d. 1300.7 He has also identified more than 1,300 villages within
these two sub-regions of the Tamil plain of which 1070 were in
the 140 nadus of Cholamandalam and the remainder in the
adjoining sixty-five nadus of Naduvil-nadu.* In addition to the
perennial region of the Kaveri basin, Subbarayalu has also delinea¬
ted 203 nadus in the central Tamil plain of Tondaimandalam.
Here, between the northern and southern Tenner rivers, were
located 638 villages during the Chola period. Other territories
similarly treated are: Kongu country in the interior upland of
modern Salem and Coimbatore of Tamil Nadu with thirty-two
nadus and 106 villages positively located; Pandimandalam (modem
Madurai) had ninety-five and 490 respectively; Gangavadi (gariga-
pddi or mudikondachola-mandalam as it was also called) in southern
Karnataka provides evidence of eleven nadus and twenty-five
villages and in several other smaller tracts, Subbarayalu has
located twenty nadus and fifty-eight villages. Thus, by about
a.d. 1300, it is possible to locate with considerable certainty 556
localities in a substantial portion of the peninsular macro region
based upon the certain location of 2,620 villages mentioned in
contemporary inscriptions.
Maps prepared by Subbarayalu also indicate two related charac¬
teristics of the nadu which emphasizes its essential agrarian func¬
tions. The first is the relationship of size and proximity to reliable
water sources. Nadus of the Chola country vary in area from ten
to three hundred square miles. Considering only those nadus
whose boundaries can be fixed with a high degree of certainty,
sixty-eight in Chola country and fifteen in Naduvil-nadu, the
following variation is discovered.
Larger nadus were located on the infertile, poorly-watered
margins of the riverine plain according to the maps prepared by
Subbarayalu. In such relatively inhospitable tracts there were
fewer villages and people than in the deltaic portions of the plain
with its greater availability of moisture. Their boundaries reveal
a second predictable characteristic related to the agrarian functions

7 He has also included the infrequent terms kandam and valtam (used in five cases)
as equal to nadu (op. cit., p. 46-7).
8 Naduvil-nadu is referred to by other names: Nadu-nadu, Naduvunilai-nadu,
and Naduvu-nadu; the tract is situated between Tondaimandalam and Chola¬
mandalam. between the southern Penner and the northern Vellaru rivers, ibid.,
p. 31; also see, K.S. Vaidyanathan, ‘Ancient Geographical Divisions of Tamil
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 93

* Table 11I-I

Areal Variation of Selected Nadus: a.d. 1300

Area Cholamandalam Naduvil-nadu
Sq. mi. S 68 S= 1-5

8-12 5 8
15-20 24 4
25-30 23 1
35-40 10 0
50 1 1
65 1 0
70-80 2 1
180 1 0
300 1 0

of these locality tracts. Subbarayalu’s maps show that most nadus

lie athwart water-courses, the principal discriminating physical
feature of much of the plain. Only the major perennial rivers,
Kaveri and Penner, constituted boundaries. The flow of these
latter rivers was large and reliable enough for agriculturists on
both banks to use without the necessity of joint management.
Not even the Kollidam (modern Coleroon) river, the most impor¬
tant branch of the Kaveri, constituted a reliable demarcation of
nadus; several of the localities on this river are found on both
sides of it (e.g. kalara-kunam, vilanadu, vennaiyur-nddu)9 and
even the southern Vellaru, which was an ancient dividing marker
between Chola and Pandya countries, appeared in the Chola
period to have some nadus lying on both of banks (e.g. olliyur-
kurram, kudalur-nadu, and perurciyil-nadu)} 0
The spatial and temporal demarcation of nadus depends upon the
location of villages said in the existing inscriptions to belong to a par¬
ticular one. There are numerous detailed descriptions of village
boundaries, but not a single inscription which defines the bounda¬
ries of a nadu. Core settlements can be located with reasonable cer¬
tainty from their names as well as from locational factors such as
streams, canals, tanks, and hills which are mentioned in inscriptions;
such places may often be found on modern, large-scale (one inch to

Nadu’, Handbook (Kaiyedu), II International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies,

Madras, 1968, p. 234.
9 Subbarayalu^ op. cit., 22.
10 Loc. cit.
94 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

one mile) maps. However, in other tracts, features such as forests,

jungle, scrub, long converted to cultivation (and in some cases
successively reclaimed as we know from eighteenth century records),
can rarely be found. In general, the further removed from the
principal water sources of a locality, the greater the difficulty in
delineating the boundaries of a particular locality. Many of the
villages referred to in inscriptions cannot be located at all. This
is hardly surprising; rather, it is striking how many settlements
of the medieval period still exist with names but little altered from
ancient times.
Another, quite minor, problem in mapping the nadus of the
Chola period is that a small number of villages can be shown
probably to have been transferred from one to another
Subbarayalu estimates that he has encountered about fourteen
cases of such transfers in Cholamandalam, a number he considers
insignificant considering that there were some 200 in Chola country
and the period over which he was surveying the evidence was
five hundred years.11 Moreover, the inscriptional record does
not deal explicitly with such apparent transfers, hence it is im¬
possible to be even somewhat clear about why such transfers took
place. Subbarayalu does point out that in all cases, the transferred
settlements were at the borders of their respective nadus, that is,
at a relatively great distance from their core settlements.
Finally, of course, there is the problem which exists for any
research based on inscriptions, that is, the incompleteness of the
record. Not all villages can be presumed to have received inscrip¬
tional mention. The stone and copperplate records which contain
references to villages are not all preserved and legible; and not
all of these records have been collected or even noticed in epi-
graphical surveys. Notwithstanding all of these problems, the
survey and mapping which has been done reveals matters of the
greatest importance for an understanding of early agrarian rela¬
tionships in South India.
The distribution of peasant villages in the some 500 nadus of
the territory under Chola overlordship was most decisively shaped
by the availability of reliable irrigation sources. The overall density
of villages in parts of the Kaveri delta reflects this relationship.
Subbarayalu has estimated that there was one village per two
square miles in places of reliable water supply. In Cholamandalam,
11 Ibid., pp. 22 ff.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 95

most (i.e. two-thirds) of the nadus with reasonably ascertainable

boundaries fell within the range of fifteen to thirty square miles
and in Naduvil-nadu most (i.e., four-fifths) fell within the range of
eight to twenty square miles.12 These quite restricted localities
exist in the best agricultural tracts where definiteness of boundaries
is related to high population and thus to the existence of many
villages capable of being assigned to one or another nadu. Of
the several in Cholamandalam with the largest number of villages,
the average size of the nadu, as suggested by Subbarayalu, was
twenty-four square miles.13 Ten nadus of the 140 in Cholamanda¬
lam can definitely be assigned twenty villages or more, and all
but one of these can be regarded as having been very well sited
in relation to water.

Table III-2
Selected Largea and Populous^ Cholamandalam Nadus
by Area, Villages and Relation to water supply

Name Modern Location Villages Areac Relation to Major

(District/Taluk) (sq. miles) Water Source
Remote Proximate

kildr- Tanjavur, Papanasam 20 35 X

kurram
arkattu- Tanjavur, Tanjore 24 36 X
kurram
pachchil- Tiruchirapalli, Lalgudi 20 45 X
kurram
patlana- Tanjavur, Nagapattinam 30 56 X
kurram
tiruvalandur Tanjavur, Mayuram 22 56 X
nadu
tirunaraiyur- Tanjavur, Kumbakonam 28 60 X
nddu
purcmgaram- Tanjavur, Mannargudi and1 27 75 X
bai-nadu Pattukkottai
uraiyur- Tiruchirapalli, Kulittalai 20 136 X
kurram
urrattur- Tiruchirapalli, Kulittalai 24 180 X
kurram and Kulattur
valluvap- Tiruchirapalli, Musiri 40 200 X
padi-nadu

a. In excess of 35 sq. miles b. In excess ot 20 villages c. Approximate

12 Ibid., p. 22. 13 Ibid., pp. 21-2.

96 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

If the nadu territory and assembly were administrative institu¬

tions of the Cholas, as the conventional historical view and Sub-
barayalu contend, then it is important to recognize that this is
an inference. No contemporary documents speak of the nadu
in terms of the Chola governmental structure or function. On
the contrary, these local units are referred to in donative inscrip¬
tions for the apparent purpose of better identifying a village or
in recognition of the special prominence of the leading people
of the nadu — nattdr — in most donative transactions. Therefore,
it would not be appropriate to suppose that when a locality —
nadu or kurram — is first mentioned in an inscription that it is
necessarily a newly created tract of settlement. There are, in fact.

Table 111-3"
New Nadus h(First References) in Cholamandalam and
Naduvil-Nadu: a.d. 850-1300

Period Cholamandalam Naduvil-nadu

- 800 18 1
800- 850 0 3
850- 900 27 11
900- 950 27 6
950-1000 13 11
1000-1050°- 42 8
1050-1100 2 4
1100-1150 0 10
1150-1200 11 2
1200-1250 0 4
1250-1300 12 5

Total 152 65

a. Based upon the table in Subbarayalu, op. cit.. p. 20. with modifications for
presentation.
b. Includes nadus and kurrams.
c. This is broken down accordingly to differentiate the reigns of Rajaraja I, (d.
a.d. 1014) and his successors:

Period Cholamandalam Naduvil-nadu

1000-1014 36 , 4
1015-1050 6 4
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 97

few and questionable references14 to the creation of a nadu or

kurram, and the assumption that its first mention may be taken as
the approximate date of its creation is a doubtful one. Subbarayalu
makes this assumption in his discussion of the ‘evolutionary
character’ of nadus and kurrams. He presents as evidence of
‘new units’, the first references to nadus and kurrams for Chola-
mandalam and Naduvil-nadu for the entire Chola period. On
the basis of these ‘first references’, the following distribution occurs.
Subbarayalu is led by this to suppose that:
The density of population in the Chola-Mandalam had reached, for
the optimum conditions, prevailing then, its saturation point ... in the
first half of the 11th century, after which the rate of growth was obviously
slow. In the Naduvil-nadu, however, new units were coming into existence
at a faster rate till the middle of the 12th century, after which the rate
was a bit slow.15
While it seems obvious that new agrarian tracts would soon open
around the rich ecological cores such as the Kaveri and the southern
Penner basins, the tempo of expansion suggested by Subbarayalu
cannot be accepted without corroborative evidence of very impres¬
sive and sustained population growth or immigration. The large
number of new agrarian tracts of irrigated agriculture, utilizing
intensive labour, could not have been established without new
population or restructuring of the field labour force or a basically
new technology. There is no evidence of these.
It is more likely that new agrarian tracts were opened on the less
fertile fringes of both Cholamandalam and Naduvil-nadu. Some
of these were among the largest locality units of which we have
records. These include: valluvappddi-nddu (Tiruchirapalli, Musiri
taluk) with forty villages and areas of about 200 square miles;
urrattur-kurram (Tiruchirapalli), with twenty-four villages and
an area of about 180 square miles. Others like kurundgan-nddu,
vembdr-nddu, and kanakkdiyur-nadu were located on the western
extremity of Cholamandalam; or, like idaikka-nadu and vavelur-
nadu, they were located in the relatively dry zones between such
major streams as the Varahanadi (South Arcot, Tirukkoyilur
taluk) or, like tunda-nddu and vdandaiyil-nadu between the western
portions of the northern Vellaru and the Murudaiyaru (Tiruchi-
14 A.R.E., 1943-4, no. 277, where the epigraphist supposes a 'regrouping' of
these nadus. Subbarayalu’s reading of this record is different, op. cit., p. 44.
15 Subbarayalu, op. cit., p. 21.
98 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

rapalli, Udaiyarpalayam taluk), or finally, danava-nadu, around

the upper reaches of the Ambuliyar river (Tanjavur, Pattukkottai
taluk). Most of these tracts were isolated, large, and not very
populous; these areas of later occupation may, as Subbarayalu
has suggested, be the result of saturation densities in propinquit-
ous and better endowed neighbouring territories.
Rather than viewed as an ‘evolution’ or as an unfolding of
locality units as a result of ‘saturation’, it is proposed here that
most of the 500 or so localities referred to in Chola times were in
existence during the time of Rajaraja I, and the references to them
indicate not a new existence, but a new recognition of Chola over¬
lordship.
The assumption that locality units, variously called nadus,
kurrams, or, occasionally, by some other term, were in existence
at the time of the ‘Imperial Cholas’ is one of the three possible
assumptions which can be made. The prevailing conventional view
of the nadu is based upon the supposition that the centralized
state utilized, if it did not create, it as the prime unit of local ad¬
ministration. In this view, the term Lnadu is understood primarily
in its meaning as a territorial assembly, not as a territory; it is
the assembly which attended its governance as a territorial unit
of administrative convenience. The nadu, as an assembly, is seen
by Nilakanta Sastri as composed of some kind of regular repre¬
sentation from each village or locality,16 or seen by Mahalingam
as composed of the more ‘influential’ persons of a locality.17
Both Nilakanta Sastri and Mahalingam tend to view the nadu
assembly as a link in the overall control of the Chola government.
This view rests on the unsubstantiated claim of the centralized,
bureaucratized character of the Chola state; this view also neglects
the agrarian and social basis of the locality territory as long an¬
tecedent to the political order established by the Cholas.
Subbarayalu, in a second possible position, recognizes the
agrarian and social character of the nadu. However, in arguing
that those of Cholamandalam and the Naduvil-nadu in most
cases came into existence in the course of the Chola period, Sub¬
barayalu is burdened by the undemonstrable assumption of
impressive population increase such as to explain the esta¬
blishment of ‘new units' of agrarian organization leading to the
16 The Cojas, p. 503-4.
17 South Indian Polity, p. 369.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 99

eventual 'saturation’ of the Kaveri and the Penner basins. He

also presumes a causal relationship between these developments
and the Chola state. It is not possible to demonstrate that there
was a 'Chola peace’ which ended a period of disorder inimical to
population growth or agrarian development nor that significant
new forms of productive organization or techniques could have
accounted for the development implied in Subbarayalu’s for¬
mulation.
The third position, the one adopted here, is that most of the
several hundred locality units of the Kaveri and Penner basins
(Cholamandalam, Naduvil-nadu and Tondaimandalam) were in
existence prior to Rajaraja I, and that these units as the prime
units of social and agrarian organization provided the basis for
the Chola political order. The nature of the Chola state is dis¬
cussed separately in chapter VII but as that state was based upon
an extant agrarian order, of which the nadu was the keystone,
attention must be given to its essential character.
Much of our understanding of the persistence of territorially
segmented units of culture and society in South India, of which
the nadu was the major manifestation during the Chola period,
must await deeper scholarship on the society depicted in Classical
poetry and on the evidence of archaeology which in South India,
as elsewhere on the Indian sub-continent, has barely begun.18
These are the most promising frontiers of South Indian scholar¬
ship. Though tentative, an assessment of the features of South
Indian territorial segmentation may be suggested.
The legacy of the ancient past of South India upon the segmentary
territorial structure of medieval South Indian society and culture
is manifold. Evidence of very early, widespread farming com¬
munities over most of the southern peninsula comes from neolithic
and post-neolithic archaeology. While yet incomplete, this evidence
strongly suggests that agricultural settlements dotted the various
landscapes of the region, the more favourable riverine sites as well
as less favoured upland ones. Moreover, it would appear that
these early sites continued to be the loci of peasant settlement

18 Two recent works deserve special mention here: S. Singaravelu, Social Life
of the Tamils, Department of Indian Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur,
1966, especially ch. 9, 'The Natu’; and Clarence Maloney, ‘Archaeology in South
India: Accomplishments and Prospects’, in Essays on South India, ed. Burton
Stein, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1975, ch. 1.
100 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

during the historical period. Further, at the time when the first
states were being consolidated in the Gangetic plain, in the middle
of the first millenium b.c., there were relatively stable though
somewhat primitively formed, societies in the southern peninsula
known to Gangetic peoples. Reference to the Cheras, Cholas,
and Pandyans as well as other peninsular peoples in the Asokan
inscriptions mark this recognition around the fourth century
b.c. Finally, in the Classical literature of the first several centuries
of the present era, we are presented with a complex and sophisticated
social order in which diverse peoples lived in trade settlements
and engaged in an extensive trade network, including the Mediter¬
ranean region. At the same time, these cosmopolitan people shared
a general culture with a variety of South India folk in quite different
settings. As reflected in the cultural-ecological categories of the
five regions, or poetic situations (tinais) of Tamil speakers, one
sees many well-established variants of a single, general culture.
One other factor should be regarded as important with respect
to territorial segmentation in the southern peninsula. The history
of South India is quite clear on the matter of conquests by peoples
of cultures different from those of the macro region. After the
ancient incursions into the southern peninsula by Mediterranean
peoples who comprise the basic Dravidian stock, there appear
to have been no conquests of the southern peoples within the macro
region of this study. There were neither the politico-military
subjugations which might have obliterated ancient, local ethnic
territories as known in Classical poems, for example, nor was
there a ‘cultural conquest’ such as might achieve the same end
The introduction and dissemination of Aryan cultural forms
Sanskrit language and the Indo-Aryan culture of the Gangetic
plain — appear to have been primarily the work of South Indian
men. In a process which has been suggested by Kosambi and
assumed, if not explicitly supported, in the work of most South
Indian historians,19 Indo-Aryan culture was assimilated by South
Indians gradually and selectively. There was no sudden trans¬
formation of Dravidian culture — if one may use such a term —
by strangers, but rather slow, quite varied, and modest variation^

19 D.D. Kosambi, ‘The Basis of Ancient Indian History, I', Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 75, no. I (Jan -March, 1955), p. 43. A valuable, recent considera¬
tion of this matter comes from Nilakanta Sastri. Cultural Contacts Between Aryans
and Dravidians, Manaktala, Bombay, 1967.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 101

in an already rich Dravidian culture through interactions with

carriers of Indo-Aryan culture, many of whom may themselves
be called ‘Dravidian’ in language, culture, and social allegiance.
The result of these factors was a South Indian cultural system
based upon highly localized, very durable varieties of a single,
extensive culture, a related set of languages, and substantially
shared cultural traditions. The robustness of the Dravidian com¬
ponent is evident in modern times as it has been throughout history.
The impact of early Indo-Aryan forms, Muslim influences during
the medieval period, and, finally, European influence since the
eighteenth century have not obliterated the Dravidian foundation
of South Indian life. And it may well be that the segmentary
character of that society and culture served to preserve and protect
that foundation.
The salient dimensions of segmentary organization in early
South India were restricted marriage and kinship networks; narrow
territorial social coalitions beyond kinsmen; and locally-based
agrarian relationships, political and religious affiliations and
loyalties.
The distinctive cross-cousin and maternal uncle-niece forms
of marriage apparently have been preferred from the beginning
to the period under examination here. Unfortunately, this pro¬
position is difficult to assert with complete confidence because
information relating to marriage arrangements is surprisingly
sparse in the early, didactic literature of Tamils, and they are non¬
existent in the inscriptions except as marriages facilitated political
alliances.20 However, according to the eleventh century com¬
mentary of Vijnanesvara on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, cross-cousin
marriages were recognized as appropriate in South India even
though disapproved in the general body of medieval dharmasastra 21
20 Noted by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Culture and History of the Tamils, p. 83, who

has been among the few historians to have consistently denigrated the literary
sources of this period as too fanciful and didactic and difficult to date to be reliable.
See his. Sources of Indian History, pp. 55-6.
21 D.K. Karandikar, Extracts from the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Bombay Vaibhav
Press, Bombay, 1913, p. ii. Marriage with one’s maternal uncle's daughter is also
allow'ed by the northern commentator on Manu, Govindaraja, ot about the same
time (Kane, op. cit., I, pp. 313-15). Earlier references to the latter may be found
in Baudhayana (possibly a southerner of c. 500-200 B.C. according to Kane, ibid.,
pp. 27-30); G. Biihler, The Sacred Books of the Aryas as Taught in the Schools of
Apastamba, Gautama, Vaishtha, and Baudhayana, v. 14, pt II, Sacred Books of the
East, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1965, p. 146.
102 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and, in the Jain Tamil classic, the Civakacintamani, of a possibly

earlier date, one of the marriages of the hero, Civakan, was with
the daughter of his maternal uncle, in which the latter recognized
the hero’s preferential claim to his daughter.22
The spatially compressing character of the marriage system
existed among the dominant, land-controlling peasantry as well
as among most other locality social groups. In part this reflected
a sharing of marriage norms from which no group, including
Brahmans, was exempt; but, more, it was a concomitant of
coalitions which exist in any society dominated by peasant agrarian
relationships. In the absence of effective, continuous, extra-local,
non-peasant authority over agrarian relationships and over the
distributions of the products of the land, it was only through secure
relationships with those local groups which controlled the land
that benefits could be obtained by groups without such control.
The superior privileges and common interests of the dominant
peasant groups — which may at the beginning have consisted of
diverse ethnic segments — would have produced a cohesive,
endogamous locality group.23 Similarly, among those dependent
upon the dominant locality peasantry, endogamous links were
formed based upon common or related occupations, or they would
form coalitions with those with whom marriage relations were
not feasible. Where, as in most Coromandel localities, direct
management of the land and effective political authority were
combined in the same group, other locality groups developed
closed and separate corporate identities.
Territorially segmented marriage and kinship systems were
supported by caste principles of hierarchy and purity as these
principles may be identified in medieval South India. References
to castes as they are known to modem Indian sociology are rare.
Suresh, in his study of Chola inscriptions, noted the names of over
1,800 persons, not including officials and women of chieftains'
families, mentioned in temple inscriptions. These persons included
women connected with the temple and other women donors,
male donors, temple staff, and Brahmans. Of this large number,

22T.E. Gnanamurthy, A Critical Study of the Civakacintamani, Kalai Kathir,

Coimbatore, 1966, p. 209.
23 Localized connubial systems can and have been maintained in ways other
than those found in South India, of course; the widespread preference rules found
there are therefore not ‘explained’ here, merely noted.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 103

only Brahmans and about twenty other individuals are identified

by ‘caste’ and, of these, eighteen are either Vellala or setti, mean¬
ing ‘agriculturists’ and ‘merchants’ of respectable standing. Suresh
concluded that the near total absence of caste designations for
those other than Brahmans named in these temple records indicates
that ‘the caste system had not yet set’.24 This is a quite unnecessary
conclusion.
For most Brahmans mentioned in the inscriptions studied by
Suresh and others, gotra designations are provided. However in
all cases, the village in the locality of the temple from whose inscrip¬
tions the names of persons come — whether Brahmans or others —
is provided. It would therefore appear that for purposes of the
public recording which temple inscriptions served, the two essential
elements of information necessary for the identification of per¬
sons were whether they were Brahmans and where they lived.
It is reasonable to assume that the persons mentioned who were
not Brahmans belonged to respectable social groups, for, pre¬
sumably only those persons could be suitable participants in the
canonical temples. Thus, the list of names provided by Suresh
would include the two most prestigious social groups in South
Indian society at the time: Brahmans and respectable non-
Brahmans along with the information of where they lived. To
say that the caste system was not set, as Suresh does, may not
therefore be altogether true, for what is suggested from his data
and that of others is that the tripartite division of territorially
segmented social groups in South Indian society — the dominant
structural element in modern South Indian caste — was already
well-established and recognized. In temple inscriptions of the
age it was sufficient to give the proper name of non-Brahmans
along with his village to say all that was necessary about caste.
While the division of social groups according to the varna schema
of vedic authority has had little sociological reality anywhere in
the Indian cultural sphere, its categories (the four varnas plus un¬
touchables) appear to have provided clearer status categories
in northern India, particularly the Gangetic plain, than in South
India. In the tripartite division of peoples in South India, the most
ambiguous division was the middle one. Certainty about the
appropriateness of a prospective marriage would have been
greatest to attain within the middle caste ranks of dominant
24 Suresh, HCGESI, p. 315.
104 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

peasants where concerns about relative status were perhaps most

keenly felt. Marriage among near kin sought to assure this ap¬
propriateness. Beyond that, participation with Brahmans in the
support and operation of the canonical temple, as representatives
of the locally dominant people, further supported their status
pretentions.
Peasant controllers of localities sought in their marriage system
and in their conspicuous association with Brahmans and canonical
religion to fix for themselves a status second only to the indis¬
putably high rank of Brahmans. Other social groups, identified
primarily by their occupations (and the relation of these occupa¬
tions to agrarian production) held ranked places below that of
the dominant peasant castes, thus fortifying the latter’s political
and economic position. The periodically activated coalitions of
the right- and left-hand castes among occupational/social groups
below the dominant land controllers which came into prominence
by the late eleventh century, served as a means for some lower
peasant groups and more mobile artisan-traders to combine across
locality lines, against the dominance enjoyed by the powerful
land-controlling peasantry, their dependents, and their allies,
the Brahmans.
Requirements of the agrarian organization, given the technology
of the age, made for territorially segmented units of production.
The nadu was thus an economic as well as ethnic territory. Bound¬
aries of each territorial unit were defined by interactions between
the dominant landed folk and those dependent upon them —
artisans, merchants, and labourers — as well as with Brahmans
with whom the peasant groups were allied.
The earliest peasant settlements of the nadu usually gave their
names to the locality. The other major source of names, besides
the village toponym, stressed natural elements directly related
to agriculture. Thus, manni-nadu in Kumbakonam taluk, modern
Thanjavur, is named after the Manniyar River, and idaiyarru-
nddu, also Cholamandalam, is the same as the term ‘doab’ in North
Indian usage, the land between two rivers; pulalerikki-nadu and
ambattur-eri-nadu, in Tondaimandalam, are named after the
prominence ol a great lake or tank as mebnalai-velur-nadu refers
to a prominent hill. Those well-watered, fertile tracts which at¬
tracted agriculturists to particular localities in the first instance
remained the inner cores of each nadu. Here were the chief settle-
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 105

merits ot those whose efforts had won the place from previous
occupants — forest people or pastoralists, who settled and cul¬
tivated the land, and who recruited groups of service providers
— including Brahmans. In time, subordinate settlements were
created in other parts of the tract by these peasant settlers and
those associated with them, extending the arrangements evolved
in the earliest settlements with which newer ones were bound by
marriage ties, cult practices, defensive arrangements, allegiances
to supra-local chieftains, and common interests in the manage¬
ment of land relations.
An interesting aspect of the relationship of ‘founding' villages
and their localities is that the earliest settlements after which locali¬
ties were often named assumed no apparent primacy among locality
villages, either as administrative centres or as fortified places.
It was rather the locality as a whole and the dominant peasant
groups within them — referred to collectively and acting cor¬
porately as the nattar — and dispersed throughout the locality
that was considered as important. In public terms, as reflected
in the inscriptional records, large Brahman settlements and
important trade centres enjoyed more prominence than even the
largest, essentially peasant, settlement of a locality.
The network of rural relationships which emerged in a nadu
territory was conditioned by many factors. Land was one such
factor. The proliferation and viability of colonies of the parent
peasant settlement depended critically upon the availability of
arable land. But nature could be moulded to the needs of peasant
cultivation; irrigation w'orks could be developed to reduce the
hazards of aridity and wells could tap rising water tables resulting
from the careful husbanding of water in the vicinity. The relative
availability of men and animals to work the land also operated
as a determinant of expansion of peasant settlements and both
of these factors would be influenced by such short-term phenomena
as war and disease, as well as long term ones like endemic health
conditions hazardous to both man and beast. Able leadership
and warriors among a peasant folk could facilitate rapid expansion
just as proximity to well-organized tribal folk in the forests — pre¬
dators upon wealthy peasant settlements — could retard, even
reverse, the development of a peasant micro region.
It is recognized that the designation of the nadu, an ethnic and
ecological micro region, as the basic unit of Chola society
106 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

diverges from the emphasis which is usually given to the ‘village’

by most scholars. In the judgement of most historians, the nadu
is vaguely seen as an administrative unit with a certain degree of
responsibility over self-governing villages. Thus Nilakanta Sastri
states: ‘The self governing village was the unit of government.
A number of them constituted a kurram or nadu or kottam as it
is called in different parts of the country.’25
The word, ‘constituted’, which may or may not have been used
deliberately to denote the nadu as an arbitrarily defined space of
administrative convenience, well expresses the propensity of
scholars to disregard the sociological significance of the micro
region.26
Emphasis upon the primacy of the ‘self-governing village’ and
the ‘constituted’ character of the nadu is questionable on at least
two grounds. First, the kind of ‘self governing villages’ to which
reference is made, and for which alone there is evidence, is the
Brahman village, and such villages were, in almost all cases, al¬
ready thriving peasant settlements before being conferred as
brahmadeyas. Indeed, if they were not prosperous villages, then
they could hardly have supported the non-productive Brahman
population and could hardly have been considered gifts.27 To the
extent that it is possible to speak of village self-government, it is
widely recognized that the non-Brahman assembly, the ur, was
probably as competent as sabha of the brahmadeya, though less
is known of it, unfortunately. In general there is little information
on the functioning of any village assemblies prior to the ninth
century when inscriptional evidence becomes vastly richer and
riveted attention upon the very conspicuous Brahman villages.28
25 The Colas, p. 465.
26 K.A.N. Sastri, the most scholarly, prolific, and authoritative writer on Chola
history has persistently held to the constitutive view of the nadu; in his recent work,
Sources of Indian History: with special Reference to South India (Heras Memorial
Lectures (1961), Asia Publishing House, Madras, 1964, p. 68), he writes, ‘they
[Rajaraja I and Rajendra I] perfected a highly organized administrative system
which admirably hit the mean between centralization and local autonomy...’.
27 In other times and places, Brahman-and-temple-sponsored schemes of agricul¬
tural development occurred, but there is no evidence of this in the period under dis¬
cussion. See, for Bengal, Land System and Feudalism in Ancient India, ed. D C.
Sircar, University of Calcutta, Calcutta, 1966, p. 15; for South India, Burton Stein,
‘Temples and Agriculture Development in Medieval South India’, Economic Weekly
Annual, Bombay, 1960.
2» Among the best of which is K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Studies in Cola History
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 107

Secondly, the nadu, or micro region, far from being an administra¬

tive device of the Cholas, existed long before as an important
unit of society and culture as well as politics.
Some of the macro regions of the Chola period existed during
the Classical period.The Classical poetic canon, Tolkappiyam,
distinguishes twelve dialectical sub-regions among Tamils in the
southernmost part of what was then formally regarded as Tamil
country (tamilaham).^ These Tamil dialects are differentiated
from the Tamil spoken north of the Kaveri — the ‘northern
language’ (vada-eol) - which were regarded as unfit to be included
as ‘correct’ (sentamij) on phonetic grounds. Centreing on Madurai,
where the language was considered most correct, the formal
linguistic region, Tamilaham, extended from Kanya Kumari north¬
ward on the Malabar Coast to about twelve degrees of latitude
and on the Coromandel coast to the thirteenth degree of north
latitude. The Vengadam Hills marked the northern boundary of
Tamil speakers according to most Classical sources.31
Several of the nadus of the Classical period persisted as dis¬
tinctive localities until quite recent times. Two on the west coast,
poli-nddu and kuda-nadu are known until the conquest by Mysore
in the late eighteenth century when their names were slightly
altered to Polanad and Kutnad as which they continue to constitute
sub-divisions of modern divisions.32 On the Coromandel coast, the

and Administration, University of Madras, Madras, 1932; but also in such survey
works as R.C. Majumdar, Corporate Life in Ancient India, S.N. Sen, Calcutta,
1922, and R.K. Mukherjee, Local Government in Ancient India, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1919.
29 Note the extended entry under the term nctdu in Subrahamanian, Pre-Pallavan
Index, p. 488-9.
30 S. Illakkuvanar, Tholkappiyam in English: with Critical Studies, Rural Neri
Publishing House, Madura, 1963, p. 142.
31 Regions by dialect are listed in Srinivasa Iyengar, op. cit., pp. 150-1; in this
period, Tamil dialect territories included those on the west coast, in what is now
Kerala. From twelve degress of north latitude these included Polinadu, Kudanadu, and
Venadu, the last of which continued to be an important Tamil region, Kanakasabhai,
op. cit., pp. 14-15. According to K.K. Pillay, this broad delineation of the Tamil
region of antiquity is referred to in several other classical works as well as the Tolkap¬
piyam (where it is found in the pdyiram, or laudatory preface): the Purammuru,
Ahananuru, and Cilapadikaram; A Social History of the Tamils, pt 1, University
of Madras, Madras, 1969, pp. 14-15.
32 William Logan, Malabar: The Malabar Manual, Superintendent of Govern¬
ment Press, Madras [reprinted], 1951, v. 1, pp. 645 and 662.
108 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

following ancient nadus continued to the Chola period: aruvanadu,33

and oyma-nadu,i4 in Tondaimandalam (Chola: jayangondachola-
mandaiam), and konddu in Cholamandalam.35 Mala-nadu (malai-
nddu) between Cholamandalam and Kongumandalam, dates from
the Classical age and during the Chola period was designated as a
special link region called rajasraya-valanadu.36 Mcdddu (or miladu),
in modern Tirukkoyilur taluk of South Arcot, continued as a
named locality until at least the late years of the reign of Rajendra
Chola I, and it is one of the few Coromandel localities to which a
numerical designation was appended in the manner of medieval
Karnataka (miladu, ‘2,000’).37
The nadus of Gangavadi in southern Karnataka predated the
Hoysala state by perhaps two centuries. These may date from the
first kingdom to be centred in this region, the Gangas, whose
territory encompassed most of what was the princely state of
Mysore during the nineteenth century. Gangavadi was distin¬
guished in medieval inscriptions from northern Karnataka. The
latter, being called kuntah or rattavadi, included the extensive
tracts of nolambavddi, banavasi, and palasige. As with all territories
in medieval Karnataka, from the seventh to the fourteenth centu¬
ries, a numerical designation was affixed to these: Gangavadi-
96,000, nolambavddi-32,000, banavasi-12,000, and palasige-12,000.38
Gangavadi was clearly linked to the interior upland of Tamil
country as evidenced by the large number of Tamil inscriptions
there and by the movement of peasant folk between Gangavadi
and neighbouring extensions of the Tamil plain as recalled in the
Karmandala Satakam of the eighteenth century.39

33 Subrahmanian, Pre-Pallavan Index, p. 56. Ptolemy in the second century

a.d. noted the territory between the north and south Penner as 'Arvrernoi'; K.V.
Raman, op. cit., pp. 4-5.
34 Subrahmanian, Pre-Pallavan Index, p. 187.
35 Ibid., p. 346; Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 109; V. Venkayya, 'Territorial
Divisions of Rajaraja Chola', S.I.I., v. 2, pt 5, pp. 21-9.
36 K.S. Vaidyanathan, ‘Mala-Nadu’, Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society,
'Culture and Heritage Number' (1956), p. 225.
37 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, 265-6. Another is vadugavali-12,000 in modem
North Arcot, S.I.I., v. 3, no. 42. p. 90, late ninth century.
38 G.S. Dikshit, Local Sell-Government in Medieval Karnataka, Karnatak Uni¬
versity, Dharwar, 1964, pp. 18-19.
39 Kdrmandala-Satakam (in Tamil) with a commentary by P.A. Muthuthan-
davaraya Pillay, Madras, 1930.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 109

It may therefore be argued that if there was a ‘basic unit of

government', it was the nadu, not the ‘self-governing village’. The
nadu was the basic peasant unit of the age, it was alsp an ethnic
region to which the later, prestigious Brahman villages and the
great overlords adapted themselves. The essential governmental
significance of the nadu was its ethnic coherence. All persons
and groups directly involved in the peasant agrarian system of
a locality and jointly dependent upon the successful exploitation
of the land tended to constitute a discrete social universe. Where
land capable of being turned to the plough ceased, where slope,
aridity, hazards to human or animal welfare, or the presence of
a hostile people — peasant or non-peasant — who could not be
displaced occurred, the locality ended. Within that spatial uni¬
verse, in most parts ot the macro region, those with sufficient
authority to compel it forced the acceptance of social rules based
upon hereditary hierarchy and segmentation. Those whose military
power and agricultural skills had originally converted a tract of
land to peasant cultivation maintained authority through control
over cultivable land and through connections with supra-local
chieftains.
In some parts of the macro region — its backwaters, late to
emerge as full-fledged peasant tracts — the relationships between
a particular ethnic group and the territory was perhaps stronger
than in the older peasant core areas, for example, southern Pandi-
mandalam as compared with the riverine portion of Cholaman-
dalam or Tondaimandalam. Where such emergence was late, clan
organization could assume great importance. This is well ex¬
emplified in the cases of the Kallars and Maravars in the southern
peninsula.
The modern districts of Ramnad and Madurai became marginal
extensions of ancient Pandya country as Kallars and Maravars
progressively converted their lands to peasant agriculture, possibly
during later Chola times. Subsequently, they expanded their con¬
trol into portions of modern Tanjavur and Tirunelveli, becoming
the territorially dominant people in some portions of Tanjavur
which they ruled as their ‘eighteen nadus'. In both places, however,
the original Ramand and Madurai ‘homeland’ and the places
into which they later migrated, Kallars and Maravars permitted
strangers, including higher status ones like Brahmans and Vellalas,
to maintain their corporate character while superior locality
110 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

control was retained by Kallars and Maravars.40 According to

the Census of 1901, Kallars were divided into ten major endogamous
divisions by territory (nadu). During the nineteenth century,
within each of the Kallar localities, one Kallar sub-division was
accorded the title of nattar and assumed a dominant place in the
affairs of the place involving not only all Kallars, but problems
involving other castes as well.41 Maravars, it appears, followed
the same pattern.
Locality governance varied in the Chola macro region. In the
central portion of the Kaveri basin and Tondaimandalam, the
nattar seemed to operate as an assembly without a single, local,
executive chief, whereas is southern Karnataka and Kongu42—
the interior, upland tracts of the macro region — nadu chieftain¬
ships prevailed. In Karnatak inscriptions, local political relations
revolved around locality chiefs. Here, men with titles of gaunda,
prabbu, and pergade to which are prefixed the word nad were
recognized holders of locality authority with specified prerequisites
of dues and land. These were hereditary offices, and those who
held the offices were ‘ranked chiefs’.43
The dispersed settlement of peasants in the relatively dry interior
upland of South India would have required greater reliance upon
highly localized chiefs for protection. Moreover, in both Kongu
and Southern Karnataka, there was evidence of conquest by
peasant groups from the Tamil plain which established a locality-
conquering elite unlike any that can be identified in the lowland
during Chola times. Arokiaswami, writing of Kongu country
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has pointed to the

40 William Taylor, ‘Marava-Jathi-Vernanam' from Unpublished Mackenzie

Manuscripts in Possession of the Asiatic Department of the Madras Literary-
Society, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, v. 4 (1836), p. 357.
41 Thurston, op. cit., v. 3, pp. 71 fF. citing J.H. Nelson, The Madura Country:
A Manual, Asylum Press, Madras, 1868. More recent corroboration of this comes
from Louis Dumont’s study of a branch of the Kallars, Une Sous Caste de I'lnde
du Sud (Mouton, Paris, 1957, pp. 143ff) where he describes the conventional struc¬
ture of four chiefs (tevar), eight districts (nddus) and twenty-four subordinate villages
in which one of the four chiefs is recognized as superior (raja) over others who are
regarded as his ‘ministers’.
42 Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, pp. 251-2, 261-2, 271.
44 Dikshit, op. cit., pp. 38-40. ’Ranked’ chiefs are distinguished from ‘ceremonial’
chiefs by their possession of preferential access to or control over human and non¬
human resources, implying a stratified difference from the essentially honourary
office of chief.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 111

heavy influx of plains groups into the region which resulted in

segmentary relationships between the ‘foreign’ lowland intruders
and those who exercised local authority previously. These latter
linked caste groups, according to Arokiaswami’s argument,
identified themselves in and with the place by the prefix ‘Kongu-’
which also emphasized their indigenous status.44
In the riverine plains of the lowland, however, the pattern of
local authority and control continued to be corporate until the
Vijayanagara period. Collective terms such as, nadayisainda
nattdm, which Nilakanta Sastri translates as, \ . . residents of the
nadu met [formed] as nadu. . ,’45 refer to those who manage the
locality through specialists.
Two kinds of administrative functions are prominent in records
which refer to the management of more densely settled, lowland
localities. These are maintenance of local accounts (nadu-kankani),
revenue registers and assessments (nadu-vagai and nadu kuru).46
General attention was also increasingly given by the nattar to
temple management where the official nadu-kankani supervised
temple accounts and income derived from lands which had been
granted by persons of the locality as devadana (‘gift to the god’).47
Whereas locality leadership in more isolated parts of the macro
region, as Karnataka, vested hereditary chiefs with considerable
authority and power based upon the dominant peasantry to which
they belonged, leadership in the more densely settled, ethnically
diverse, and wealthy parts of the plain is more difficult to identify.
Here, the public actions of the nattar spokesmen for the dominant
peasantry of the locality are undertaken corporately. Revenue
and registerial functions within each locality were the work of
agents of the nattar. If one is to try to locate a kind of executive
authority in the more populous, diverse, and wealthy localities
of the macro region, the most promising possibilities appear to
be persons designated by such titles as muvenda-velar and mum-
madi.

44 Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, pp. 270-1. What Arokiaswami discussed as

‘social stratification' (p. 271) is better labelled ‘social segmentation’ since distinctions
among later ‘invasions’ of Kongu do not appear to be of a ranked sort; these were
merely different groups of equal rank.
45 The Colas, p. 503.
46 Subbarayalu, op. cit., p. 42.
■ 47 Ibid., pp. 43-4.
112 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Little attention has been given to the precise meanings of titles

in Chola inscriptions and such ideas which are held relating to
functions carried out by persons using titles are wholly con¬
jectural. Arokiaswami published a brief note on the term mu-
vendaveldr, which he called, ‘a curious title’.48 ‘Curious’ it is,
as it has been used by historians, and Arokiaswami was referring
to the usage by Nilakanta Sastri. The titles adigari and muvenda-
velar are examined by the latter in a lengthy paragraph dealing
with ‘officials in the service of the king’. In this discussion, such
ancient honorific titles as cnadi and mdrayan and the titles of
chiefs and leading men (araiyan and peraraiyan) are included.49
The examples provided by Nilakanta Sastri fail to convince that
these are ‘Officials’ in the sense implied by his interpretation of the
Chola state as centralized and bureaucratized. Thus, examples
of ‘civic occupations’ of officials are kadigaimardyan and vdcciya-
mdrayan, which mean, respectively, ‘palace-bard’ or ‘time-keeper’
and ‘palace musician’.50 As for the title adigari,51 which Nilakanta
Sastri and others regard as ‘high officers of the army and in general
administration’, again, in the presumed framework of a centralized
political structure, it is noted that the title is often used without
personal names, but very often with a place reference. Of these
‘officials’, Nilakanta Sastri cites a ‘quaint account’ of a later
medieval commentator on a religious text who wrote:

Members of these [adigari] families only accepted appointments as

mantris and did no other work. It is an improper thing that they are
found holding positions of accountants in these days; except that they
could not wear a crown, they are entitled to all the other insignia of royalty,
and it is improper for them to accept any positions other than those of
mantris.52

48‘The Inscriptional Term, “Muvendavelan'” J.I.H. (April 1956), p. 191. See

also the recent preliminary work by N. Karashima and Y. Subbarayalu, "A Statistical
Study of Personal Names in Tamil Inscriptions; Interim Report 11\ Computational
Analysis of Asian and African Languages. ed. M.J. Hashimoto, no. 3 (March, 1976),
National Research Institute of Asian and African Languages and Culture, Tokyo,
pp. 9-20. Definitions are not considered in this work.
49 The Colas. pp. 462-4. Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 173-4, notes eighty references to
these terms which he equates with raja or ‘king’.
50 The Colas, p. 483, no. 61 and Tamil Lexicon, p. 668, on katikai. Tamil Lexicon,
p. 3576 on vacciya-mdrayan.
51 Tamil Lexicon, p. 73.
52 The Cdlas, p. 463. Nilakanta Sastri notes that the gloss on this work, Tak-
kayapparani. was written some centuries after the period of the Cholas.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 113

The term mantri is significant here because it relates to the role of

the king s advisor or counsellor, not a subordinate office-holder
in the bureaucratic sense.53 Similarly, while adigari is used to
refer to a ‘director’ or ‘head person’, it is in the sense of a person
of personal merit, not official precedence.54
Muvendavelar is a term frequently used in Chola inscriptions.
It is often joined with the term adigari to designate an important
personage, often without his personal name. Arokiaswami’s un¬
derstanding of the term is like that of Nilakanta Sastri: it connotes
people with experience in ‘high administrative jobs’, where ‘job’
is meant to convey a bureaucratic office.55 Muvendavelar is a
phrase which appears to mean: Vellalas {velar) of three {mu)
kings {vendan).56 Arokiaswami has provided some instances of
Vellalas serving the Cholas and their predecessors which support
the association suggested by the term velar in the title.57 Again,
as in adigari, persons with this title appear less as occupying func¬
tional political roles than as possessing an esteemed status, the
importance which attaches to men who serve kings as full agents
of the ruler’s authority.
Persons with the titles mentioned above are frequently not
identified by their personal names, yet their locality or village is
often given. Nilakanta Sastri’s understanding of place, in pre¬
ference to personal, identifications is consistent with his general
notions about the Chola state: lie sees the reference as indicating
the place from which a royal officer derives his salary; he sees it
as a kind of fief, or livelihood (jhita), which might include a village
or a ‘district’ {nadu).5% There is absolutely no evidence of such
prebends, or assignments of village or nadu income, in Chola times,
and an arrangement of this sort would seriously have weakened
the putative central control ascribed to Chola rulers. Another,
and more convincing explanation of the place designation, is that
the personage bearing the title was, in fact, a notable of the place
mentioned in his title, that such persons were not royal officials
or central officers as purported, but locality chiefs.

53 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 785.

54 Tamil Lexicon, p. 73.
55 Arokiaswami, "The Inscriptional Term “Muvendavelar”’, p. 191.
56 Tamil Lexicon, p. 3834, ventan and p. 3843, velan.
57 Arokiaswami, ‘The Inscriptional Term “Muvendavelar"’, p. 192.
58 The Colas, p. 464.
114 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

This suggestion is supported by the data which Suresh has

collected. Though his understanding of muvendavelar conforms
closely to the conventional one, Suresh undertakes a closer study
of the term.59 Forty-nine references to muvendavelar are cited
by him from a list of 449 ‘officers’ culled from the corpus of Chola
inscriptions he examined. For almost every one of these 449 men,
the place of the person is clearly recorded in the inscription along
with a title like muvendavelar60 or brahmarayan, the latter indicat¬
ing a Brahman notable.61 In the cases of non-Brahman notables,
a personage with the attributes of a chief was reliably indicated
by the suffixes: udaiyar, alvar, or draiyan. Suresh also notes that
another standard term affixed to the names of notables, mummadi
was equivalent to muvendavelar,62 In the title mummadi-chola
ilango vel reference is to a ‘chief’ or ‘king’ of the Ilango lineage
which flourished in the Kaveri basin for a long time.63 Mummadi,
or more properly mummudi, thus, appears to be another way of
referring to the ‘three kings’,64 either in the sense that the Cholas
had become dominant over the territories of the three ancient
peoples — Cholas, Cheras, and Pandyas — but more likely in the
sense that the holder of the title was a local notable recognizing
the sovereignty of kings.
These titles were held by chieftains’ families of long standing,
not by persons whose status derived from the officialdom of the
Chola state. True, some great families of chiefs continued to be
referred to in inscriptions, thus, preserving an ancient identity.
They are described as an ‘aristocracy’ by Suresh and included
great families of chiefs (perdraiyar) whose existence is attested
during the Classical period. Tondaiman chiefs probably originated
in Tondaimandalam,65 but their territorial power in the Kaveri
basin was well-established in villages furs in which they were the
principal people (kildr). Maravar chiefs, similarly carrying the
title of araiyar, remained important at least until the time of

59 Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 230-1.

60 Explained, ibid., p. 227.
61 Explained, ibid., p. 182.
“ Ibid., p. 227.
63 Ibid., pp. 194-5.
64 Ibid., p. 227; Tamil Lexicon, p. 3272.
65 The Perumpanarruppafai of perhaps the second or third century celebrates
the chieftain Tondaiman Ilantiraiyan of Kanchi: K. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan;
On Tamil Literature of South India, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1973, pp. 56-7.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 115

Kulottunga III; they appear less as a kin-linked ruling group in

the arid country south of the Kaveri than as an assortment of ruling
families originating from various parts of the macro region who
found opportunities on the southern Chola frontier. Among the
Maravar chiefs were the Ilangovels, referred to above, who enjoyed
a somewhat special relationship with the Cholas through marriage.
Kadavarayans, a chieftain’s family of modern Tanjavur district,
were also identified as Maravars though they also appear to have
been linked to another ancient chief’s family, the Muttaraiyars of
the relatively arid tracts north of the Kaveri, in modern South
Arcot. Other families of chiefs of antiquity who are prominent
during the Chola period include: Banas, Irukkuvels, Kadup-
pattigals, Sengenis, and Tamilavels. Additional great chieftains’
families were apparently Valavadaraiyans, Tennavans, and those
called Pallavans or Pallavaraiyans who may also have been warriors
from Tondaimandalam originally, though this is unclear.66
The prominence of these ancient chieftains’ families is marked
by the frequency with which they were mentioned in Chola ins¬
criptions, the titles which they bore, the villages and localities
with which they were associated as principal people, and finally,
the practice of including Chola royal titles (e.g., edirilichola or
vikramachdla) or the names of the Chola rulers in their own titles.
Suresh interprets the last practice as a sign of matrimonial relations
between ‘aristocratic’ families and the royal family;67 he also
supposes that there were matrimonial relations among these
‘aristocratic’ families.68
A good example of the use of Chola royal names by quite in¬
dependent chiefs comes from the interior upland of Kongu (modem
Salem and Coimbatore districts). A line of rulers of this territory,
called the ‘Kongu-Cholas’ is regarded as a ‘vice-royalty’ of the
Kaveri Cholas by Arokiaswami.69 The Kongu-Cholas ruled from
the beginning of the eleventh to the late thirteenth century. Most
of the rulers in this line bore Chola regnal names, such as Uttama-
chola (a.d. 1100-1119), Virachola (a.d. 1119-1134), and Vira

66 Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 301-8. Some of these families were prominent in Pallava
times; see M.S. Govindasamy, The Role of Feudatories in Pallava History, Annamalai
University, Annamalainagar, 1965.
67 Suresh, HCGESI. p. 302.
• Ibid., p. 309.
69 Kongu Country, pp. 229-48.
116 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Rajendra (a.d. 1207-1249). While claiming the great territory of

kohgudesa, most of the 300 inscriptions of this line of chiefs were
concentrated in two places: Dharapuram in the southern portion
of modem Coimbatore and Avanashi in the central portion. Both
places seemed to be on an ancient road from the Kaveri basin to
Malabar over the Nilgiri Hills, and the progenitors of this line of
chiefs may have been Irukkuvels who migrated from the southern
bank of the Kaveri during the Chola period.70 It may also have
been true that the Irukkuvels were linked in marriage to the great
Cholas, but the independent career of the Kongu-Chola chiefs
is too clear to regard them as actual viceregal deputies of the great
Cholas.
Political alliances involving marriages among families of chiefs
and between them and the Chola ruling family certainly did occur
judging from the pedigree of some of the Chola queens However,
the argument that the use of a Chola royal title or name of a Chola
ruler in the title of a chief is a sign of matrimonial relations is
questionable. Such titles seem to have been used frequently among
even quite minor chieftains’ families noted among the 449 names
of ’officers’ by Suresh.71 Unless it is to be argued that every local
notable — a person claiming the title of chief, and claiming kllvar
status with respect to a locality and using the title or name of
ruler — was actually tied to the Chola ruling family by marriage
relations, the practice must be explained some other way. What
is suggested in the evidence available is that the royal Chola family
exercised a ritual sovereignty over the numerous locality notables
in the plains and neighbouring upland; one expression of this
sovereignty was the adoption of Chola royal names and titles by
local chiefs.
As in the case of the great families of chiefs referred to above,
it must have been the case that most minor families of chiefs existed
before Rajaraja l’s time. There is no suggestion in the evidence
of the Chola period or in the interpretations of modern historians
that either the great families of chiefs or minor chieftains were
eliminated by the Cholas; thus, the only reasonable position which
can be taken is that they continued to exist. In relatively isolated
portions of the plain — tracts less favourably situated for dense

70 Ibid, pp. 241-2. Also see, K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, ‘Seven Vatteluttu Inscrip¬
tions from the Kongu Country’, E.I., v. 30, no. 19, p. 100.
71 Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 427-6.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 117

settlements — older families of chiefs as most of those noted above

continued to hold sway, preserving their ancient family identities
even as they assumed additional titles linking them to the Cholas.
In those more populous tracts, well favoured by irrigation and
consisting of quite diverse ethnic groups, the dominant peasantry
continued as before to exercise control through their chiefs. How¬
ever, as in the case of the more ancient families of chiefs, the identity
of these local chiefs — spokesmen for the nattar of the locality —
also changed to reflect a powerful new and politically able over-
lordship, that of the Cholas.
The titles which appear to mark off older locality chiefs in more
densely settled, pluralistic localities were muvendavefar and mum-
madi. References to the Chola hegemony in the titles of these
notables are not to political subordination, for the power of the
nattar and their chiefs seems to have continued undiminished.
The titles, rather, point to a formal allegiance to, and a ritual
linkage with, the Cholas by locality authorities whose power was
based upon their ties with local, dominant peasantry from which
they themselves originated.
Shared sacral allegiance was another significant dimension of
the territorially segmented society of South India during medieval
times. The responsibility of the locally dominant nattar for the
maintenance and supervision of shrines was vested in officials
(ndyagam) of the nadu assembly. The nattar of a locality in which
a Brahman settlement was established were clearly the most im¬
portant of the several groups which participated in the ceremonial
events marking such foundations. But what is most interesting
about the relationship of religion and the territorially and socially
segmented society of this age is the interaction of localized forms
of folk religion and canonical religion, and these with the Chola
state. This is considered in chapter VII.
Seen as micro regions of overlapping distributions of marriage
and kinship networks, social coalitions beyond kinsmen, agrarian
relations, political and religious affiliations, the nadus of the South
Indian macro region varied greatly. In most parts of the Kaveri
and Palar basins — Cholamandalam and Tondaimandalam —
nadus were complex societies consisting of relatively large popula¬
tions, considerable wealth, and diverse social groupings living in
numerous, pluralistic settlements. In more remote upland portions
of the macro region or in the less-favoured ecological settings of
118 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

parts of the Tamil plain, a simpler model may be considered, such

as that presented by the anthropologist F.G. Bailey.
In his work on a part of the modern peasantry of Orissa, Bailey
has used the concept of ‘clan' to analyse relations between peasant
lineages and the territory they jointly occupy even though there
is no actual descent group which can be called a ‘clan’ in the classical
sense of that term. This putative ‘clan’ structure appears as a
means for associating a diverse set of lineage groups with a parti¬
cular portion of land. It provides an important element in Bailey’s
idea of the ‘bloc’, an integrated structure of discrete locality social
groups with which other, similar, units have historically been ag¬
gregated to form larger units, even states.72 Bailey’s arguments on
the character and functions of the ‘clan’ have been attacked on
theoretical grounds.73 On empirical grounds, it appears doubtful
that such ‘clan’ units as he has found in highland Orissa, to which
could be added such groups as the peasantry of Kongu or the
Kallars of Madurai and Ramnad, ever constituted more than a
minor variant of peasant organization within the Indian cultural
sphere. The maintenance of such sequestered social units has
been rare and probably restricted to relatively isolated territories.
cul-de-sacs, or shatter-zones.74 In perennial peasant territories,
involving the greatest numbers of people, the problem for the
peasantry was not the maintenance of some putative or real kinship
organization, but the formation of viable coalitions based upon
the mutual interests of various kinship and occupational groupings
and their dependents. It would appear that the ‘clan’ model is
appropriate for some cases, but by no means of most.
The complex agrarian operations of most nadu micro regions
are most clearly illustrated with respect to the redistribution
of locality income in the form of eleemosynary grants. Ironically,
this is the same evidence upon which those who argue the primacy
of the village depend. From Pallava times, changes in the status
of villages and portions of villages, in which dominant cultivating

72 Political and Social Change in Orissa. Also, ‘Closed Stratification in India',

Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, v. 4, no. 1 (1963), pp. 107-24.
73 See, Louis Dumont, ‘A Note on Locality in Relation to Descent’, Contribu¬
tions to Indian Sociology, v. 7 (March 1964), pp. 71-6.
74 Bailey, ‘Closed Stratification', seems quite aware of this and suggested in his
postscript, pp. 122 and 124, that changes in scale of the territorial system would
effect caste and caste systems.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 119

groups relinquished a portion of the wealth they controlled to

Brahman or Jaina religieuse, involved transfer arrangements
executed through the dominant locality peasantry acting cor¬
porately as the nadu assembly. Formal actions solemnizing these
changes involved a purported royal order {tirumugam) or com¬
munication (kondlai) presented to the nattar. An example of
this procedure is contained in one of the earliest Tamil inscriptions,
of the middle sixth century, from Pallankoyil, Tirutturaipundi
taluk, Tanjavur:
Let the assembly of the nadu fi.e., the nattar) of the Perunagara-nadu,
a sub-division of Venkunra-k-kottam observe. We have granted the
village of Amanserkkai in your nadu as padichchandam to the teacher
(kuravar) Vajra-Nandi of Paruttikkunril. (Accordingly) you also walk
(around) the hamlet [paddgai], plant [boundary] stones and milk-bush
(kadi) and issue the order for proclamation to the assembly of the nadu
(nattar). And the members of the assembly of the nadu (nattar) having
seen the royal order, made obeisance and placed it on their heads, walked
(around the boundaries of) the paddgai, planted stones and milk-bush
and issued the order for proclamation (araiyolai) according to which the
boundaries are. . . ,75

There are other instances of this in Pallava inscriptions.76 Chola

inscriptions carry out the same arrangements with some variations,
perhaps reflecting the development, by that time, of various cor¬
porate entities who shared in the changes in distribution ol locality
resources. In the famous Larger Leiden Plates of Rajaraja I,77
the village of Anaimangalam was granted to support the Buddhist
shrine (palli) being built at Nagapattinam by the Malaysian ruler
Chulamanivarman of Kadaram.78 Those addressed in the Tamil
portion of the plates included: the nattar of Pattana-kurram, the

75 T.N. Subramaniam, ‘Pallava Jain Copper-Plate’, Transactions of the Archaeo¬

logical Society of South India, p. 82, hereafter: T.A.S.S.I., 1958-59; reported in
A.R.E. 1958-59 as C.P. no. 10 and commented upon in the Report, p. 3; also see,
Zvelebil, Tamil in 550 A.D., pp. 13-14.
76 For example, see ‘Kasakkudi Plates of Nandivarman II’, dated c. a.d. 753,
S.I.I., v. 2, no. 73, pp. 342-61.
77 E.I v. 22, no. 34, pp. 213-66, dated a.d. 1005 and edited by K.V. Subrahmanya
Aiyer.
78 A recent record from Nagapattinam is of interest in this connection, A.R.E.
1956-7, no. 166, dated in the reign of Rajendra I, a.d. 1019, and refers to what
appears to be a reciprocal gift by a Sri Vijaya ruler of Chinese Gold (ana kanagam)
to support a temple in Nagapattinam.
120 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

spokesmen (kilavar)79 for brahmadeyas, those in charge of assemb¬

lies (urgalildr)80 of Hindu temple villages (devaddna), Jaina or
Buddhist shrine (pallichchanda) villages, those settlements exempt
from all dues (kanimunuttu),81 villages whose income may have
supported public works or vedic sacrifices,82 and trade centres
(nagara). The nattar appear, from this record, to have been the
primary recipients of the order,83 and they appear also to have been
responsible for incising the record as suggested by the following
lines:
A royal order (tiramugam) embodying the above [specific income from
Anaimarigalam which were henceforth to be paid to the shrine] and with
the words, ‘it behoves you [the nattar] to be with those persons [named
as witnesses from many parts of the Coromandel plain] to point out the
boundaries, to go around the hamlet accompanied by a female elephant,
to set up [boundary] stones and milk-bush [markers], and to draw up
and give the deed of the gift’ . . . [This order] having been sent to us,
the ndttom, ... we the ndttorn respectfully received and carried on our
heads and accompanying the female elephant, walked round the hamlet,
set up stones and milk-bush, drew up and gave the deed of gift.84

74 The word 'kilavar' is translated in slightly different ways by those who have
commented on its usage. K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer in his edition of the record.
E.l. v. 22, p. 258, renders it as ‘headman’; T.N. Subramaniam (in the Pallankoyil
epigraph, p. 88, discussed above) translates it as ‘owner’; the Tamil Lexicon (p. 936)
gives another meaning in addition, ‘aged man’, or elder, which, with ‘spokesman’,
seems to come closer to the meaning in the context.
80 Under urgalildr, the collectivity or ‘body of the ur\ Subrahmanya Aiyer appears
to put all village assemblies, including nagaras, except Brahman villages with sabhas,
E.l. v. 22. p 231.
81 The epigraphist, K.G. Krishnan. in a personal communication, has suggested
the kanimurruttu grant was not for Brahmans, as usually understood, but for non-
Brahman teachers.
82 Vet(aperu is sometimes read as vettiperu by Subrahmanya Aiyer (pp. 231 and
247, line 107) or bv H. Krishnasastri, in his reading of the Tiruvalangadu Plates,
where the meaning is as a service tenure of some sort, perhaps like that of sluice-
keeper as is suggested by Subrahmanya Aiyer in his reading oi the Larger Leiden
Plates. However, T.N. Subramaniam reads the term as 'vet(a(\)peru signifying
‘the performance of (Vedic) sacrifices; Chola Jaina Copper Plate Grant', T.A.S.S.I..
1958-9, pp. 91-2.
83 The Tamil portion of the Tiruvalangadu Plates of Rajendra 1 is addressed to
the nattar and other locality groups in melmalai palaivanur-nadu and directs that
the village of Palaiyanur, for which place the locality was named and which was a
Brahman village (brahmadeya). was now to become a village subject to regular
dues from cultivators (ve/lan-vagai) and these were to be granted to the temple of
Tiruvalangadu as devaddna. The opening Tamil portion follows the form cited
in the ‘Larger Leiden Plates’ above, S.I.L. v. 3, p. 427.
84 E.l.. v. 22, p. 259, line 49ff.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 121

After a detailed description of the lands, the income from which

comprised the gift, the signatures of twenty-seven persons of the
nadu, representing twenty-six major settlements of the locality,
are appended.85 Ten of the twenty-six people of the locality were
members of Brahman village assemblies; the balance of the signa¬
tories represented mixed Brahman and non-Brahman assemblies
(urdr).
An analysis of these nadu signatories is of some interest.86
Lines 210 to 300 of the Larger Leiden Plates provide the names,
titles, and villages of each. Of the twenty-seven signatories, the
titles of six was madhyastan and ten were called madhyastan-
karanattan. The first term means, ‘neutral person’ and sometimes,
‘headman’87 while karanattan means ‘accountant’; the latter is
given as the title of two of the nadu signatories. Five others were
entitled, karanattan-vetkovan, the latter term meaning, ‘potter’.88
Of the balance, one of the signatories is identified as a vaikhanasa
or Brahman who followed the ancient and exclusive vaishnavagama
of that name and, interestingly, represented not a brahman village
assembly, sabha, but an ur; as to the rest, the record provided no
other information than the village which they represented. The
titles, madhyastan and karanattan suggest persons whose functions
are nadu-wide, not simply powerful men of individual villages.
Karanattan especially, points to the fact that nadu management
was in the hands of members of the locality population, and it
anticipates the importance of the office of the ‘karnam’ in the
eighteenth century when the British first encountered it.89 Then,
and earlier, the office oflocality accountant was filled by important
local people. ‘Madhyastas’, people of the middle, suggest the
position of the dominant landed groups who sought to remain
aloof from divisions within the locality. They were not impartial

8? Ibid., List ‘B\ pp. 237-8.

8(5 Ibid., plates 11-15, pp 263-6.
87 Under this term, Subramaniam, S.I.T.I. Glossary, xxxii, gives ‘headman’;
Subrahmanya Aiyer, throughout, uses the term ‘arbitrator’, cf. lines 21 Off; for
karanattan, see Subramaniam, S.I.T.I. Glossary, p. xxv, ‘accountant’.
88 Subramaniam, S.I.T.I. Glossary, p. xci; Tamil Lexicon, p. 3821.
89 For example, the Tanjavur karnam continued to represent local interests long
after the appointment of government accountants in 1807; the former were dis¬
tinguished by the title kudi karnam in contrast to the government, or sarkdr karnam
according to F.R. Hemingway, Tanjore (Madras District Gazetteers); Govern¬
ment Press, Madras, 1915, p. 193.
122 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

mediators, but arbitrators whose decisions involving locality pro¬

blems was based upon their powerful positions within local society.
Again, one must look to the eighteenth century record for the
right- and left-hand divisions and the position of the dominant
peasantry which transcended both.90
This prominence given to the locally dominant peasantry is
further supported by those parts of the Larger Leiden Plates
which record signatures. The first signature on the list w'as a
member of the dominant peasant group in the village of Anaiman-
galam:
When the ncittar were accompanying the [female] elephant and circumam¬
bulating the hamlet of Anaimangaiam, I Kon Puttan, a Vellala, residing
at this Anaimangaiam, mounted the elephant, was present with them
[the other witnesses in the procession], and showed the boundaries clearly,
and this is my signature.91

Other inscriptions also refer to the circumambulation of a newly

constituted settlement or portion of agricultural land granted to
persons or to a temple, and in these cases too there are numerous
local witnesses. In the Tiruvalangadu Plates of Rajendra Chola
I, there is detailed reference to the circumambulation procedure
and, again, a member of the dominant cultivating group of the
locality, ‘one born of the fourth caste (chaturthanvayaY, led the
procession and concluded the other activities involved in demar¬
cating the boundaries of the village.92
Dikshit has provided yet other examples of corporate nadu
action primarily from southern Karnataka during the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. In Kadur district, a locality
assembly (nadu) of the Devalige ‘70’ territory, consisting of seventy
gaundas, met in a.d. 1074 to reward the public work of an indi¬
vidual; at Hemmanahalli, in Mysore district, an assembly formed
of gaundas or prabhugdvundas of a number of villages met with
a warrior chief (dandanayaka) in a.d. 1175; in another Mysore
district village, Tondanur, in a.d. 1158, prabhugdvundas and the
representatives of major peasant households, okkalu, of thirty
villages met to arrange support for the Vishnu deity of the place
(vittirunda perumdda).93

90 Cited in C.S. Srinivasachari, ‘Origin of the Right and Left Hand Castes’, p. 85.
91 E.L. v. 22, lines 207-10, p. 262.
92 S.I.I., v. 3, verse 132, p. 426. Also see, C.P. no. 10 and no. 14. 1958-9 and
A.R.E., 1958-9, pp. 4-5.
93 Dikshit, op. cit., pp. 44-5
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 123

It is necessary to underscore the central role taken by the do¬

minant peasantry in reallocations of locality wealth with which
records like the Leiden Plates of Rajaraja I deal. Scholars have
long recognized the special functions of the nattar. We have
K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer asserting that the prestigious representa¬
tives of brahmadeya villages, devadana villages, trade centres
(nagara) as well as other eleemosynary beneficiaries were under
the administrative control of the nattar.94 Additional new light
has been provided in the recent, excellent work of Subbarayalu.
He has clarified the connection between such well-recognized
bodies as the sabhas of brahmadeyas, representatives of other
religious institutions, the well-recognized mercantile interest of
nagarattar of a locality and the very dimly perceived vellan-vagai
villagers.
Of 1,300 villages noted by Subbarayalu in Cholamandalam,
about 250 were brahmadeyas, about 50 were devadana villages,
part of whose income was designated for particular temples and
over which temple authorities had some administrative control,
and 26 were nagaras, trade settlements and subject to the special
influence of merchant assemblies. Villages identified as consti¬
tuting kanimurruttu, pallichandan (supporting Jaina savants or
shrines), and vettaperu grants are few. This leaves the vast number
of villages in the residual category of vellan-vagai, or peasant
share villages, which most scholars recognize as the most numerous
of all types of villages.95
Subbarayalu notes that among the various representative groups,
one, the most numerous category, peasant villagers (uraa), is
missing. In a competent review of a series of inscriptions in which
the nattar figure prominently, Subbarayalu concludes that the
nattar can only be identified as the representatives of this largest
category of village units of a locality—those called vel.lan-vagai
villages. He goes on to argue as follows:96
If the Nadu were a VeUanvagai group, the question may be raised why
they are confined to only their respective Nadu units, when similar groups

94 E.I., v. 22, p. 231.

95 A. Appadorai, Economic Conditions in Southern India (A.D. 1000-1500), Uni¬
versity of Madras, Madras, 1936, v. 1, p. 152 and implied by Nilakanta Sastri,
The Colas, where he speaks of ‘ryotwari' tenure (p. 531) and ‘peasant proprietor¬
ship’ (p. 570).
96 Subbarayalu, op. cit., p. 36. His usage of ‘nadu’ and ‘nddu’ is meant to dis¬
tinguish between the territory and the assembly.
124 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

existed in the neighbouring units. It is really a fact that the Nadus [i.e.,
nadu assemblies] functioned only within the limits of their Nadus [terri¬
tories] at least till the end of the eleventh century a.d. The answer to the
question is closely related to the basis of the Nadu region already con¬
sidered. It was suggested that the Nadus were agricultural regions
formed of groupings of agricultural settlements. Since the Nadus covered
only small areas, it is possible that each group of agricultural settlements
consisted mostly of kinsfolk. That is, each Nadu was basically a cohesive
group of agricultural people tied together by marriage and blood relation¬
ships, the so-called chief villages forming the core of each group at the
beginning. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that only on this hypothesis
can a satisfactory explanation be given for the . . . many caste and com¬
munal sub-divisions of today which are mostly territorial in origin.
Thus, then, because of the cohesive character of the segment of the society
which each Nadu contained, the Nadu [assembly] functioned only within
the limits of the respective territorial units [. . . . and] the Nattar were
the Velldnvagai group.

This view is very close to that of another who has demonstrated

a mastery of Chola inscriptional evidence as well as a very acute
historical sense, T.N. Subramaniam. He has emphasized the pro¬
minence of the nattar in Pallava as well as Chola times, noting that:
. . . devandana, padichanda, and brahmadeya villages were, at the time
of their being granted . . . separated from the jurisdiction of. . . the
nadu in which they were situated and constituted as autonomous villages.97

Peasant leadership in a locality, even if deeply rooted in networks

of kinsmen and their dependents, could be threatened militarily.
Successful nattar control demanded the capability of defence
against both non-peasant marauders as well as other peasant folk.
The exigencies of defence and the opportunities open to the more
powerful for aggression against weaker neighbours provide one of
the most important explanations of the valangai velaikkdra,
soldiers of the right-hand division, who were the best-organized
military organization of the Coromandel peasantry during the
Chola period. The conception of the valangai velaikkdra as a
standing, royal army is rejected here in favour of a conception of
these essentially local armed units constituting a potential force
which could be mobilized as required. Themselves the dominant
peasantry in contiguous localities who periodically banded together

97 T.A.S.S.I., 1958-9, p. 88. He goes on to say that an analogous situation exists

in modern Indian towns with panchayat unions within, but administratively separate
from, the modern revenue district administration.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 125

for purposes ot mutual defence and occasional predatory raids

under the leadership of an important overlord, the valangai leaders
appear occasionally to have sought new agrarian territories.
Tracts which were already under the plough but poorly defended,
provided the most attractive targets.
The nattar of Tondaimandalam looked to the settled lands to
the north-west for such expansion, and they were to remain the
dominant peasantry there for centuries. The northern portion of
the Tamil plain, or Tondaimandalam, was called Jayangondachoja-
mandalam from the late tenth century to the twelfth. According
to a Tamil inscription, found in Mulbagal taluk, Kolar district
of modern Karnataka, the conquering peasantry of Jayangonda-
cholamandalam, “a 48,000 country', recorded a revenue arrange¬
ment in a.d. 1072.98 This arrangement apparently sought to
maintain revenue practices extant in Tondaimandalam in this
portion of Karnataka which had been conquered during the early
years of Rajaraja I" and perhaps reconquered during the time
of Rajendra Chola I. Following an introductory section referring
to the conquest during Rajendra's time, the inscription reads:
We of the assembly of the eighteen countries [or nadus] :10U [xr7 rajendra-
chd.la-padinen-pumi-periya-vishaya], the great army of the right-hand
armed with great weapons \perumbadi-valahgai-mahdsenai] . . . have
caused an order [sasanam] to be engraved on stone to the effect that there
was no tax on cows and she-buffaloes since occupation of Nigarili-
chola-mandalam seventy-eight nadus [Nulambapadi or central Karnataka]
by the sacred family of the Cholas as well as in Jayangondachoja-manda-
lam 48,000 country, in both of which . . . the cultivators of the whole
country came and settled. Therefore, the tax upon cows and she-buffaloes,
ordered by [the officer] Adigarigal-Chola Muvendavelar should not be
paid. For dry lands with dry crops, there should be paid a melvaram
of one in five. For lands under tanks, there shall be paid a melvaram
of one in three. For every 1500 kuli of land in which kummari [crop by
shifting cultivation] is raised by the forest tribes [vedar], one cloth \pudavai]
shall be received. Additional dues such as kummarakkachchanam [temple
dues], washermen’s fees, dues on good buffaloes and good cows, and the
like shall be two kdsu per head . . . [damaged portion], for petty dues,
the asuvimak-kal [Ajivakas] shall pay one kdsu per head, one-quarter

98 The text and translation are published in E.C., v. 10, no. 49a, pp. 86-7; other
partial translations, Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, 538-9; K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer,
Historical sketches . . ., v. 1, pp. 351-2; Dikshit, op. cit., p. 49.
99 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 174.
100 Dikshit, op. cit., also notices this usage in Kannada inscriptions: hadinentu-
vishaya or hadinentu-nadu (pp. 34 and 193).
126 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

kdsu shall be received from each house of teachers [uvatti\, of the men in
charge of the temple and talarar [watchmen or temple (tali) committee].
The houses set apart for the minor tolls [siru-surigam] are exempt. The
lands shall be measured by rods 18 san in length, a san being equal to . . .
[damaged] Thus, [we of] the eighteen countries and the great army
of the valahgai possessing large weapons had this document engraved
on stone.

South-central and south-eastern Mysore, Gangavadi ‘96,000’

during the twelfth century, included the territory between the
Kolar and Hassan districts of modern Karnataka and the northern
portion of modern Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.101 That this
territory was under the domination of Tamils is clear from the
large number of Tamil inscriptions there.102 Reference to nigarili-
chola-mandalam confirms the fact that this part of Karnataka
was under the control of warriors associated with the Cholas;
it was also called Nulambavadi and extended north beyond the
Tungabhadra river in what is now Bellary and Anantapur districts
of Andhra Pradesh and a portion of Chitaldrug district,
Karnataka.103
The dominant peasants who referred to themselves as ‘we of
the Sn-Rajendra-chola-mandalam-padinen-pumi-vishaya', or the
assembly of the eighteen nadus of Sn-Rajendra-chola-mandalam,
were possibly a part of the army of Rajendra I which conquered the
area in a.d. 1015, as stated in the introduction of the inscription,
or were migrants from the Coromandel plain after that conquest.
From inscriptions of the time of Kulottunga I, a.d. 1080, and
Rajaraja II, a.d. 1160, which refer to gahga-nadu in Nigarili-chola-
mandalam, it appears that a deep thrust of the Chola overlordship
into Karnataka had brought eastern parts of that country into a

101 A detailed geographical description is contained in B.R. Gopal, The Later

Western Chalukyas’. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Mysore, 1961,
App. IV.
102 See Mysore Castes and Tribes, v. 1, p. 114, fig. 8, for a map showing the distri¬
bution of Tamil inscriptions in the districts of Mysore, Bangalore, and Kolar with
a scattering in Tumkur as well. Of such records in Mysore, there are over 100 along
this northern part of the Kaveri, and those of Bangalore and Kolar cluster heavily
in the fertile basins of the Ponnaiyar and Palar with a secondary distribution along
the Penner.
103 This is defined in Gopal, op. cit., with the designation, ‘a 32,000 country’;
an inscription ot a.d. 1219 (303/1913) equates Nigarili-chola-mandalam with Nulum-
bapadi, see Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 2, pp. 344 and 723-4.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 127

state of prospective settlement by Coromandel peasant settlers.104

The nucleus of that settlement may have been military colonists
similar to those which, during the reign of Kulottunga I, were
established in other outlying areas of the Chola overlordship.
Colonies called nilaippadai were found on the principal lines of
communication in Pandya country and in Travancore;105 these
colonies of warrior-peasants were reported to have been established
in the northern hill tracts around Kalahasti (modern Chittoor
district, Andhra Pradesh) and may have existed in still other parts
of the macro region where Chola conquests occurred.106 The
references to Nulambavadi and its association with peasant settlers
from Tondaimandalam also points to the vast territory which
had come to be included under the influence of cultivating groups
from the Coromandel plain by the eleventh century. Though this
great territory was not continuous, but broken by ranges of hills
and, at that time, dense forests, those tracts capable of settled
peasant agriculture based upon tank and riverine irrigation ap¬
peared to be in close contact with each other.
Another interesting aspect of the inscription discussed above,
in addition to the references to the valangai which is commented
upon further below (ch. V), is the designation of Tondairnanda-
lam as a ‘48,000 country’. This occurs in other inscriptions of the
period, and it is among the few instances in which a territory is
given a numerical designation in Tamil inscriptions.107 As noted
above, such designations are common in Kannada inscriptions
or Sanskrit inscriptions from medieval Karnataka; they also occur
in inscriptions from Andhra.108 This Mulbagal record of the time

104 676/1905 and 18/1900; Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 2, pp. 564 and 653.
105 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 313; Tamil Lexicon, p. 2281, glosses the word
as ‘standing army stationed in the capital of a country’.
106 v. Venkatasubba Ayyer, ‘Kalahasti and its Inscriptions’, QJMS, v. 16 (1925-

6), p. 22.
107 Other records of the 48,000 ( ndrpat ten- nayiravar ) are: 238/1959-60, at Palghat.
10th C., 273/1950-51 and A.R.E., 1950-1, p. 3 at Tanjavur and E.I., v. 27, no: 18,
p. 106, 12th Century, South Arcot. Other numbered units include Miladu 2000
in Tirukkoyilur Taluk, South Arcot, A.R.E.. 1921-22, p. 8.
108 For Karnataka: Gopal, op. cit., and A.P. Karmarkar, Cultural History of

Karnataka (Ancient & Medieval), Karnataka Vidyavaidaka Sangha, Dharwar

1947, pp. 64-5. For Andhra Pradesh: Pala-Nadu in Nellore is called a ‘21,000
country’ in 22/1956-57; the text of this inscription was earlier published in A. Butter-
worth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper Plates
and Stores in the Nellore District (3 Vols.), Government Press, Madras, 1905, Ongole
128 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of Kulottunga I being found in what is now Karnataka, but which

then contained a basic population of Telugu speakers over whom
Tamil peasant-warriors had extended their control,100 may account
for the rare usage in a Tamil inscription. Further, this usage as
encountered in a Tamil inscription, apart from what it reveals
about nadus, may offer a clue to the still vexing problem of the
numerical designations in other parts of medieval Karnataka as
well as Andhra.
Numerical designations for territories in Karnataka appear to
date from the seventh century and continue to be used until the
early Vijayanagara period. The epigraphist, J.F. Fleet, was among
the first to speculate about the meaning of numerical suffixes
for territorial units, numbers ranging from 750,000 (seven and
one half lakhs) for Rattavadi, comprising most of northern Kar¬
nataka, to a locality as small as Vavulatalla "twelve’.110 He argued
that smaller numbers — tens and hundreds — may have referred
to actual settlements within a particular territory whereas larger
numbers were conventional or ‘traditional’. Lewis Rice, the early
Karnataka epigraphist, drew Fleet’s criticism for his quite realistic
disbelief about such very large numbers of villages assumed in
even some of the smaller numerical suffixes. As to the larger
numbers, Rice suggested that ‘thousands’ referred to nads\ thus,
Gangavadi ‘96,000’ would refer to a large tract comprised of
96 nadus or localities and Banavasi ‘12,000’ to a territory of twelve
divisions.111 More recent students of medieval Karnataka have
striven to show that the smaller numerical designations refer to
villages and have adduced some supporting evidence. However,

Taluk, no. 139, dated a.d. 1218, in, pp. 1129-30 showing that the segment referring
to the numbers for the territory were not clear. However, there is no ambiguity
in the recent epigraphical report; a Kannada inscription at Warangal of the Chaluk-
yas of Kalyana, dated a.d. 1118 refers to the place as Anmakonda-7,000. Other
references to numbeied territories in medieval Andhra may be found in; Andhra
Pradesh Government Archaeological Series, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra
Pradesh, eds. P. Sreenivasachar and P.B. Desai, no. 3. Government of Andhra
Pradesh, Hyderabad, 1961, no. 73, p. 29; no. 88, p. 34; no. 94, p. 35.
109 Avani, where this Kulottunga inscription was found, is said to be in Andhra-
mandala in an inscription of the 4th C. a.d.: B. Lewis Rice, ‘Mudyanur Plates of
Saka 261 of the Bana King Malladeva-Nandivarman'. I.A., v. 15 (June, 1886),
p. 172. It was then and later a well-known sacred site associated with Rama.
110 ‘Ancient Territorial Divisions of India’, JRAS (1912). pp. 707-10.
111 Discussed in Dikshit, op. cit., pp. 26-7. In his opinion, this explanation was
plausible.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 129

they also propose that the idea of ‘village’ may have been different
from the modem one, though different in what respects is
unclear.112
Another possible explanation of the smaller numerical suffixes
attached to place-names in medieval Karnataka and Andhra is
that they refer to the peasant household units, okkalu, of those
who originally conquered or colonized a locality. These conquerors
or colonizers might then have continued to refer to themselves,
as a corporate unit, by some conventional number based upon
the historical colonization event. This suggestion would accord
with a parenthetical statement of Dikshit who sought to explain
village assemblies (e.g., ‘Seventy of Kaginele’) as the number of
families which originally established the village and corporately
preserved their ascendant rights by the use of a numerical title
even after many more households had come into existence.113
Here, groups of peasant households, okkalu, are given a primacy
which conforms with the importance of the nadu to which Dikshit
gives full recognition. Numerical designations in their lower
ranges would thus be understood as referring to corporate groups
of peasant households within localities, or nadus,. The larger
numbers, like Gangavadi ‘96,000’ would refer, as Rice long ago
suggested, to conventional ways of expressing the clustering of
such localities.
The term ‘48,000’ is important in the legends of Tondaimanda-
lam. Numerous local traditions refer to the warrior Adonai
(or Ananda) Cakravartin who conquered Tondaimanddam from
its pastoral occupants, the Kurumbars, and brought 48,000
‘selected and good’ families of Vellalas to settle the central and
northern portions of the Tamil plain.114 The inscriptional reference

112 Dikshit, op. cit., p. 28; S. Ritti, The Belavola Desa’, Jagadguru Tontadarya
College Miscellany, v. 4, pp. 2-3; B.R. Gopal, ‘The Later Western Chalukyas (From
the Earliest Times to 1076 a.d.\ unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, Mysore University,
1961, especially App. IV, pp. 431-40 and a personal communication from Gopal,
19 Feb. 1968.
112 Dikshit, op. cit., p. 75.
114 Sec B. Ramaswami Naidu, ‘Remarks on the Revenue System and Landed
Tenures of the Provinces under the Presidency of Fort St. George’, JRAS [Com¬
municated by John Hodgson] (1834), pp. 295ff; a similar version from the Mackenzie
Collection of the late eighteenth century is found in Castes and Tribes of Southern
India, v. 7, pp. 382-5. Variants of this legend, involving the migration of Vellalas
from Tondaimandalam to Pandya country may be found in M. Arokiaswami.
130 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to jayahgoncla-chola-mandalam 48,000 bhumi (Tamil: pumi) is

thus significant in relationship to the legendary migration of
Vellala families who divided the Tondaimandalam territory
(called jayahgonda-chdlamandalam during the Chola period) into
48,000 sections.115 Though details of this Tondaimandalam legend
may be a late invention to justify Vellala local authority as the
nattar, or leading people, of Tondaimandalam, it is obviously
based upon earlier usage. It was almost certainly Vellalas, nattar
of Tondaimandalam, who controlled the area called Rajendra-
chola ‘eighteen countries’ and who comprised the valangai army
to which the a.d. 1072 inscription makes reference. This asser¬
tion is further supported by evidence from the Karmandala-
Satakam416 From several verses of the Satakam, we learn
that the Karalar people were related to the ‘Ganga people.117
Thus, Gangavadi ‘96,000’, as the tract including rajendra-
chola-padinen-vishaya was usually called during the medieval
period, appears to be the same as karmandala, ‘96 nadus’ of the
Satakam. The commentator on the Karmandala-Satakam ex¬
plained that the references in verse seven to thirty-two nadus and
sixty-four nadus meant that there were 32,000 and 64,000 Karalar
families in these places, or 96,000 for the entire territory.
From extant inscriptions of Tamil country and Karnataka, the
evidence is clear that the nattar represented the dominant peasant
group or groups of the locality. In numerous records, the nattar
are differentiated from other important local groups having interests
in the land and in all cases the nattar have a primacy over these
other groups as the recipients of the purportedly royal order and
The Early History of the Vellar Basin, Amudha Nilayan Press, Madras, 1954, p. 36,
and involving the migration of Vellalas from Tulu country (North Kanara) to
Tondaimandalam in D.B. Ramachandra Mudaliar, 'Mudaliar’, QJMS, v. 10
(1919-20), pp. 289ff. Suresh, H.C.G.E.S., p. 236, notes that persons, including three
Brahmans use this numerical designation (narpattemayira) in their names but
fads to recognize this as a reference to their origin, i.e. Tondaimandalam.
115 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 'bhumi', p. 763. The division
of Tondaimandalam into kd((am and nadu is attributed to Adonai Cakravartin;
see Ramaswami Naidu, op. cit., pp. 295-6.
116 The Satakam was written by one Araikilar of Avinasi and the commentary
was prepared by P.A. Muthuthandavaroya Pillay, Madras, 1930, verses 1-7.
117 Nilakanta Sastri, The Cokts, p. 507, where he cites in evidence: the Tiruvalan-
gadu Plates, S.I.I., v. 3, the Anbil Plates in E.I., v. 15, S.I.I., v. 3, no. 142, and the
‘Larger Leiden Plates’ of E.I.. v. 22.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 131

were it executors. In what appears to have been a well-established

procedure, the nattar classified and registered lands within the
locality and took prime responsibility for effecting changes in the
distribution of income from cultivated land.118 Only peasant
groups of a locality who actually controlled the cultivable land
could have carried out the functions described in these numerous
records. They alone possessed the valuable land whose income
could constitute a gift to the pious and the learned; they alone
possessed the means for maintaining the full productivity of these
lands dependent as most were upon irrigation works which served
the entire locality; and they alone through their control over
dependent labourers — both skilled artisans and unskilled field
hands who actually carried out field operations — could have
assured that once granted, the specified income from villages and
lands granted would sustain a flow of income ‘in perpetuity’.
Through these references to the nattar, we perceive a corporate
entity consisting of those prestigious, satvik peasant families linked
together by their common dominion over the land and reinforced
by marriage alliances, close social relations, shared religious and
ritual affiliations, and common allegiance to locality chiefs who,
in this period, were of the nattar. These locality social systems of
peasant folk were maintained by Vellalas throughout the Tamil
region and by the Vokkaligas and Kapus in Karnataka and Andhra
at this time. Locality interests and dominance would invariably,
in the South Indian context, come to reflect themselves as a multipli¬
city of territorially specific subdivisions among the nattar and would
be imitated by those lower status groups linked to those enjoying
locality dominance.
In the light of the obvious importance of the nattar, it is interesting
to speculate about the elaborate solemnizing processes described
in many of the copperplate inscriptions. Ostensibly these docu¬
ments recorded a gift and sought to assure its longevity just as
inscribing its provisions upon a temple wall did. The copperplate
inscriptions record gifts to individual priests or teachers — Hindu,
Buddhist, or Jaina — or to groups of such persons as recipients;
attention is focused upon the receiver or receivers and that which
is received, and both are very elaborately described. The copper¬
plates, thus, become instruments of new rights created in land
or some other value. Most stone inscriptions differ in that they
118 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 467 and 504-5.
132 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

record the beneficence of a donor or donors to the god or priests

of the temple, and the major focus is upon the giver.
The lengthy Sanskrit prasastis of copperplate inscriptions would
seem to belie this distinction between copper and stone epigraphs.
In most of the bilingual — Sanskrit and Tamil — copperplates,
as in most stone inscriptions of the Chola period, the reigning
overlord and, often, subordinate chiefs of the neighbourhood are
praised. Special praise is lavished upon the petitioner (vijhapti)
for the grant.119
The two languages employed in the Chola copperplate inscrip¬
tions emphasize two purposes served by these records. The opera¬
tive portions of these inscriptions and others are in Tamil; they
are exact and detailed in describing the lands from which a portion
of income is being transferred and in identifying the recipients
of these grants. Sanskrit portions name the Chola overlord and
provide his genealogical and warrior bona tides. The Tamil portions
describe in detail the grant and the grantee, naming the most
important social groups in the locality where the grant is made and
providing for their solemn association with and assent in the grant
While the Sanskrit portions of the plates constitute the most im¬
portant and comprehensive public records of the day, the Tamil
portions provide a view of the key groups of the locality in action,
and this, plus the solemn procession, suggest that the grant was a
way of conferring honour upon such groups.
There is some evidence to suggest that the Sanskrit plates were
executed separately from the Tamil plates and at different times.
Rajaraja I introduced the technique of a standard prasasti which
was affixed to many of the inscriptions of his time, a practice
followed by his descendents.120 The Sanskrit plates of the Tiru-
valangadu Plates of Rajendra I were clearly added a decade after

119 See the ‘Larger Leiden’ Plates, Sanskrit and Tamil, 21 plates, 443 lines of
writing, E.I., v. 22, no. 34, the Tiruvalangadu Plates, both languages, 31 plates,
816 lines, SI.I., v. 3, no. 205; the Karandai Plates, both languages, 55 plates, 2,500
lines of writing but, as yet, not properly edited, see N. Lakshminarayan Rao, 'Some
New Facts About Chola History’, Journal of Oriental Research, v. 19 (1950), pp
209 ff.
120 Nilakanta Sastri, Sources of Indian History, p. 69. He discusses some of
the differences between copperplate and stone inscriptions, noting that the latter
began to increase after the sixth century, ‘but copper plate records continue to be
the mainstay of the historian for some centuries more, and at no time can they be
left out of the reckoning (ibid , p 61)
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 133

the donative Tamil plates,121 and, in one recently discovered set

ot plates ol the tenth century, only the Tamil language portion,
consisting of six plates, inscribed on both sides, remains. In this
latter case, the Sanskrit plates were never added to the Tamil ones
which number from ‘13’, indicating that this addition was in¬
tended.122 This is perhaps the clearest evidence yet discovered
relating to the differences between the two sections of copperplate
inscriptions.
When, during later times, temples became the principal re¬
positories of public records, the relatively balanced and realistic
association of peasant groups with the operation of locality life
reflected in the Chola period became obscure. The prominence
of stone inscriptions from temples accurately reflect an important
shift in institutional power, but, owing to their almost exclusive
concern with the affairs of the brahmanical temple, they inaccurate¬
ly reflect other aspects of social and economic life at a later time.
More than 550 nadus are mentioned in the inscriptions of the
Chola period until about a.d. 1300. These cannot of course be
considered as equivalent units, or segments, anymore than the 333
taluks of the macro region during the twentieth century can be so
regarded.123 There were obvious and great variations among these
basic units of agrarian organization: in size, population, quality
of their resource base, isolation, and antiquity. To say a great
deal more about these hundreds of nadus, or as they might otherwise
be called ‘nuclear localities’ or ‘segments’ is to venture well beyond
the evidence of the Chola period, but such an excursion, so long
as it is understood as tentative, may be useful.
During almost the entire time of the great Cholas — from
around a.d. 1000 to 1200 — the 550 nadus of the macro region were
primary loci of agrarian society. While each of these constituted
an almost self-sufficient ethno-agrarian micro region and while

>21 S.I.I., v. 3, p. 384.

>22 A.R.E.. 1961-2, C.P. no. 29, pp. 4-5; also published by T.N. Subramaniam,
T.A.S.S.I., 1958-9, pp. 84-110.
>23 Based on Subbarayalu, op. cit., App , pp. 98-109. Taluk data for the twentieth
century is as follows: Mysore districts in the divisions of Bangalore (48) and Mysore
(51) are 99 and Madras territory within the macro region (excluding Malabar and
a few other places) had 234 taluks according to Government of Mysore, Depart¬
ment of Statistics, Mysore State in Maps (1958), p. 3 and Government of Madras,
Alphabetical List of Villages in the Taluks and Districts of the Madras Presidency,
Madras, 1933, pp. iii-v.
134 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

most pre-dated the establishment of the imperial Chola state,

all were linked together as parts of a great kingdom. What linked
them were their common recognition of the Chola kings; the
imitation by local chiefs of some of the royal styles of these kings,
especially their support of brahmanical institutions — brahmadeyas
and temples devoted to the worship of Vedic gods; and by the
occasional massing of military resources of a number of nadus
for predatory or defensive warfare. Each nadu was a segmental
part of a single, unified conception of Hindu kingship; each con¬
stituted a basic bloc of which the edifice of the realm was composed.
But, there were significant differences among these hundreds of
localities with respect to their internal organization and with respect
to their connections with other localities.
Some nadu localities were elaborately hierarchical. Here there
were ancient ruling lineages, some were vestiges of an ancient
tradition of kingship; here there were great establishments of
Brahmans where the highest forms of brahmanical learning was
cultivated and transmitted and where the highest forms of ritual
of this bhakti age were practised; here too were large and wealthy
agricultural and mercantile settlements. Political, religious, and
economic links among such nadus, were strong; in the Kaveri, these
linkages among its populous localities were strengthened by the
proximity of the royal power and authority of the Cholas. As a
condition of existence of such wealthy and populous nadus was
the reliability of water for irrigated agriculture. Protection and
regulation of water courses was a major political concern for such
localities, and the certainty and relative abundance of water meant
that they represented the greatest concentrations of agricultural
labourers, then as now stigmatized as impure and sequestered in
a paraiyar-ceri, separated from the main settlements of any locality.
Nadus of such strong vertical segmentation, or hierarchy, may be
designated ‘central nadus'.
There were central nadus in almost every part of the macro
region, even in some of the more remote peripheral areas. In form,
these resembled the central localities of the Kaveri core of the Chola
segmentary state. Here, local society was most hierarchical in its
organization, Chola influences and political authority were most
evident, Brahmans were most numerous and accorded high status
and the settlements controlled by their mahasabhas were often
linked together as satellites of a central brahmadeya, chieftainships
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 135

were ritually assimilated to the Chola kingship (e.g. muvendavelar),

and nadus were smaller in size and larger in population as well
as moie closely linked together as in the case ot the niyayams
of Chola country or periyanadus elsewhere. Paradigmatically, the
central nadu consisted of the following ranked elements:

Central Nadu

Cholas

Muvendavelar chiefs

Brahmadeyas<_Brahmans_^Central place
Brahmadeyas

Niyayam or^_Dominant Peasantry (Nattar) >Niyayam or

Periyanadu Periyanadu

Lower Peasantry
and Dependents

Artisan-Traders

Landless .abourers

Yet another type of nadu was to be found in those tracts of the

lowlands or in the large interior upland above the plain which
lacked reliable sources of moisture for regular or extensive irrigated
agriculture. These may be designated as "intermediate nodus'.
In these tracts, agriculture was a matter of considerable risk and
uncertainty, requiring the utmost skill and effort by agriculturists.
Successful occupation of the land here was more a matter of such
skill and effort than military prowess; and here wealth for the
support of elaborate royal or religious institutions was seldom
available, resulting in fewer of the hierarchical elements found
in central nadus. Instead, various agricultural groups, usually
mobile, often migrants from elsewhere, joined older, established
peasant groups in localities which offered the prospect of simple
livelihood as a return on their cultivating skills and their modest
and mobile agricultural capital of animals, tools, and seeds. Dif-
136 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

ferences among such groups would not take the form of rank or
status distinctions, but of subcaste and clan affiliation among all
of whom a rough equality was maintained under the rule of a chief¬
tain (or occasionally, a minor king) of those belonging to the
oldest, established peasant groups of the locality. This horizontal
segmentation among subcastes and clans along with the relatively
sparse populations supportable by mixed agricultural and pastoral
utilization of these dry lands made for fewer durable linkages
among neighbouring nadus as compared with central ones. In¬
termediate nodus, with their more diverse peasant groupings,
tended to be somewhat more independent, more isolated from
the others; often how'ever, their constituent peasant and pastoral
peoples maintained cult and marriage contacts with their subcaste
and clan brethren in neighbouring nadus.
Nadus or segments of an intermediate character differed from
the hierarchically organized, centra! nadus in several crucial res¬
pects. Each of the central nadus was closely linked to a ruling
dynasty; for most of the Chola period, this was the Chola dynasty
in the Kaveri core region But, in the intermediate nadus the
sovereignty of other dynasties was recognized. In the Pandya
country, a part of the Chola segmentary state, the Pandyan dynasty
was barely suppressed by Chola power. It reasserted itself vigor¬
ously in the thirteenth century. The Pallavas of Tondaimandalam
were remembered long after the demise of the dynasty by the
widely used chief’s title, ‘Pallavarayan’. Intermediate nadus on the
edges of the Kaveri — the centre of Chola power — were capable
of being detached from allegiance to the Kaveri overlord by other
dynastic powers such as the Hoysalas and Pandyas.
Another feature of the intermediate nadu segments was that
chieftains were less fully incorporated by the Chola kingship.
Here, the basis of authority of chiefs resided in their leadership
over the segmentarily organized, dominant peasant folk of their
localities. In contrast to central nadus, where political manage¬
ment involved the exalted and separated, dharmic, king-like con¬
trol over numerous groupings in complex interaction under power¬
ful village representatives of the nattar, in intermediate nadus
more direct political control appeared to vest in local chiefs.
These hereditary chieftains of dominant, local agricultural groups
exercised not lofty dharmic rule, but the direct, proprietory rule
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 137

of ksatra,124 It was from among such chiefs that the Pandya

dynasty, ‘the Five Pandyas’ maintained a hovering presence
through much of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and re-emerged
in the thirteenth century; it was similar chiefs, called paftakkdrar,
who controlled much of Kongu at the same time.
The number of Brahmans in intermediate nadus was possibly
not insignificant, but the institutions with which Brahmans were
associated in the central ones were far fewer. Evidence of the
Chola period suggests that not all Brahmans, nor even most,
were members of villages controlled by Mahasabhas, nor were
they members of Vedic temple establishments protected and
patronized by the mighty. The territorialization of Brahman sub¬
castes reported during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
and the status differences between the major divisions of sastnc
Brahman castes and the vaidika or temple Brahmans may be
taken as evidence that most of them lived among peasant villagers.
Here they enjoyed special privileges deriving from their priestly
functions, but they lacked the visible institutional and sacral
prestige of sastric Brahmans in the central nadu segments. Brah¬
mans in the intermediate segments would thus have been closely
linked to ranked chiefs who, with their peasant clientele, they
served ritually.
Still another feature of the intermediate nadu segment was the
shallow hierarchy of relationships as compared to that of the
central nadu: characteristically, horizontal rather than vertical
segmentation was characteristic of the former. Within each inter¬
mediate nadu segment, villages might be dominated by one or
another of the several blocs of peasant peoples of the macro region
(e.g., choliyar, kongu): each nadu segment would be dominated
by one of these blocs. Within Pandimandalam and Tondaiman-
dalam, there appear to have been several blocs of castes whose
sub-units were dominant in some of the localities of the zone
while in other localities they might be subordinate to another
zonal bloc sub-unit. Those dominant in a nadu segment consisted
of that peasant group with numerical strength, with possession
of share (pangu) rights over numerous parcels of land in the locality,

124 See the discussion of Robert Lingat on the concepts of dharma and ksatra
in his The Classical Law of India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973,
pp. 211-13.
138 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and with close status and social relationships with basic service
groups, including artisans and merchants involved in the agricul¬
tural economy. The 4pahja jdti (five castes) of Kongu in present
day Kongu exhibits the characteristics of caste dominance referred
to here.125
The tendency for the intermediate nadu segments to be dominated
by peasants and service groups sharing a nearly common status,
identity, and a common zonal caste name produced two apparent
structural features which further distinguished the intermediate
from the central nadu. While the evidence on this is sketchy,
mobile artisan-traders — kammalars or panchayattars — appear
usually to have been separated from this core population of the
locality and enjoying higher status than the same groups in the
central nadu segments. In the twelfth century, artisan-traders in
Kongu and elsewhere appeared to have striven for and attained
status parity with the local peasant folk among whom they lived.
Prior to that time, and later, mobile artisan-traders maintained
linkages with others like themselves in other places and constituted
zonal alliances of the idahgai. Notwithstanding the greater diffi¬
culty of intermediate nadus achieving the massing capability of
central ones as a consequence of their greater horizontal segmenta¬
tion and the absense of the proximate mobilizing activities of
kings, some of this did occur as we have seen. It was precisely
such a massing of dominant peasant groups which took the epithet
of 'right-hand castes’ as well as designations like the ‘48,000’ of
jayankondachdlamandalam (Tondaimandalam) in the Mulbagal
epigraphy of a.d. 1072.
Diagramatically, the intermediate nadu segment may be
represented as on the next page.
A third type of nadu may be distinguished. In those parts of
the macro region least hospitable to sedentary agriculature or
even to mixed agricultural and pastoral activities were scattered
nadu localities in which neither vertical segmentation, or hierarchy,
nor elaborate horizontal segmentation prevailed. These may be
designated as peripheral nadus.
Nadus of the peripheral type in the Chola kingdom displayed
the strongest ‘tribal’ characteristics. That is, most of the people

125 Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, p. 267 and Thurston, op cit.. v. 3, p. 419. The
five castes comprise Vellalas, Chettis, barbers, washermen, and Paraiyar.
 Peasant Micro Regions: The Nadu 139

Intermediate Nadu

Cholas
or
e.g. Pandya Zonal dynasty

Chief Zonal allies

Brahmans

Valangai <- of zonal bloc Artisan-traders

Low Castes Low Castes

of these localities shared a single common ethnic identity, usually

a section of some larger regional group such as Maravar or Reddi.
Isolation and the hazardous basis of livelihood in the peripheral
tracts were the major reasons for this tribal feature. It is doubtful
that the peoples of the peripheral tracts were racially distinctive
in any sense whatever during the medieval period, if they had
ever been. In any case, they were not on this or any other account
excluded from contemporary dharmic society. In fact, as already
pointed out, Maravars and Kallars of the southern peninsula
appear to have been acceptable sections of the Tamil-speaking
peoples in the early centuries of the Christian era as this society
is revealed in Classical poetry. Only in British times did the pejora¬
tive designation ‘criminal tribes’ come into existence.
While evidence of peripheral nadus is for the most part inferential
for the medieval period, it would appear that there was regular
contact between those of the peripheral nctdus and more prosperous
peasant peoples contiguous to them. Relations with itinerant
merchants and with colonies of plains migrants were important
forms of contact; participation in military expeditions with plains
140 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

people may have been another important form of contact. Such

interactions, however intermittent, secured a place for the isolated
folk of the peripheral areas within the larger society of the macro
region; contact also provided a model of a way of life followed
by the peasant folk in neighbouring areas for at least the more
prosperous of the peripheral people to adopt. The latter, along
with genuine colonists from the intermediate nadus, created a
two-part society in the peripheral areas. Domination was that of
the local section of the major ethnic group (e.g. Maravar), but
there would be a subordinate part approximating a simplified
organic model. In contrast to the pattern of intermediate nadu
segments, however, localities with the characteristics of central
ones were rare and dynastic affiliations were very weak, though
in common with most intermediate nadus the peripheral tracts
were ruled by strong chiefs and lateral linkages among locality
groups were important.
 CHAPTER IV

The Coromandel Brahmadeya

Village

The sacerdotal elite of. India has been a part of rural society from
an early time. Even after the emergence of ancient and medieval
urban places, Brahmans retained a ‘rustic’ character to which
both the diversity and flexibility of Indian civilization may, in part,
be attributed.1 However, the quality of rural life which South
Indian Brahmans maintained over centuries was exceptional in
one crucial respect. That is, the character of the villages in which
many of them resided was quite special, and the degree of secular
authority which they were able to exercise was very considerable,
in their own settlements, and in many other settlements dependent
upon Brahman villages through their powerful spokesmen, the
‘great men’ of the sabha. In no other part of the sub-continent was
such a measure of influence achieved and maintained by Brahmans
as in the villages and the localities of the Coromandel plain.2 The
Coromandel brahmadeya villages were unique centres of civilization
whose culture moulded that of the peasantry around them; they
were also thriving centres of agrarian activity.
There can be little doubt that the kinds of Brahman villages

1 More than any other historian of India, D.D Kosambi stressed this fact in
his various works: see especially, ‘The Basis of Ancient Indian History’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, pt 2, v. 75, no.4 (1955), pp. 235-6; The Culture
and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Perspective, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1965, pp. 175-6. In general, however, the nature of urban places in early
India is poorly understood and deserves more serious attention than is provided
in works such as: B.N. Puri, Cities of Ancient India, Meenakshi Prakashan, Meerut,
1966.
2 See A.S. Altekar, A,History of Village Communities in Western India, O.U.P.,
Madras, 1927, pp. 26, 123-4. Altekar not only explicitly compared the village types
of western and southern India but also criticizes some of the scholarship on this
issue which combines evidence from widely different times and places, especially
that of R.C. Majumdar, Corporate Life in Ancient India, Calcutta, 1922 and R.K.
Mukerji, Local Government in Ancient India, Motilal Banarsidass. Delhi, 1958.

141
142 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

which dotted the Coromandel plain during the Chola period were
relatively scarce elsewhere in the macro region. From extant eviden¬
ce, there were few Brahman villages, governed by a sabha of the
learned and capable of the full management of their own affairs,
beyond the fertile, well-watered plain. Wanting in most parts of
the macro region beyond the plain were requisite peace and security,
and ecotypic conditions for agriculture prosperous enough to
support large populations of Brahmans. Without such conditions
the Coromandel type of Brahman village could not exist. Even
where such conditions could and did exist in the interior uplands
of the macro region, there was not a dominant peasantry which
regarded this institution as desirable or necessary as did the peasan¬
try of the plain. However, if the Brahman villages themselves
could not be established and maintained in the macro region beyond
the plain, the culture of these centres of civilization certainly did
reach these more remote areas. The mathas and other centres of
learning in the Coromandel brahmadeyas served as disseminating
points of a high and distinctive culture not only to young Brahmans
of various parts of the plain, but to those who came, often from
great distances, to study and to carry back to their home territories
ritual and theological elements which shaped the high culture in
the temples and mathas of the interior cultural hinterland. It must
be supposed that other ideas were also carried in the same way.
Hence, while the great brahmadeya villages, the subject of this
section, are appropriately identified with the plain, they must be
treated as distinctive institutions of the macro region as a whole.
How Brahmans were able to establish and maintain these unique
rural centres of civilization has been suggested above in the dis¬
cussion of Brahmans and peasants during and after the Pallava
period. The complementarity of social, political, and ideological
objectives of the Coromandel Brahmans and the dominant peasan¬
try of that region was responsible for this accomplishment; the
persistence of reciprocal advantages in the relationship between
Brahmans and peasants assured the durability of these settlements.
Basic changes, when they did occur after the twelfth century, were
only partly a consequence of the development of divergent aims
between peasants and Brahmans and from pressures in society
beyond this relationship. Forces were actually generated within
the Brahman villages and the Brahman world which contributed
significantly to the decline of these villages.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 143

However unique and important Brahman villages as centres of

civilization and agriculture may be shown to be, their place and
functions can be, and have been, exaggerated, and the role of the
village as a unit of society, politics, and economy correspondingly
distorted. Many of the inscriptions which we possess deal with
brahmadeya villages; a few refer to the locality with its numerous
settlements of non-Brahman cultivators. From the point of view
of agrarian relations, the latter were obviously more important.
Because Brahman villages were well-defined, well-organized, and
highly visible in the historical record of the time, the assumption
has been that peasant villages were but slightly different versions
of the brahmadeya villages. This view has been strengthened by
the manner in which the British dealt with the village unit for
revenue purposes on the assumption, or with the justification, that
they were adapting to the usage of ‘time immemorial’, when
actually it suited British political requirements and their agrarian
preconceptions.3 Historians have not adequately recognized that
the atomic village of recent times reflected important agrarian
changes after the Chola period; too much emphasis has been
placed upon village units in a period when this was not a primary
unit of social and agrarian organization, which it was to some
extent later to become.
Seen in the context of the nadu, or the peasant micro region.
Brahmans were one of several kinds of social groups distinguishable
by the fact of their significantly higher status than even the most
powerful peasant people and their ritual and learned functions
which set them apart from others. As noted in the Chola copper¬
plate inscriptions, particularly, Brahmans in brahmadeya villages
shared a common position in relation to the nattar along with
others engaged in sacral functions such as certain Vedic, Jaina,
and even Buddhist functionaries and teachers. Merchants and
artisans involved in commodity production and exchange outside
of the immediate local peasant economy were also accorded a
special, autonomous position with respect to the dominant peasant
people of a locality with whom substantial political authority and
economic power vested. However, Brahmans were distinctive in

3 Walter C. Neale, ‘Land Is To Rule’, in Robert E. Frykenberg (ed.). Land Con¬

trol and Social Structure in Indian History, The University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison, 1969, pp. 3-17; Louis Dumont, 'The Village Community from Munro
to Maine’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, v. 9 (December 1966), pp. 67 ff.
144 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

that they alone maintained village establishments governed by

assemblies of their most learned members, and these settlements
were further distinctive in being the most important religious and
educational centres of the time. Though it is not to be presumed
that all - or indeed most — Brahmans lived in these sabha-
governed villages but, rather, that many Brahmans lived in villages
attached to temples (devaddna) or in ordinary peasant villages,
and though it is also clear that there were many non-Brahmans
who lived within the large brahmadeya villages, still the latter were
among the most important cultural institutions of the time.
In the Coromandel lowland by the ninth century, and in other
parts of the macro region later, control over cultivable land and its
wealth was held either by peasants comprising the nattar or by
Brahmans. Distinctions between the two were carefully maintained
as suggested by the terms urar and veUan-vagai, for the former, and
sabha and brahmadeya, for the latter. Urars and sabhas were
assemblies composed of representatives of the two basic types
of agrarian settlements within a nadu. The terms vellan-vagai
and brahmadeya refer to categories of major recipients of agricul¬
tural income: veljan vagai, a sharing of agricultural income among
cultivating peoples, peasant families comprising the various urar
of the nadir,4 brahmadeya, a sharing of income among Brahman
families under the authority of the sabha. Appropriately, the
control of the urar, or urgalildr as it was also called, comprehended
all lands not under the authority of the sabha, including Hindu
temple land (devaddna), those lands from which income supported
Jaina shrines (paUic-eandan), and Vedic sacrifices conducted
outside of temples or ‘public works’ (vettapperu).5 In all of these
cases, as well as that involving arable lands around trade centres
under some degree of merchant nagarattar control, the dominant
peasantry of the locality distributed the proceeds of cultivation
according to the deeds of gift specified in inscriptions, or according
to customar>' payments and dues to groups associated with agrarian
production from the lowliest labourer to the most skilled craftsman
and the locality overlord.

4 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 570-80; Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 152-4;
vellan-vakai, according to the Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, is ‘that which belongs to the
velaja class, as lands in a village’, p. 3793, citing a South Indian inscription.
5 E.I., v. 22, no.34, ‘Larger Leiden Plates’, p. 231; the meaning of vettapperu
is doubtful.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 145

Carefully and ceremonially demarcated from the most fertile

and productive lands were the fields under the authority of the
Brahman sahha. Within a locality, or nadu, there may have been
several Brahman villages, some very large, others smaller. These
were easily identified by their names and references to the sahha
and often to the fact that the village was Galled a brahmadeya.
Brahman villages of this period were referred to by a variety of
terms beside brahmadeya: chaturvedimahgalam, mahgalam, agaram,
agraharam, agra-brahmadeva, agra-brahmadesa. brahmadesam,
brahmapuri, and brahma-mahgalam.6 Of these, only agraharam
seems to have conveyed a substantially different meaning within the
general meaning of brahmadeya, ‘a donation to Brahmans’. Ag¬
raharam appears to have been more often used in inscriptions to
designate a set of privileges held by Brahmans living in villages
over which they did not enjoy the same dominance as the Brahmans
of brahmadeyas J The usage is more common in the inscriptions
of Karnataka and, in general, during the period after the thirteenth
century when the importance of brahmadeyas was much reduced
and therefore may reflect only a change in the circumstances of
landed Brahmans under the altered agrarian conditions of a later
period.8 An alternative means of identifying Brahman villages
was by reference to assemblies through which these great villages
were governed. Thus, inscriptions refer to the sabha and maha-
sabha, or use the equivalent Tamil terms, kuri and perunguri, or
perungurimakkal, ‘the great men of the assembly’.9
Brahman assemblies with their functional committees, or
offices (variyams), through which control and supervision were

6 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, p. 140; S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, ‘Glossary’.

7 Monier-Williams, Sanskrii-English Dictionary, p. 6; Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1,
p. 158n, cites F.W. Ellis (Replies to Seventeen Questions Proposed by the Government
of Fort George Relative to Mirasi Right; with Two Appendices, Government Gazette
Office, Madras, 1818, p. xxv, n.8, to the effect that agra means ‘before’ and harati
‘it is taken' which is understood to be the grant of village income to Brahmans which
would otherwise constitute a revenue payment. However, Ellis used agrahara to
refer to villages which paid a full revenue as well as those which paid part or no
‘inam’. Relative to melvaram, where mel = before any other or first, see n.75 below.
8 On agraharas of Karnataka see G.S. Dikshit, Local Self-Government in Medieval
Karnataka, Karnatak University, Dharwar, 1964, chs. 5 and 6, where the contrast
with Coromandel Brahman villages, though not explicit, is striking; also, K.R.
Basava Raja, ‘Agraharas in Medieval Karnataka’, Journal of the Karnatak Uni¬
versity (Humanities), v. 2 (1970), pp. 106-14.
9 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 82n; Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, p. 138.
146 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

exercised, do not appear to have existed before the Pallava period,

though Brahmans living among peasants in their villages and upon
a share of peasant production dates from an early time.10 Not
until the eighth century are there records which refer to the means
of selection and scope of functions of the Brahman assemblies.
A Pandyan inscription of a.d. 782 from Mananilanallur (modern
Manur near Tirunelveli), a hrahmadeya in Kalakkudi-nadu, may
be among the very first of those records which anticipate the
elaborate organization described more fully in the Uttaramerur
inscriptions of Chingleput district.11 The purpose of the brahmadeya
was to provide a reliable source of support to Brahmans for the
pursuit of their sacral responsibilities, and the gift (Sanskrit:
dana or deya) of arable land, part of the proceeds from which
constituted a stream of income to learned Brahmans, was one of the
major sources of merit to pious Hindus.12 In order to achieve this
objective, reliable and substantial wealth had to exist to be placed
at the disposal of Brahman assemblies. Merely providing for the
subsistence of the Brahman populations of some of the great
Brahman villages assumed very advanced productive agriculture.
The population of a place like Uttaramerur during the tenth
century, according to the Parantaka I inscriptions of a.d. 919 and
922, must have been very large if the elaborate rules for selecting
holders of the village offices (vdriyam) were even partially followed.
These rules provided for the selection of forty-two members of the
mahasabha to serve on five committees, twelve on the annual and
garden committees and six on the tank, assessment,12 and gold
committees. Each of the mahdjanas, or members of the great

10 Minakshi, op. cit., p. 121; Sathianathaier, op. cit., pp. 34-5; and K.M. Gupta,
The Land System in South India Between c. 800 A.D. and 1200 A.D.. Motilal Banar-
sidass, Lahore, 1933, pp. 30-1; N. Subrahmaniam. Sahgam Polity, pp. 255 ff.
11 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, pp. 81-2.
12 P.V. Kane, History of Dharmasdstra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and
Civil Law). Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1941, v. 2., pt 2, ch.
25; Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, p. 156; and note the term ddna khanda. in v 14,
p. 97, a.d. 1369, referring to the merit of constructing tanks.
13 Some of the terms used in connection with committees are unclear; for example,
pahcavara-vdriyam which is interpreted by Nilakanta Sastri to be related to'the
function of assessment (Cola Studies, p. 142-3) and by Sathianathaier as ‘Standing
committee’ (op. cit., p. 33; S./.T.I.. v. 3, pt 2) ‘Glossary’, takes both positions it
appears (pp. viii-xlii) while K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer (£./., v. 23, p. 22) favours
the first.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 147

assembly, selected for membership of the committees had to meet

rigorous qualifications and be free of specified disabilities. The
qualifications were those of age (between 37 and 70 years), Vedic
learning and teaching experience, and minimum property ex¬
pressed as a share of the lands possessed by the Brahmans of the
place; disabilities involved having served on the sabha in the
previous three years, being shown derelict in the execution of
previous offices (a disability which extended to other agnatic and
affinal kin as well), having committed the sin of incest or other
similarly serious transgressions as theft, consuming polluted food
without having undergone purificatory rites, and having been
adjudged an ‘enemy of the village {gramakantaka)'. Considering
these restrictions and the rotational rules on balloting, a village
like Uttaramerur would have had a large population in order to
provide anything approaching an adequate panel of candidates.
Yet, this village was not great in size; it measured less than five-
eighths of a mile from east-to-west and one-half mile from north-
to-south during the tenth century.14 In 1932, Nilakanta Sastri
reported a population of 11,000; its population in 1961 was 13,
879.15
Distinctions among Brahman villages must be recognized
notwithstanding the fragmentary knowledge which exists about
them. It is certainly clear that all Brahman villages in South India
were not like Uttaramerur, by which Brahman villages have been
measured, not only in South India, but elsewhere in India.16 There
were, first, other settlements like Uttaramerur which maintained
a set of central place functions, in which authority was most ela¬
borately organized among Brahman residents, and in which the
most persistent relations with the great overlords of the region
— the Cholas and their allies — obtained. However, the extant
evidence suggests that Brahman villages of the Chola period ranged
in size from those which may have been the largest settlements on
the plain to quite small villages, just as they ranged in social com-

14 Based upon the locations of the major temples referred to by contemporary

inscriptions in the modern village, see Nilakanta Sastri, Co/a Studies, pp. 98-9. These
are mentioned in S.I.I., v. 6, pp. 273-325, 238-335, 336-8, 339, 340, 341-3, 376-7;
Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 2, p. 215.
15 Census of 1961, IX, Madras District Census Handbook; Chingleput. v. 2, p. 305;
the Uttaramerur Panchayat Union population was 92, 773, p. 307.
• 16 Note particularly this assumption in Dikshit, op. cit., p. 98.
148 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

position from those with a large proportion of Brahman families

to those with a few. The residence site of a Brahman village might
comprise over two square miles, as in the case of Uttaramerur,
which was subdivided into twelve sections (cm's) and thirty smaller
divisions called kudumbusd1 Another internal division of this
and other important Brahman settlements may have been ac¬
cording to sect or to occupational grouping; it was called sahka¬
rappddi, and may have included only non-Brahman residents of
these villages.18
Size reflected the location and the circumstances under which
the gift of village income was conferred upon a group of Brahman
families. Those extensive tracts with relatively well-developed,
reliable irrigation facilities, as in deltaic portions of the plain, or
similarly large areas whose surface configuration and drainage
characteristics made possible large, perennial tanks, provided the
condition and the requirement for large peasant villages. Isolated
parts of the rest of the macro region provided the same possibilities,

17 This estimate of the area is based upon the location of temple markers (n. no. 14)
Cert names in Uttaramerur appear to be based upon twelve names of Vishnu thus
suggesting the clustering of Brahman families according to their ritual functions
(Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 2, p. 273; Nilakanta Sastri, Cola
Studies, p. 103n). In another case of the eleventh century, Alambakkam, alias
Madhurantakam-chaturvedimarigalam, about twelve miles south-east of Uttara¬
merur, ceris seem to be named for other Brahman villages, suggesting colonization
from places, or they were named for previous Chola rulers using their surnames
as many Brahman villages did (A.R.E., 1910, para. 25, referring to 726/1909). An
inscription of Kulottunga I seems to support the latter theory of ceri names based
upon royal titles (Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 2, pt 2, p. 560). The meaning of
kudumbu is unclear. Usually translated as ‘ward’ as by Nilakanta Sastri (The Cotas,
pp. 496, 502, 517n.), the term is obviously better understood as a reference to
lineage’ or, as used by Subrahmanya Aiyer, ‘family groups’ in Historical Sketches . . .
(v. 2, pp. 273-86 and passim); also see ku(umpi in Tamil Lexicon, v. 2, p. 974. Kudumbu
was also used among peasants to constitute what appears to be work units; see
below, ch. 6, n. no.24.
18 At Tiruvalangadu, in a.d. 1072, an inscription refers to a portion of that large
temple centre called the sahkarappddi and describes the shifting of twenty-five
families of oil-mongers from there to another part of the settlement and the require¬
ment that they provide oil for fifteen temple lamps (14/1896, in Nilakanta Sastri.
The Colas, v. 2,. p. 272n.). Still other references to this residential grouping come
from Udaiyargudi (Chidambaram taluk) which refers to the sahkarappddi of Kadam-
bur (550/1920, S.I.I., v. 13, no.58, pp. 26-7) and Sivapuram (Sriperumbudur taluk,
Chingleput) (A.R.E., 1960, no. 284, a.d. 1030; also see Francois Gros and R. Naga-
swamy, Uttaramerur: Legendes, Histoire. Monuments. Institut Franqais d’Indologie,
Pondicherry, 1970, p. 98.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 149

but it was in the coastal plain portion of the macro region, the areas
of the most ancient peasant settlement, that most Brahman villages,
large and small, were established. Of the smaller Brahman settle¬
ments less is known of course, for it is from inscriptions alone that
anything is known of any Brahman villages, and the number of
inscriptions is clearly correlated with the size and importance of a
place. Thus, most of the Brahman villages of the macro region have
left an insufficient record upon which to estimate even relative size.
Whereas in a place like Uttaramerur, procedures for the selection
of members for service on one of the functional committees of the
mahasabha are explicit, the presumption of a relatively large
Brahman population is unavoidable. Similarly, where a village
was granted as brahmadeya to a large number of Brahman families
— even if, as is often the case, the number was a conventional one
like' 108’ families — it was only a matter of time before the Brahman
population would have become substantial.19 Many extant records
refer to brahmadeya grants to smaller groups of Brahmans, including
those to single persons (ekabhogam).20 In the latter case, the des¬
cendants of the original donee would have constituted a minor
fraction of the population of a village, the major share of whose
income they enjoyed, and probably lived on a single street much as
Brahmans of the agraharam section of modern South Indian
villages do.
The proportion of Brahmans of the macro region who did not
live in these villages is among the important issues in the social
history of early South India which have never been raised. It is
certainly significant to know — or at least to speculate about —
the extent to which Brahmans resided and were part of the society
outside of Brahman villages. That most did seems beyond question.
19 Srivillipputtur, a Brahman village in the northern part of modern Tirunelveli
was established as a brahmadeya for 108 Brahmans in the late eighth or early ninth
century (T.K.T. Viraraghavacharya, ‘The Srivilliputtur Temple of Sudikkodutta
Nachchiyar’, Tirupati-Tirumalai Devasthanam Bulletin, v. 6, no.3, pp. 1-2). This
number is very common, though there are other multiples of twelve which are often
encountered as well; e.g. the village of Korraparru in the Kistna delta, established
as a brahmadeya in the middle of the eighth century, certainly one of the earliest,
was granted to twenty-four Brahmans (S.I.l., v. 1, no.35, pp. 31-6). See ch. 6, n.
no.9.
20 S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. xiv; grants to individual Brahmans who might later
redistribute shares of income among other Brahmans seems to have occurred more
frequently, indeed characteristically, in Karnataka than in the Coromandel plain
(Dikshit, op. cit., pp., 100-1).
150 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Villages under the control of a Brahman assembly were being created

throughout the Chola period; small or large groups of Brahman
families came into new residential quarters of established and
prosperous settlements from other peasant settlements near and
far, constituted themselves as a sabha, and corporately managed
the landed wealth which had been bestowed. It appears reasonable
to suggest that many more Brahmans continued to live in non-
Brahman villages as indeed they had in the period before Pallava
times when the establishment of such settlements gained great
prominence. If this supposition is correct, it cannot be argued
that life in the great Brahman villages, such as Uttaramerur,
constituted the ordinary way of life of the sacerdotal elite of the
macro region in this age. On the contrary, it must be supposed
that, as most Brahmans lived in prosperous peasant villages in the
way they had in the past, perhaps in a special quarter in the vicinity
of a Vedic temple, their life-styles would have been close to those
of the peasants and artisans among whom they lived. Life-styles
of Brahman and peasant, under the circumstances of long-termed
residential propinquity as well as the tendency in this period of the
latter to emulate the ways of the Brahmans, cannot have varied
substantially. The implication of this line of speculation is that
it would be false to exaggerate the gap between Brahmans and
those peasant groups with whom they shared a common rural
social context and culture.
Map IV-1 shows a distribution of some 300 Brahman villages
of the Chola period. It cannot be claimed to be a complete re¬
presentation of Brahman villages of the period for new ones come
to light with new publications of South Indian inscriptions, and all
of them may never be known. Beyond that, many of the known
Brahman villages of the period cannot be located with enough
certainty to make their notice useful, and others cannot be located
at all. Still others which could have been plotted were not because
they were parts of clusters of such villages, discernable only on
large-scale maps.21 In Map IV-1, it will be seen that the distribution
of Brahman villages conforms to the ecotypic conditions most

21 As with all other distributions of medieval South India, the accidents of pre¬
servation and discovery of brahmadeya village inscriptions determines the extent
of possible identification and location. Lacking either local or supra local listings
ot Brahman villages at particular times and places, the universe of such places which
can be positively identified and dated must be considered as partial. In the famous
IV-1 Brahmadeya Distribution c. a.d. 1300
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 151

favourable to Coromandel agriculture. The most significant con¬

centrations occur in the riverine tracts of the Kaveri and its tri¬
butaries, the Ponnaiyar, the western Tambraparni, and the Palar.
Most of the Brahman villages lie below the 250 foot contour, the
exceptions being only those which follow the major river basins
through the graded descent from higher elevations to the sea-
level plain below. Very few Brahman villages are found at higher
elevations where reliable irrigation sources, whether riverine or
tank, could rarely be developed. Even considering the partial
nature of the distribution shown, the map points to significant
and predictable aspects of the relationship of Brahman villages
to the agrarian structure. One of these is that the Brahman village
is a reliable and accurate ‘marker’ of the most mature agrarian
localities in the macro region. The high consumption requirements
of these villages were supportable only under the most advanced
conditions of agriculture. Moreover, these same localities, it must
be presumed, bore the highest burden of tribute payments to local
and great overlords. The second fact demonstrated by Map IV-1
is that most of the nadus which can be located had within their
boundaries, and usually at their core, one or more Brahman villages.
This is evident from records of brahmadeyas of the period in which
the name of the nadu in which the Brahman village existed is almost
invariably given. N. Karashima, in his work on the Chola ins¬
criptions, has suggested that during the period of Rajaraja I,
most of the nadus, of Cholamandalam contained two or three
Brahman villages; in some there were four or more.22 The relation¬
ship between the nadu, the primary unit of agrarian organization,
and these prestigious Brahman settlements will be discussed below.
Previous research on the Brahman villages of the Pallava and
Chola periods has treated each as an independent, self-contained
unit. The effect of this has been to homogenize all villages in which
the sabha existed. It has been suggested above that a more realistic
perception of Brahman villages is that they varied from the most
modest, hazardously supported, village settlements, under the

Tanjavur inscriptions of Rajarajesvara temple, of the twenty-ninth year of Rajaraja

1. a great many villages are listed to supply functionaries for the temple (e.g., S.I.I..
v. 2, no. 69, pp. 312 fif); this is exceptional in the extent of the many villages men¬
tioned, but the total number of locality villages are not.
22 'The Power Structure of the Cola Rule’, Paper presented to the 11 International
Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies, Madras, 5 January 1968, p. 3 and app
152 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

control of a sabha, to a class of great, populous, and wealthy Brah¬

man-dominated enclaves within a micro region, of which Uttara-
merur was a conspicuous member. Of this latter class, it would
appear that perhaps thirty-five constituted premier settlements
by reason of their size and the impressive array of central place
functions.
‘Central place' Brahman settlements were sometimes designated
as taniyur, literally ‘separate settlement , or, as scholars have at
times suggested, ‘free-’ or ‘independent-settlement’.23 Among such
places are the following: Madhurantakam, Tirumukkudal and
Uttaramerur in modern Chingleput district; Tribhuvani in Pondi¬
cherry; and Chidambaram and Ennayiran in modern South Arcot.
Taniyur settlements are often referred to as constituting a minor
and separate division of the nadu in which they were: tankuru.24
A more reliable measure of the special status of the central-
place Brahman settlement than such designations, however, was
the various functions which many of them carried out. Among
these, the most conspicuous and, perhaps, important were religious
and ritual functions. The privileges enjoyed by Brahman families
in these villages were derived from sacral activities for which they
alone could be responsible. From the earliest brahmadeya ins¬
criptions, there appear to have been a regular set of ritual functions
for which learned Brahmans were responsible and for which sup¬
port was given. These included: adhyayanam or archand, the
recitation of Vedas; bhdrati or bharatavritti, recitation of the Maha-
bharata; panchangam, calendrical activities to provide the aus¬
picious times for marriages, festivals, and ploughing; puranam,
recitation of purana\ in addition there were payments for teaching
the Vedas to other Brahmans, vedavritti: and payments to sup¬
port learned Brahmans, bhattavritti.25 Most of these activities
were carried out in temples, and all such villages had at least one
temple to provide the locus for these and other ritual activities.
During the tenth century, most temples were identified in the
inscriptions simply as ‘the mahddeva temple’ of some particular

23 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 150-1; S I T.I.. 'Glossary', p. lxiii.

24 Uttaramerur was called a taniyur and tan-kuru in the famous a.d. 921 inscrip¬
tion of Parantaka I (Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, pp. 99, 171). Tirukkalukunram
(Chingleput taluk) is also designated as tan-kuru; E.I.. v. 3, no.38B, dated a.d. 919.
25 Ibid., pp. 118, 125-7; S. Sundararaja Iyengar, Land Tenures in the Madras
Presidency, Commercial Press, Madras, 1921, p. 213.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 153

village, reflecting the greater prominence of Saivite religious

activities over Yaishnavite at the time. After the tenth century,
however, many Brahman villages had several temples, most of
which continued to be Saivite shrines and all under the management
of the sabha which supervised and supported the educational and
ritual activities of each. By the twelfth century, most of the temples
had come to be managed by special bodies, separate from the
sabha, and fully capable of receiving endowments of money and
land for the maintenance of the shrine. This independence was to
weaken the Brahman assembly after the twelfth century.
Special hagiographical importance is attached to most of the
great Brahman settlements as ancient, important Saivite places,
celebrated in the lines of the devotional hymns of the nayanars
and often prominent in the lives of the sect’s saints. Examples of
these are: Takkolam, Tiruvallam, Alangudi, Tillaisthanam, Tiruk-
kadaiyur, Tiruvidaimarudur, Kilpalavur, Tiruppalatturai, Nallur.26
Others were among the most sacred places of the Vaishnavas, the
‘108 sacred places (nuttettu tirupati)’: Tirrukkoyilur, Kumba-
konam, Tirunaraiyur, Tiruchchirai, Tirumayam, Shiyali, Kovil-
adi, Kandiyur, Adanur, Tirukkurungudi, Srivaikuntam, Sri-
villiputtur, Kilanbil, Uraiyur, Tiruvellarai.27 Some of these places,
like Tirukkoyilur and Kumbakonam, were equally sacred to both
of the major sects, and in all of them were one or more temples
which were rated among the most important in the macro region.28
In fact, it was only in such great Brahman settlements and in the
few towns like Kanchi, Tanjavur, and Gangaikondacholapuram
— important centres of Chola authority — that personnel and
resources for the increasingly elaborate rituals of the times could
be supported. Thus, Uttaramerur had two Vishnu and five Siva
temples, Nallur had two Vishnu and four Siva temples, and Ennayi-
ram is said in an inscription of a.d. 1037 to have had twelve Vedic
temples and village shrines.29
26 These are most conveniently found in V. Rangacharya. A Topographical List
of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency (Collected till 1915), 3 vols., Govern¬
ment Press, Madras, 1919. The volume and page are provided here: v. 1: 512,
37, 73; v. 2: 1359, 1413, 1308, 1265; v. 3: 1614, 1617, 1580 [Cited hereafter as IMP}.
27 Ibid., v. 1, p. 512; P.V. Jagadisa Ayyar, South Indian Shrines, The Madras
Times Printing and Publishing Co., Madras, 1920, pp. 221-30.
28 IMP. v. 1, p. 226; v. 2, p. 1235.
29 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, pp. 101, 85; A.R.E., 1917, no.335, dated a.d.
154 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Central brahmadeyas appeared to maintain an elaborate and

enduring network of relationships with other institutions in South
India. They were places of record in a society i^ which there were
few other means for recording and preserving important public
facts. Among such facts would be those related to the great warrior
houses of the time including, but not limited to, royal families.
Important officers of the Chola overlords are panegyrized in long
inscriptions, the purport of which was to provide a gift to a temple
or to some Brahmans. These great kavya inscriptions in Sanskrit
as well as other languages must be considered as a form of public
notice of an essentially non-religious nature notwithstanding their
ostensible purpose.30 The efficacy of incising public notices in
these settlements derived from their attraction for large numbers of
people participating in periodic religious ceremonies and other
activities, including educational, economic, and political.
Most Brahman villages, however modest, carried out at least
a limited set of educational functions; the central Brahman villages
were the premier educational centres of the time. Mathas, or
seminaries, of considerable size as well as individual teachers were
provided with regular income by the sabhas. While such grants
to individual teachers are among the most commonly recorded in
the inscriptions of the macro region, evidence relating to centres
of advanced learning involving many people are more rare. An
inscription of a.d. 1048 refers to 260 students and twelve teachers
at Tribhuvani; a record at Ennayiram, somewhat earlier, mentions
370 students of which most were junior in status, the rest, perhaps
seventy, being regarded as senior scholars of Vedas and Prabhan-
das; in addition there were fourteen teachers.31 Both of these
inscriptions specify the allotments of food-grains to each of the
several classes of persons associated with the schools. At Tiru-
vadutturai, a school for medical and grammatical training was
provided with lands by a military officer (sendpati) from which the
sabha exempted all dues.32 These activities — individual scholars

1037; idem. The Cd/as, v. 1, p. 563; Madras District Gazetteers, South Arcot, ed.
B.S. Baliga, Government of Madras, Madras, 1962, p. 483.
30 John F. Fleet, one of the early epigraphists in India (government epigraphist,
1883-6) recognized the public notice function of these records, a fact insufficiently
recognized by modern scholars (cited in S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 164).
31 Nilakanta Sastri, The Cd/as, pp. 630-1; A.R.E., 1917, no.333 and A.R.E.,
1919, no.176.
32 Ibid., p. 632; A R E., 1925, no.159.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 155

expounding particular portions of brahmanical knowledge as the

Mimamsa ot Prabharkara or larger groups of scholars pursuing
more varied subjects — were at the core of the purpose of the
Brahman village. The clientele of this tuition were Brahman
youths just as the instructors were Brahmans, and toward the
objective ot transmission of this sacred and semi-sacred lore, the
sabhas of Brahman settlements maintained a broad network of
relationships with other, minor. Brahman villages, as well as non-
Brahman settlements.
Mercantile and artisan groups comprised an important segment
ot the population of the central Brahman settlements. As populous
places which attracted pilgrims from near and far, there were
profitable opportunities open to both groups. A unique temple
like the Rajarajesvara shrine at Tanjavur cannot, of course, be the
measure of the scale of operations extant in other, smaller places,
for it was a special monument of one of the greatest of the Chola
warriors, Rajaraja I. Thus, its employment of over 600 temple
servants, according to an a.d. 1011 record, included musicians,
accountants, and various kinds of artisans as well as ritual func¬
tionaries and teachers. Tanjavur must be regarded as unusual.33
The magnitude of mercantile and artisan activity at most central
Brahman settlements was certainly more modest, yet integrally
related to the pilgrimage custom of these centres. Temples of
the central Brahman settlements were consumers of large quantities
of goods, many of which could not be provided locally. Various
kinds of condiments, oils, and the ephemera of ritual offerings had
often to be acquired from distant places.34
Principally, central Brahman settlements are to be identified
by the number of inscriptions found in them which pertain to the
affairs of other places. Anticipating the great temple centres of
the later medieval period in South India, when important events
of the locality, territory, and kingdom were registered in the
lengthy prasastis of inscriptions, the central Brahman settlements
were repositories of local public notice. In the course of a half
century of epigraphical collection by archaeologists of the Govern¬
ment of India and several of the larger Indian States, such as

33 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 275-6; S.I.I., v. 2, no.66; and K.A. Nilakanta
Sastri, ‘The Economy of a South Indian Temple in the Cola Period’, Malaviya Com¬
memoration Volume, ed. A.B. Dhruva, Banaras Hindu University, Banaras, 1932.
34 Camphor is one such material, Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, p. 288.
156 Peasant Stale and Society in Medieval South India

Mysore, Travancore, and Hyderabad,35 most of the macro region

has been surveyed, thousands of inscriptions copied, and many of
them published. Though the resultant record is incomplete, it is
possible to identify some of the places which occupied a central
recording function in relation to other locality institutions.
One turns inevitably to Uttaramerur, the place with perhaps
the largest number of sahha inscriptions (over ninety) ot any
Brahman settlement — indeed, any village — in South Asia;
it is moreover one of the most studied of ancient Indian settlements,
the most recent and excellent example being the work of F. Gros
and R. Nagaswamy.36 Here, two early, undated records of the
ninth century refer to endowments in support of two temples,
characteristically identified simply as mahddeva, or Siva, temples
in villages of the locality. One was in the village of Tiruppulivalam,
3.5 miles north of Uttaramerur on the main road to the Cheyyar
river;37 the other was Tittatur, modern Tittalam, about 5.5 miles
south-east of Uttaramerur.38 The endowment for the temple at
Tiruppulivalam was made by the residents of the non-Brahman
quarter (sahkarappddi) of the north-east bazaar (vadakilartgadi)
of Uttaramerur with the consent of the mahasabha, whereas the
grant to Tittatur was made directly by the latter. These neigh¬
bouring villages were clearly not Brahman villages, but Tirup¬
pulivalam may have been a village whose major share of income
had been granted to a temple in Uttaramerur (i.e., devadcina).
Similar to these is the complex and interesting record of Uttara¬
merur, dated a.d. 1133, in which a temple of the village, or one
nearby, having demanded repayment of a loan which had been
made to the Uttaramerur assembly, and the latter, being without
funds to meet the payment, including accumulated interest, trans¬
ferred the share of income enjoyed by the mahasabha from a

35 B. Lewis Rice (ed.), Epigraphici Carnatica, 12 vols.. Mangalore and Bangalore.

1886-1905; Travancore Archaeological Series, v. 1. Madras, 1910-13; v. 2, ff.,
Trivandrum; Hyderabad Archaeological Reports, Calcutta, 1915; now superseded
by the Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series, Hyderabad.
36 Op. cit.
37 A.R.E., 1898, no.79, Nilakanta Sastri, Cofa Studies, p. 120; Subrahnranya
Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 2, p. 214.
38 A.R.E., 1898, no.4; Nilakanta Sastri, Co/a Studies, p. 120; Subrahmanya
Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 2, p. 231. Others mentioned in the neighbourhood
of Uttaramerur are: Adalampundi (Anarampundi), 3.1 miles SE. of Uttaramerur,
ibid., p. 235; Puliyur, 2.1 miles SE. (ibid., p. 237), and Marudattur (Marudam),
3.5. miles NE. (ibid., p. 254). Also, Gros and Nagaswamy. op. cit.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 157

neighbouring village, Vennakuttanallur, to the temple in order

to discharge the debt.39
Several points deserve notice in this record. One is that this is
an example of a Brahman village assembly — one of the greatest
in the macro region having become so indebted to temple
authorities, in their own and in other villages, that they were com¬
pelled to aivest themselves of a portion of their own income sources.
This phenomenon is general during the twelfth century, and it
constitutes irrefutable evidence of the decline of the great Brahman
villages by that time. The other point of interest in this a.d. 1133
inscription is that there was a provision that the name of the village
transleired from the Brahman village to the temple, Vennakutta¬
nallur, a name derived from one of the appellations of the god
Krishna, a Vishnu deity, should henceforth be known by the
Saivite name, Tiruvekambanallur.40 The change was not a lasting
one; the village of Vennakuttan still exists in Madhurantakam
taluk of Chingleput district. Still another Uttaramerur inscrip¬
tion, of a.d. 1018, relates a transaction of the mahasabha with four
Vaishnava priests of the Vaikanasa school in which they were
assured of income in Uttaramerur by a grant of income shares for
temple worship (archanavritti) to compensate them for the loss
of their income in the distant Brahman village of Arasanimangalam
(modern Cuddalore taluk, South Arcot district).51 This record
demonstrates, as many of the eleventh century do, the widespread
network of a great settlement like Uttaramerur, in this case about
fifty miles, and also the spatial mobility of priestly families during
this and subsequent ages. That it was not only Brahmans who
were capable of cooperation in the affairs of the great Brahman
villages is clear from another eleventh century inscription from
Uttaramerur in which one of its merchants, a resident of what
appears to be a Vaishnava quarter of the village, Govindacheri,
together with a merchant of the central bazar (naduvilahgadi) of
Uttaramerur, jointly endowed a temple lamp in Uttaramerur.42
The same pattern of relationship between other Brahman and

39 A.R.E., 1898, no.68; Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 128.

40 S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. xli.
41 A.R.E., 1923, no.171; Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 1, p. 544.
42 This is probably mistaken for the modern Valarigadi village, A.R.E., 1923,
no. 187; Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 124. See, Gros and Nagaswamy, op.
cit., p. 91.
158 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

non-Brahman peasant settlements can be shown for other central

Brahman villages. From Tribhuvani, in modern South Arcot,
a mahasabha order of a.d. 1028 altered the status of a village named
Varakkur, a devaddnci village, into one in which forty-eight culti¬
vators were assigned full rights over the production of the village
save only a continued and specified payment to a particular temple
and the responsibility for maintaining the tank of the village.43
An a.d. 1113 inscription by order of the Tribhuvani mahasabha
directed that a. group of its village-servants — priests, carpenters,
accountants, and others — must desist in the practice of plying
their crafts in other locality settlements.44 This restriction is
interesting in the light of an earlier Tribhuvani mahasabha order
which granted an income from agricultural land to a goldsmith,
presumably to assure his services to the Brahman village.45
In Tanjavur, the central Brahman village of Tiruvadutturai
(Mayavaram taluk) maintained a close relationship with several
villages from which income in support of one of the Tiruvadutturai
temples was obtained or from which consumables for ritual
offerings, such as coconut and flowers, were obtained. The
Brahman village of Sattanur, about three miles from Tiruvadut¬
turai in modern Kumbakonam taluk, existed as a satellite for these
purposes for almost two centuries, it would appear. Several ins¬
criptions of the ninth and tenth centuries suggest the close interac¬
tion which must have obtained between the large and ancient
Brahman village and its small neighbouring settlement.46 By
a.d. 1018, Sattanur, already a Brahman village, underwent a name
change to abhayasraya chaturvedimahgalam, suggesting that the
community of Brahmans of the place were in high esteem as scho¬
lars; yet, the sabha continued to register some of its inscriptions,
as of old, in the village of Tiruvadutturai.47 Other satellite Brah¬
man villages associated with Tiruvadutturai in some of the same
ways were: Sirupuliyur (Nannilam taluk) and Sirranaichchur
(Mayavaram taluk).48 The numerous inscriptions of Tiruvaduttu-

43 1 89/19 1 9 in Nilakanta Sastri. The Colas, v. 1, p. 557.

44 205/1919 in The Colas, v. 2, p. 595.
45 210/1919 in The Co/as, v. 1, p. 585, undated, but probably of the period from
a.d. 1018-54.
4<> 135/1925 and 127/1925 in The Colas, v. 1, pp. 355, 396; and 120/1925, 102/1925,
150/1925 in The Co/as, v. 1, pp. 485, 543, 592 respectively.
47 1 02/1925 in The Colas, v. 1, p. 543 and 147/1925 in ibid., v. 2., p. 567.
48 For the former, 107/1925 in The Co/as, v. 2, p. 391 and 111/1925 and others
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 159

rai suggest an impressive network of relationships with other

settlements in this densely populated portion of the delta. From
the non-Brahman village of Karanur, some ten miles from Tiru-
vadutturai, income from land was given to maintain a temple lamp
in a.d. 1017; a year later a Brahman village neighbouring Karanur,
Peravur, undertook to provide regular income to a temple in
Tiruvadutturai in return for a lump-sum payment.49 Other brah¬
madeya villages in regular relationship with Tiruvadutturai were:
Tiruvilimilalai, five miles to the south (Nannilam taluk); Tiraimur;
Tiruvidaimardur, five miles south-west whose merchant assembly
(nagarattar) participated in the purchase and gift of a substantial
portion of land to the Tiruvadutturai temple in a.d. 942; and Palai-
vanavanmadevi-chaturvedimangalam about sixteen miles west
of Tiruvadutturai from which the income from some land was
purchased in a.d. 1016 to support physicians in the latter place.50
Arrangements similar to these could easily be evinced for many
other Brahman villages.51
Beyond these transactions between central Brahman villages
and other settlements involving transfers of rights over agrarian
wealth, loans and gifts, specialists recruited and in some cases
restricted, these great institutions served as the most prominent
locality site for the registration of events quite beyond the locality.

in The Colas, v. 1, pp. 434, 437; for the latter, 139/1925, 126/1925, 125/1925 in The
Cofas, v. 1, pp. 414, 423-4, 433; also IMP, v. 2, Tanjore, nos.600, 604.
49 102/1925 in Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 1, p. 543.
50 Karanur was said to be in Peravur-nadu, a territory named for its important
Brahman village, Peravur (109/1925 and 102/1925 in The Colas, v. 1, p. 543; also
149/1895 and 113/1925 in ibid., v. 1, pp. 433, 537).
51 Examples: a Tiruvalangadu inscription of a.d. 1124 records the sale of land
by a brahmadeya called Valaikulama alias Nittavinoda-chaturvedimangalam for
a lamp in Tiruvalangadu (485/1905 in ibid., v. 2, p. 618). At Ennayiram in a.d.
1061 a village, part of whose income was previously used to maintain temple ritual,
i.e. a devadana, called Nannaderpakkam, of the temple at Eydar (modern Eydanur,
Cuddalore taluk. South Arcot) was now to pay some portion of its income to a
person as a life gift while the remainder was to be included in local revenue accounts
(336/1917 in ibid., v. 2, p. 652). Tiruvadatturai served this function for a number
of settlements such as Tirunallam, 5 miles south, in which endowments were arranged
to support mat has in Tiruvadatturai (Tirunilvaithankan-matha); (144/1925, dated
a.d. 110! in ibid., v. 2, p. 581 and 155/1925, dated a.d. 1110 in ibid., v. 2, p. 590).
Others connected to Tiruvadatturai include Kottur, 30 miles south in Mannargudi
taluk (152/1925, a.d. 116 in ibid., v. 2, p. 599) and Siruppuliyur (62/1926, 69/1926,
.71/1926, 107/1925 in ibid., v. 2, p. 391).
160 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Uttaramerur was called Rajendrachola-chaturvedimangalam du¬

ring the reign of Rajendra I, and in the middle of the thirteenth
century it was called Gandagopala-chaturvedimangalam for the
Telugu-Chola overlord.52 So general is the change of names
of these great settlements to those based upon the personal name
or surname of a ruler or his favoured deity as to suggest that bet¬
ween these villages and the most powerful warrior overlords of the
macro region, a special relationship existed.
The presence of Chola authority in peasant micro regions is
nowhere clearer than in the central Brahman villages, and the
‘central’ functions of such places are perhaps most dramatic when
considered with reference to that authority. Not all central Brah¬
man villages were equally influenced by kings; location appears to
have affected the extent to which a settlement might be involved
in the activities of the Chola overlords and their military officials.
The important Brahman centres of Tribhuvani, Ennayiram,
and Tiruvadutturai all contain inscriptions indicating that warriors
serving the Cholas took part in the decisions of the respective
mahasabhas as they related to agrarian matters. An a.d. 1053
record from Tribhuvani reported an order from a military official
to the sabha directing that they alter the classification of dues upon
some of the lands under sabha control, part of whose income was
alienated to a temple.53 Again, in a.d. 1099, the sabha was directed
to provide lands for the cultivation of areca trees from which no
dues were to be collected, and the sabha was instructed to replace
the lost dues from other lands.54 External intervention is again
evidenced in an a.d. 1093 order to the Tribhuvani sabha that land-
holding arrangements involving what appears to be a military
tenure (parasavak-kani) be protected from the encroachment of
non-military cultivators, in this case, potters.55 Several inscrip¬
tions from Ennayiram of the eleventh and twelfth centuries also
attest a significant degree of external authority over the affairs of
the sabha, with soldiers instructing the assembly to provide income
for temple rituals or being present when lands of the Brahman
village were sold or the arrangements pertaining to the allocation

52 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, pp. 99-100, 126.

53 188/1919 in The Colas, v. 1, p. 583.
54 201/1919 in ibid., v. 2, p. 577.
55 2 06/19 1 9 in ibid., v. 2, p. 572; 5.7.7’./., ‘Glossary’, p. xliv.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 161

of proceeds from land altered in some way.56 An important record

of a.d. 1001 from Tiruvadutturai relates that some money owed
to temple weavers by the sabha was appropriated by ‘the king’,
and the assembly, fearing that the weavers would migrate else¬
where if not paid, borrowed the sum from a temple in return for
which it freed some devadana lands of that temple from certain
dues.57 Apart from the evidence of arbitrary exactions to which
a mahasabha might be exposed by those with power, this record
indicates that the mahasabha could be placed in a position of
jeopardy between these powerful outsiders and such village ins¬
titutions as temples and artisan groups, all of whom maintained a
degree of corporate strength with which the Brahmans of the
sabha had to cope.
The temple at Sucindram, in Travancore, provides similar
evidence of the displacement of the mahasabha which had managed
the affairs of the temple from the middle of the tenth century.
Under the supervision of a committee of the mahasabha, called
the mulaparuda as at other Saivite shrines, the following matters
were attended: general financial management, the management of
lands apportioned to the maintenance of the temple, the super¬
vision of ritual and endowments, and the promulgation of orders
relating to the temple. In the middle of the thirteenth century,
the mulaparuda committee of the mahasabha was displaced by a
group of Malayali Brahmans called yogakkar or porris, a priestly
group which may have originated in the northern coastal area of
Tulu-country, migrated to Travancore, and developed marital
links with Nambudri Brahmans.58
Vulnerability to these pressures upon and against the maha-
sabhas seems to have been greater in the southern portions of the
Coromandel plain than in its central and northern portions. In
Tondaimandalam, judging from the inscriptions of Uttaramerur
and those at the temple centre of Tiruvalangadu, which referred
to brahmadeya affairs, these Brahman centres appeared to have
preserved a greater degree of freedom from the intrusion of power¬
ful warriors as well as less pressure from the internal power position
of temple organizations. Distance from the Chola heartland in the

56 330 and 335/1917 in The Colas, v. 1, pp. 276-7, 562; 348 and 351/1917 in ibid.,
v. 2, pp. 588, 596.
57 105/1925 in ibid., v. 1, p. 498.
58 Pillay, Sucindram Temple, pp. 143-50.
162 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Kaveri may have been an important factor; another appears to be

the greater diversity and corporate strength of groups in the central
and northern plain.
Again, it is to the great Brahman village of Uttaramerur that
one turns for evidence of well-organized corporate elements besides
the Brahmans of the assembly comprising the settlement. A variety
of such groups maintained their identity from the earliest period
of the inscriptions to the latest. Among the most early are residen¬
tial groups such as the people of sahkarappadi and perhaps those
of the twelve cm's; others include: mahesvaras, sthdnattdrs,
perilamaiyar, sraddhamantas, srivaishnavas, vlrganattdr, kaliga-
nattdr, and srikrishnaganapperumakkl.59 All of these groups are
associated with temples, and they figure prominently in the affairs
of the village as inscriptions reflect this. The composition of these
groups is difficult to ascertain. In some cases, they suggest groups
not capable of serving on or being represented in the mahasabha.
For example, those of the sahkarappadi were non-Brahmans as
were the same group in Tiruvalangadu; the perilamaiyar consisted
of middle-aged women attached to temples; and the viraganattdr
referred to Jainas.60 The mahasabha of Uttaramerur appears to
have been more successful than Brahman villages in the Kaveri
basin in maintaining their authority and control over resources
of the settlement from the expanding rights of temple organiza¬
tions. In the Kaveri region, as noted, inscriptions of the twelfth
century indicate that sabhas were often unable to resist the shift
of greater economic power to temples which had in the past been
entirely dependent on the assemblies of these villages. Thus,
the Brahman village of Sattanur, although closely linked to the
larger village of Tiruvadutturai, became for a time at least, a
tiruvidaiyattam; that is, its income was endowed to a Vishnu temple
of Tiruvadutturai. This village was therefore under some influence
from the temple.61 A neighbouring Brahman village, Ilachchikudi,
alias Vikramasinga-chaturvedimangalam, appears also to have
made payments to the same temple, at least once on behalf of
Sattanur.62 Uttaramerur was not, of course, completely proof

54 All of these were corporate groups involved in temple administration (Nilakanta

Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 102).
60 Perilamaiyar may have been middle-aged women attached to temples (S.I.T.I.,
‘Glossary’, p. Hi); vTraganatta may refer to Jainas of the village (ibid., p. xciv).
61 101/1925, dated a.d. 1009 in Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 1, p. 513.
62 See ibid.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 163

against this encroachment of temple influence in sabha affairs

judging from the need which this great assembly had to transfer
its interests in the village of Vennakuttanallur to the Saivite shrine
of Ekambam-udaiyar in repayment of a loan.63 However, a
century later, when the temple functionaries (mahesvaras and
sthanattdrs of the Siva temple in Tiruppulivalam, nearby) demanded
that the Uttaramerur mahasabha resume its obligation to maintain
eight temple lamps, according to various endowments of the past
for this purpose, the assembly was able to settle with the temple
managers for a lower schedule of payments.64 Thus, even Uttara¬
merur felt the growing pressure of temple demands by the thirteenth
century.
This discussion of the central Brahman villages of the Chola
period inevitably exaggerates their importance. In all, these great
rural centres might have comprised about one-tenth of all Brahman
settlements and only a minor fraction of the totality of rural settle¬
ments of all sorts. The cultural and religious significance of these
relatively few places obscures the fact that most Brahman settle¬
ments were smaller and more modest in function; many were
shadows — satellites — of those centres of civilization referred to
here as central Brahman villages; and most were more closely
integrated with culture and society of the nadu of which they were
part. Of most Brahman villages, only their names and references to
their Brahman assemblies and Vedic temples distinguish them from
the more important peasant villages of the localities in which they
were. Yet, every Brahman village, however modest and remote, was
a centre of those cultural and social forms which gave to a locality
an essential status element which its peasant people supported to
the fullest extent that their resources permitted. If the Brahman
village w-as a marker of the prosperous, peasant agrarian localities
of the macro region, as has been suggested, then it was no less
a social and cultural marker of the maturity and propriety of the
collection of peasant groups comprising the nattar.
Relations between Brahman villages and the locality peasantry
— nattar — have been touched upon in a variety of ways in this
discussion. These relations are elusive, for they are not the subject
of many inscriptions. Nor should it be expected that these relations
would be elaborated in great detail in stone and copper records

63 68/1898, dated a.d. 1133 in Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 128.

64 67/1898, dated a.d. 1215 in Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 129-30.
164 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of the time. Occasionally, of course, detailed data relating to

grants are provided, but these are exceptional and, even then,
much is left unspecified. Clearly, relationships involving the
distribution of proceeds from arable land was a matter of the
highest importance, and the absence of such details means that
these relationships were either well enough known and fixed by
usage or they were subject to a customary procedure or determina¬
tion that permitted allocation and reallocation of income from the
land without the need of a permanent record. Both of these sup¬
positions are probably correct in some degree. In every peasant
locality, the division of produce among those with rights to a
share would have been well-established among locality folk.
Wide variations in the absolute amounts which might be realized
from shares had to be anticipated owing to several factors: the
variations in cropping patterns and practices, the relationships
between those who tilled and those who exercised dominance
over the land, the shifting relationships between those directly
involved in agricultural production and service groups, and finally,
the relations between those with local dominance over the land
and overlords — great and small — to whom some tribute was
transmitted. The scope for arbitration and adjustment of share
divisions would have had to be considerable. Agricultural output,
then as now, would have been subject to seasonal variations, and
tributary demands would vary according to the exigent require¬
ments of local defence or perhaps the military, or to the enthusiastic
piety of the ruler. Under these circumstances, the conclusion is
inescapable that locality custom and established modes of adjudica¬
tion to deal with the exigent would have obviated the need for
detailed descriptions of many aspects of the agrarian relations
between Brahman villages and the nattar of a locality.
Such references as are occasionally found in inscriptions seem
to bear this out. Most inscriptions record that a donor, usually
well-identified, provided land of an unspecified quality and quantity
in a named village for the benefit of the god of a temple. Where
other kinds of grants are made, there was a similar lack of specificity
about precisely how the grant was to be realized. For example,
many of the grants to temples during the tenth century, and even
later, were to maintain lamps. George Spencer’s analysis of such
procedures is most valuable.65 Grants usually specified the number

65 George W. Spencer, ‘Temple Money-Lending and Livestock Redistribution

 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 165

of sheep or, at times, cattle, whose milk was to yield ghee as the
fuel. At times, grants state that these animals were to be entrusted
with a named village or person in a village whose responsibility
was to supply the temple with the fuel; for the most part, not even
this information is recorded. Lack of specificity about how, in
what amounts, and by whom the gift of land, animals, or money
were to be converted into the ritual service cannot be inferred to
mean that there was indifference about these things. Certainly
the donor cannot have been indifferent, nor should we assume,
were those of the temple in charge of such matters. One can only
conclude that in most cases the procedures for fulfilling such solemn
obligations were well enough known and understood by all that
there was no need to state them in the record of the grant.66 It
was probably sufficient for most pious donors to have the permanent
record of their charity inscribed in stone, leaving to those res¬
ponsible for temple affairs the proper execution of the grant in
accordance with accepted procedures. It is only in the light of such
unwritten and customary arrangements, understood by all of the
locality folk involved in the support of the religious and educational
activities of the Brahman village and temples, that the records of
the Chola period can be understood.
In the larger sense, these unwritten, essentially customary ways
of doing things indicate an important aspect of the relationship
between the Brahman village and the peasantry among whom they
existed. There was mutual confidence and respect between the
two. Nilakanta Sastri, in discussing the relationship between the
sabha and ur of Uttaramerur, has stated that \ . . a vague transla¬
tion of Ur and Urom into “village” and “we, the inhabitants of the
village” is hardly satisfactory’. Pointing out that the ur was an
ancient locality organization, he goes on to argue that this body
of peasants had a commanding voice within the locality in respect
to many issues.67 In several Uttaramerur mahasabha inscriptions,

in Early Tanjore’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, v. 5, pp. 277-93.
66 Alternatively, there is some evidence that such matters were also recorded
on more ephemeral materials, such as palm leaf (e.g. A.R.E., 1961-62, no.449,
a.d. 1106) where it is stated that white ants destroyed the palm leaf record and
thus lost; this kind of procedure may have been followed often. However, to assume
that much was left unwritten appears to be more plausible and conforms more
realistically to what would be expected in an essentially non-literate society which
most of those concerned would have comprised.
67 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, pp. 103-4.
166 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the ur of the locality undertook special responsibilities for temple

endowments which involved the sale of rights over village land by
the ur and the subsequent supervision of the endowment, under the
general control of the sabha.6& In another case, the ur of Uttara-
merur assigned all the dues to which it was entitled from the southern
hamlet, called Ulliyur, to a Saivite temple in that village.69
Where one must differ with Nilakanta Sastri about the relation¬
ship between such great Brahman villages as Uttaramerur and the
locality peasantry is his assumption of the involuntary subordina¬
tion of the peasantry as a consequence of external pressure:

... the simplest explanation of the existence side by side, as in Uttara¬

merur, of both the organizations is to suppose that the Ur was the more
ancient form and that the Sabha came on top of it when, at the will of
some king or chieftain, a considerable number of new Brahman residents
. . . were settled in the village, and endowed with perpetual rights of
property in a part of the village lands.70
There is no evidence to support the argument that the rights con¬
ferred upon Brahmans were extracted by force or the threat of
force from the non-Brahman, peasant people of a locality. On
the contrary, as even Nilakanta Sastri has pointed out, there is
every indication that Brahmans were granted such rights as they
possessed on a wholly voluntary basis by the dominant peasantry.71
Further, the idea of conflict between the Brahman sabha and
the peasant ur, speaking for the locality peasantry, is based upon
the obviously diminished role of ur within the precincts of the
brahmadeya village, This reduced scope of ur functions within a
Brahman village, and presumably the complete elimination of the
ur in some cases, did certainly occur, providing scope for the super¬
visory functions of the committees (variyam) of the sabha. However,
the ur was not simply a village institution in the same sense as the
sabha. The urar were members of a locality social system in which the
village which was granted as brahmadeya was located. In ceasing
to enjoy certain rights in these villages, they did not forfeit their
68 Ibid., pp. 105-6.
69 41/1898, 9th C. in ibid., pp. 122-3.
70 Ibid., p. 104.
71 ‘They [Brahmans] lived on voluntary gifts from all classes . . . and devoted
themselves exclusively to learning, teaching, and writing. They showed themselves
capable of detached thinking on social questions and provided patterns of ethical
and religious conduct [and were] active helpers and disinterested arbitrators. . . .'
(Culture and History of the Tamil, pp. 95-6).
 The Coromandel Brahrnadeya Village 167

prerogatives as members of locality society. The decline of the

ur in Brahman villages did not mean a diminished capacity of its
peasant constituents to exert authority in those settlements and
over those lands beyond the jurisdiction of the sabha. The fallacy
arises from viewing the relations between Brahmans and peasants
within the framework of the individual village, when it was not the
village, but the locality — the nadu — which was the primary
unit of peasant organization. So long as the nattar were capable
of acting together with effectiveness, as they were long beyond the
time of the great Brahman villages, the village unit was a means for
providing requisite self-government to non-peasant groups. The
locality was dominated by peasant folk under the authority of
locality chieftains, themselves drawn from peasant ranks and
dependent upon peasant support. Brahmans were accordingly
granted rights to be exercised under the sabha, and to assume that
such village units were modal in character is to ignore the capability
of the locality peasantry which, in the period after the twelfth
century, showed itself to be increasingly able to exercise authority
separate from such village bodies, on the one hand, and the great
Chola overlords, on the other.
The extent of support for Brahmans and their ritual activities
by the locality peasantry cannot be assessed with any reliability from
existing records. There were variations from place to place in
accordance with the number of Brahman families constituting
beneficiaries of the brahrnadeya, the relative fertility and agricultural
potential of the lands granted, the elaborateness of ritual facilities,
and support from other than local people. Under the terms of the
inscriptional charters, Brahman villages realized their basic support
from a grant of the major portion of income, or ‘melvaram as it was
called, produced from the lands around the newly constituted
Brahman settlement. The melvaram, ‘higher-share’, was that
which had been enjoyed by those with control over the locality of
prosperous settlements from which the Brahman villages were
necessarily created. The actual proportion of output represented by
the melvaram is not specified in inscriptions, and there is no basis
whatever for suggesting some regular proportion of output.72

72 To suppose that the sastric injunction of 1 /6th as the appropriate share to the
king was followed, as some suggest, is baseless. Equally difficult to accept are such
references as 1 /5th for forest land and 1 /3rd for rice land, as specified in the a.d.
1072 inscription of Kulottunga 1, referred to above, as constituting a regular basis
168 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Another portion of income to which reference is made is the

kllydram, ‘lower-share’, or the kudivdram, ‘cultivator’s-share’; this
appears to have gone to those who actually supervised cultivation
and perhaps took part in it. These income shares, vdram, were net
proceeds since there were in addition numerous, other small dues
to which reference is made in the inscriptions of the period which
seemed to be in excess of these shares.73 In most Brahman villages,
it must be supposed, it was the ‘higher-share’ of the net proceeds
from cultivation that went to the Brahman beneficiaries, and the
former cultivators carried out their supervisory activities as before.
This may be inferred from the references to an arrangement some¬
times mentioned in which the previous cultivators are said to have
been removed from the land and the village at the time of being
granted.74
Displacement of those who supervised cultivation and received
the kllydram, or ‘lower-share’, appears to have been unusual.
However, its occurence helps to explain the mention in many of
the mahasabha inscriptions of specialized committees or offices
of the assembly charged with the supervision of various aspects
of cultivation.75 Two of the important committees (vdriyam) of
the Uttaramerur assembly were the tank committee (eri-varivam)
and the garden committee (totta-vdriyam); service on these com¬
mittees was considered a necessary qualification to service on the

for calculating the income of those who could extract a portion of peasant production.
73 1 am grateful to T.V. Mahalingam for permitting me to use a glossary of
dues of this period which runs to 43 typed pages and presents a bewildering array
of charges against peasant production in excess of such regular payments of melvaram
and kTlvaram ("Unit for the Preparation of Topographical List of Inscriptions in the
Madras and Kerala States: Epigraphical Glossary of Terms Relating to Taxes and
other Dues, Customary and Feudal'. Department of Ancient History and Archaeol¬
ogy, University of Madras, Madras, 1967). An important analysis of some of these
terms is found in N. Karashima and B. Sitaraman. 'Revenue Terms in Chola Inscrip¬
tions’. Ajia Afurka Gengo Bunka Kenkyu (Tokyo), no.5 (August 1972). pp. 87-117.
4 This is expressed by the term kudi-ningaya and refers to lands which have been
granted to a temple for its support, S.I.T.I., 'Glossary', pp. xxix-xxx.
75 The term vdriyam is usually translated as committee; however, as Nilakanta
Sastri has pointed out, it is more to be understood as an office for carrying out some
important function of the Brahman settlement. As a committee formally con¬
stituted by the sabha, the vdriyam could be seen more as a formal than functional
institution. In some cases this may have been true, but in others the variyams did
provide supervision to operations with which they were charged; Cola Studies,
p. 133, and v. 14, no.78, p. 50, a.d. 860, for regulating irrigation channels,
and v. 3, no.5, pp. 8-9, a.d. 883, for removing silt from a tank.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 169

annual or standing committe of the assembly (samvatsara-va-

riyam)16 The brahmadeya Tirupparkadal contains a record from
another Brahman village, Kaviri-Pakkam, alias Amaniarayana-
chaturvedimangalam, which refers to the following offices of its
mahasabha: kalani-variyam for the general supervision of cultiva¬
ted lands, eri-variyam for tank supervision; kalihgu-variyam
for the supervision and maintenance of sluices, and tadivaU-
variyam for the supervision of paths and roads around cultivated
fields. These offices are enumerated in an inscription of about
a.d. 960 which records a grant by the brahmadeya Kaviri-Pakkan
to a temple in the larger village of Tiruparkadal of some of its
as that of Uttaramerur of about a.d. 924. In one, the totta- vdriyam,
cultivable waste land, mahjikkam, for reclamation in order to
support a temple service.77 That the mahasabha offices actually
supervised appears clear from a few of the existing records such
or garden officials, were authorized by the assembly to acquire
sufficient land along an important irrigation channel in order to
carry out dredging and repairs; the record states that lands were
purchased and the work completed.78 Where inscriptions speak
of the displacement of the former cultivators, as some do, it may
be presumed that supervision of cultivation was undertaken by
Brahman members of the sabha and, under these circumstances,
kilvdram, as well as the melvaram, would have gone to the assembly.
Supervision of cultivation in most cases remained the preroga¬
tive of those who had held this right prior to the grant of the brahma¬
deya, and these peasants continued to retain a portion of the net
proceeds of cultivation while passing to the sabha that portion
called melvaram.19 Continuity with the older pattern of agrarian
relations was maintained by the persistence of the ur as a corporate

76 Nilakanta Sastri, Cola Studies, p. 174.

77 S I.I., v. 3, no. 156, pp. 32-3.
78 S.I.I., v. 6, no.292, p. 147; also see Subrahmanya Aiyer’s interesting reading
of this inscription in which he takes the paramesvara-vadi to be a road not a channel
as it is usually taken in inscriptions (cf. Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3489; vati, as channel
according to usage in S.I.I. (Historical Sketches . . . , v. 2, pp. 249-51).
79 The term melvaram and mlyatchi both seem to refer to the income which was
taken by those with the superior claim. The particle mel means not only ‘higher’,
‘upper’, or ‘major’, but also ‘superior’ in the sense of priority of entitlement and
‘first’ in the sense of that which is taken first (Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, pp. 3354 and 3356
and S.I.T.I.: ‘Glossary’, pp. xxvii and xxviii; also Gupta, op. cit., p. 192 and
Minakshi, op. cit., p. 138).
170 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

entity within the Brahman village, even if its functions were reduced
by those of the sabha. The relationship between the Brahman
sabha and the peasant ur has properly been called ‘hazy’ by Nila-
kanta Sastri with reference to the best documented Brahman village
which exists — Uttaramerur.80 This relationship appears to be
a one-sided one, favouring the Brahmans, which surely reflected
the fact that, as Nilakanta Sastri has stated, all of the evidence
of the relationship in Uttaramerur date from a time after the village
had become a chaturvedimahgalam and all of the transactions
recorded were those of the sabha. Many of the rights which the ur
or its executive, the cduhganattdr, exercised from the time when
there was no sabha came to be executed by the sabha. Yet, even
in this great Brahman settlement, a taniyur in its own small territory
(tan-kuru), the non-Brahman essentially peasant, assembly con¬
tinued to have an existence which can be glimpsed through the
exclusively Brahman records of the place.
Nilakanta Sastri concludes his discussion of the ur and the
sabha with the assertion that: ‘the ancient Ur by the side of the new
Sabha was secured as a part of the new order’.81 That ‘new order’
centred upon the existence of Brahman settlements throughout the
Coromandel plain, in every peasant locality, enjoying the support
of the dominant peasantry with whom Brahmans had formed
close relations during the Pallava period. Brahman settlements
were linked to each other by common ritual ties and, judging
from the territorialization of Brahman sub-castes, by kinship ties
as well within the localities in which they were; they were also
linked across nadu lines by similar bonds and through the central
place functions which involved not only the multifarious activities
of the sacredotal elite, but those of merchants and artisans as well.
At this time when the fundamental organization of South Indian
society was segmented into many isolated peasant localities, the
central Brahman villages played a significant integrative role.
Possessing a high degree of spatial mobility. Brahman families
were able to move from peasant villages to Brahman villages and
to temple centres; they were invited from places in one part of
the plain to others hundreds of miles away for their particular
ritual or sastric knowledge. In these centuries Brahmans contri-

80 Nilakanta Sastri, Cdja Studies, p. 105.

si Ibid.
 The Coromandel Brahmadeya Village 171

buted much to a macro regional culture which bridged the numerous

social and cultural differences among territorially segmented
peasant peoples.
The Brahman village functioned as a vital hinge in this macro
regional culture. Standing between the great temple centres —
populous towns of often great antiquity as Kanchi and Madurai —
and the majority of Brahmans who lived in small, separate parts
of prosperous peasant villages. Brahman villages of the Coromandel
plain maintained institutions essential for the preservation and
transmission of Indo-Aryan culture. In these settlements, with
control over substantial agrarian resources — a token of the
support of the peasantry among whom they lived — and with the
patronage of locality chieftains and great overlords in Tanjavur,
temples, schools, and mathas of various kinds elaborated and
disseminated the ritual and philosophical doctrines of the age.
Here too, the basic facilities for the pursuit of proper (satvik)
mode of brahmanical life was most readily realizable. Ritual
and social purity according to agamic and sastric proscription
could be maintained in the many peasant villages and the few towns
in which Brahmans lived, of course; but in these places there was
the proximity of many people of low ritual status and the lack of
ritual specialists required for many life-cycle and other ceremonials.
Brahman villages, to be sure, were also pluralistic settlements.
In the original charter of Srivilliputtur, for example, six shares of
the major portion of income from the village were allocated as
penisai vritti, or shares for skilled artisans.82 Vellalas are often
referred to as residents of Brahman villages in Tondaimandalam
and elsewhere.83 Merchants too lived in the great Brahman villages
and participated in the life of the place as distinctive, corporate
elements.84 The largest portion of the non-Brahman population
in Brahman settlements as in others may well have been those who
laboured in the fields of Brahmans and Vellalas as dependents
of these two powerful groups. Such people would have lived in

82 Viraraghavachari, ‘Srivilliputtur Temple’, p. 1.

83 A.R.E., 1909, no.729, 11th C, Madhurantakam-chaturvedimangalam;
A.R.E., 1922, no.20, 11th C., Arinjiyamangalam.
84 A.R.E., 1919, no.399, early 11th C., refers to a merchant of Nellur (Nellore)
as a resident of Muranottamangalam, S.IJ., v. 14, nos.72, 46 of early 10th C. refer
to a merchant and carpenter; also, K.V. Raman, The Early History of the Madras
Region, Amudha Nilayam Private Ltd., Madras, 1959, p. 174.
172 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

hamlets apart from the ceris of the principal settlement — as they

do today — but well within the precincts of the locality dominated
by the Brahman assembly. Finally, in Brahman villages at the
edges of the plain, or deep in the upland plateau, as in Karnataka,
even tribal people frequented, if they did not at times dwell in,
some Brahman villages.85 Notwithstanding its pluralistic charac¬
ter, the Brahman village, better than other possible residential
situations, afforded a unique context for the requirements of the
pious and learned Brahmans of Coromandel, and to the extent
that it is accurate to say that Brahmanical culture and life-styles
were an important element in social models of the macro region,
the Brahman village was a keystone of Coromandel culture because
it was the Brahman place, par excellence.
Life-styles in Brahman villages of the Coromandel plain influen¬
ced the behaviour of those dominant peasants who sought to
separate themselves from others in the countryside. Dietary rules,
language, ritual activities, and the general modes of social interac¬
tion of the dominant peasants of the plain were modelled upon
those of Brahmans among whom they lived. The extent to which
this influence was effective in moulding a set of broad, subregional
variants of respectable peasant culture becomes somewhat clearer
after the twelfth century when dominant peasant groups began to
establish their own ritual and educational centres. These followed
those of the Brahmans but without the participation of the latter.
Peasants also shifted their allegiance in ritual matters from the
sabhas of the Brahmans to temples within and outside the Brahman
villages.

This somewhat late reference of the 14 C. or 15 C. is from an inscription from

the brahmadeya of Bellur alias Vishnuvardhana-chaturvedimangalam in which
a Karnataka tribal toik (Sahara) were mentioned as disciples of Brahman teachers
( Mysore Archaeological Report, 1913-14, p. 6; cited in B.A. Saletore, The Wild
Tribes in Indian History, Motilal Banarsidass, Lahore, 1935, pp. 58-9).
 CHAPTER V

Right and Left Hand Castes

(valarigai and idangai)

The nadu, the basic territorial unit in the South Indian macro
region, gave to the agrarian system of the Chola period a highly
fragmented character, elements of this remain to this day. Culti¬
vated land and the nexus of relationships involving land exercised
a strong centripetal influence upon the structure of social relation¬
ships in South India as in other pre-industrial agrarian contexts.
Added to this, however, are the distinctively regional characteristics
of spatially compressed marriage, kinship, and political relation¬
ships resulting in cores of peasant settlements which were dis¬
continuous and relatively small. These settlement units remained
small and isolated until the thirteenth century in most parts of
the Coromandel plain and even longer in the western uplands,
assuring to the nadu-locality its primacy as a structural unit.
Two factors tended to offset the isolation of the nadu without
diminishing its integrity. One was the network of brahmadeyas
from whence, during the tenth to the twelfth century, emanated
a general, highly aryanized culture spreading from the Coromandel
plain over the entire macro region. These were powerful, corporate
institutions which exercised continuous influence for several
centuries. The other was the emergence, by the eleventh century
at least, of dual social divisions rooted in the numerous nadu
societies but capable of transcending the isolation of these localities.
These were potential social formations which could be activated
for a variety of purposes, but which were not corporate or con¬
tinuous in character. What the Brahman settlements of the region
did to foster integrative cultural bonds among dominant peasant
folk within the macro region, the divisions of the ‘right-hand’
and ‘left-hand’ peoples or castes appeared to do in forging signi¬
ficant social links among a variety of dependent peoples of diverse
localities. In both cases, cultural and social integration beyond the

173
174 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

level of the nadu was the consequence although it was not until
after the thirteenth century that the nadu began to lose some of
its early primacy as the focus of society and culture in the macro
region.
Labels for the dual social divisions have persisted for almost a
millenium. Valangai, the Tamil word for ‘right-hand’ or ‘right-
side’, as a social designation dates from the tenth century when
contingencies of Rajaraja I’s armies, valahgai-velaikkara-padaigal,
are mentioned.1 During the early eleventh century, persons calling
themselves valangai, made endowments to temples as in the case
of the temple at Vembarrur, alias Sri-Cholamattanda-chatur-
vedimangalam in Tanjavur.2 References to groups of the ‘left-hand’
or ‘left-side’, idangai, appear somewhat later; one of the earliest
recorded an affray between people of the right and left hand in
a.d. 1072. This record reads in part:

... in the second regnal year of the king (Kulottunga I) there was a
clash between the right-hand and left-hand communities in which the
village was burnt down, the sacred places destroyed, and the images
of deities and the treasure of the temple (Mummudi-Chola-Vinnagar-
Alvar temple) looted.3

Thus, by the late eleventh century, there is evidence of two broad

and at times hostile divisions of the population in at least some
parts of the Coromandel plain; shortly it was to cover almost
the whole of Tamil country. These divisions appear also to have
existed in other parts of the macro region at about the same time
though there is less convincing inscriptional evidence. In southern
Karnataka, the equivalent Kannada terms for right and left-
hand, balagey and edagey, were used as designations for the divi¬
sion.4 Other designations later used among Kannada speakers
were: desa, for right-hand people and nadu for those of the left-
hand division.5 Among Telugu-speaking people of the macro

1 V. Venkayya, S I.I., v. 2, "Introduction’, p. 10; C.S. Srinivasachari, "The Origin

of the Right and Left Hand Caste Divisions', J.A.H.R.S., v. 4 (1929), p. 80.
2 v. 2, p. 1287, 341/1907, dated a.d. 1014.
3 A.R.E., 1936-7, para. 27; also summarized in Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas,
p. 551.
4 C. Hayavadana Rao (ed.), Mysore Gazetteer, v. 1, Government Press. Ban¬
galore. 1927, p. 178; L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes, v. 2,
Mysore University, Mysore, 1935, p. 114; L. Rice, Mysore, v. 1, p. 222.
5 Rice, Mysore, v. 1, p. 224. He reports that the term pete was used in place of
the term nadu.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 175

region, slightly different designations were used. One, kampulu

(literally ‘protector’ but in common usage, ‘agriculturist’), appears
to have had the same meaning as the terms used in Tamil country
and Karnataka for the right-hand designation while the terms
pahchahanamvaru and pahchanulu were the same as the left-hand
division elsewhere.6 The latter term in Telugu inscriptions refers
to five artisan-trader groups usually consisting of goldsmiths,
blacksmiths, braziers, and stone-and-wood sculptors, hence, pahchd,
or five.7 In later centuries especially, but apparently even in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, another way of referring to the
dual division among Telugu speakers was by their sectarian affi¬
liations. Adherents to Vishnu worship. srTvaisnavas, being the
counterpart of the right division and Siva adherents allegedly
corresponding to the left division.8
Analysis of the origins and functions of the dual divisions of
peoples of the macro region have posed difficult problems. Though
the subject of serious scholarly speculation for almost a century,9
the origins of the divisions remain obscure. Classical poetry
contains no references to the divisions, and the terms have little,
if any, contemporary currency.10 A note on origins is appended
to this chapter. It has proven just as difficult to understand the
functions of the right and left divisions, for the dual divisions
resist analysis according to such Chola cultural categories as
caste, sect, and territorial (nadu) affiliation.

6 R. Narasimha Rao, Corporate Life in Medieval Andhradesa, Secunderabad,

1967, pp. 110-23; S. Chandrasekhara Sastri, ‘Economic Conditions Under the
Hoysalas’, The Half-Yearly Mysore University Journal, v. 2 (1928), pp. 215-16.
7 Narasimha Rao. op.cit., pp. 56-63.
8 N. Subha Reddi, ‘Community Conflict among the Depressed Castes of Andhra’,
Man in India, v. 30, no.4 (Oct.-Dec. 1950), p. 4; Narasimha Rao notes the use of
LSrivai$nulu' in groupings of what appears a right-hand character in medieval
Telugu records (op.cit., p. 116). However, see contra, Sidney Nicholson, ‘Social
Organization of the Malas — An Outcaste Indian People', Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, v. 56, (Jan.-June, 1926),
p. 91: ‘most Right-hand castes are Saivite in faith . . .’ This discrepancy cannot
be explained by regional variation since the references appear to be to the Rayala-
seema portion of south-western Andhra.
9 Cf. the work of Oppert which was published in 1893; notice two somewhat
earlier, brief, and less analytic discussions in the Indian Antiquary. J.S.F. Mackenzie,
‘Caste Insignia’, v. 4, (Nov., 1876), pp. 344-6 and James F. Kearns. ‘The Right-
Hand and Feft-Hand Castes’, v. 5 (Dec., 1876), pp. 353-4.
10 Though she reports that the dual divisions are not known to more than a few
176 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

While each of these categories may be found at times to have

been related to the dual divisions, the divisions are essentially
different. Thus, ranking seems present at times, as in an a.d. 1227
inscription in which newly admitted groups to the division in a
part of modern South Arcot are declared The eyes and the hands
of the idahgai\ body images suggesting the performance of service
for other members of the division.11 Generally, however, the
divisions give the appearance of being non-ranked groupings of
local social groups. Also, while certain elements of sect organi¬
zation may be seen at times in the references to an idangai perceptor
or a mandapam, the divisions are not essentially religious groupings.
Finally, while the divisions have territorial focus—there being no
macro region-wide divisions as such — that territory appears
always to have been greater than the nadu.
The categories of caste, sect, and territory fail to help in an
understanding of the dual divisions in South India because the
divisions are different from each and all, and because, at least in
the early period under consideration, the scope of these three
social categories was very highly localized whereas the dual divisions
appear to be essentially supra-local in character. It is therefore
little wonder that where the divisions have been considered as
something to explain by historians, these divisions are often treated
together with other, so-called, ‘corporate' institutions in a modest
genre of historical literature dealing with what is called, ‘corporate
But, two persistent features of the early right-left divisions
militate against their dismissal as ‘corporate groups' in presumed
ensemble with other like groups of a caste, sectarian, or territorial
in kind. One is the importance of references to the assimilation
of previously outside people to the left division and their alliance
with other generally similar groups; the other is the military and
life' or ‘local government’.12

of her informants, Brenda E.F. Beck made the conception a central organizing
principle of her recent. Peasant Society in Kohku, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, 1972. Commenting on her usage, Dumont in Homo Hierarchies,
p. 288, called it ‘sui generis’.
11 A.R.E., 1940-1, no.184; discussed below more fully.
12 The best known of these for early India generally are: R.C. Majumdar, Cor¬
porate Life in Ancient India, Calcutta. 1918 and R.K. Mookerji. Local Government
in Ancient India, Oxford, 1919; for South India: R. Narasimha Rao, Corporate
Life in Medieval Andhradesa, Secunderabad, 1967 and F.S. Dikshit, Local Self-
Government in Medieval Karnataka, Dharwar, 1964.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 177

colonization ventures with which both divisions of the Chola

period were associated. Together, these two features of assimila¬
tion/alliance and military/colonization convey the sense of a social
order which is not fixed in terms of its structural constituents
nor in space, but a social order which is in flux, one expanding
from its relatively isolated local forms of organization to ever
wider forms of societal and cultural integration. The corporate
imagery of the existing historiography with its presumption of
fixedness and stability around bureaucratic kingship, caste, and
guild or its conception of conflict resolution through factious
groupings fails to appreciate the dynamism of Chola society.
Viewed as a ‘corporate institution’, the dual division is looked
upon as guild-like, or as a sreni, i.e. a multicaste body of traders,
artisans, and agriculturists. This guild conception is based upon
the well-recognized association of the right division with agriculture
and related activities, including trade and some processing of
agricultural commodities, as well as the equally consistent asso¬
ciation of left division groups with artisan-trader activities. The
guild or sreni notion also fits well with the general Indian institution
usually called ‘the jajmdni system'13 — localized exchanges of goods
and services centred on the ritual and economic dominance of
agricultural patrons (jajman, Sanskrit: yajamdna) and their clients.
However, any essentially cooperative and interdependent model,
whether guild/sreni or jajmdni, fails,, to deal with the often con¬
flictful relations between the divisions which are attested in his¬
torical records from at least the eleventh century, as noted above.
Thus, some scholars, cued by conflict between the right and left
divisions, have applied the term ‘faction’ following the usage of
some British administrators.14
‘Faction’ denotes an alignment of persons for the purpose of
attaining some objective in competition with others.15 Conflict

13 See the excellent summary discussion by Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, pp. 97-
108.
14 McKim Marriott, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions of
India and Pakistan, Deccan College Monograph Series, no.23, Deccan College,
Poona, 1960, pp. 46-51, where he speaks of 'factional lines of ritual patronage and
alliance’. J.H. Hutton speaks of 'factious rivalry', Caste in India, Oxford, 1963,
p. 67. The term is also used in the following of the Madras Gazetteers: Salem,
F.J. Richards, pp. 125-6; Trichinopoly, F.R. Hemingway, pp. 92-3.
15 See Alan R. Beals and Bernard J. Siegel, Divisiveness and Social Conflict:
178 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

is the business of factions, and the term fits, most aptly, certain
of the activities with which the right and left divisions in South
India have been associated during recent centuries certainly, and
possibly from a much earlier time.
As sociological elements, factions have been viewed in many
ways by modern scholars, though all might agree with the humorous
observation of Nicholas that ‘the faction is a troublesome form
of social organization’.16 Factional alignments can and have been
relatively persistent in some societies, particularly at times of
special internal strain and external stress.17 And, however un¬
stable they may be, factional systems can achieve some important
objectives through means not usually considered appropriate and
often in contravention to norms regarding conflict resolution.
This would seem especially true in cultures which emphasize
‘harmony and unanimity’ or where ‘cooperation’ among social
groups is given high value as it is in caste culture according to
many scholars.18 Finally, even if factions may be evanescent,
‘their component cliques and families may be stable groups’.19
Accordingly, the dual division of social groups in the South Indian
macro region may plausibly be seen to lend itself to analysis as
factional systems even as it is recognized that there were important
changes in the composition, purposes, and context in which the
divisions operated in the course of perhaps eight centuries.
Neither ‘faction’ nor ‘guild’ appear fully satisfactory terms for
discussion of the early phase of the dual division of social groups
in South India. If one were to adopt Nicholas’ definition of faction
— ‘a noncorporate political conflict group, the members of which
are recruited by a leader on the basis of diverse ties’20— it would

An Anthropological Approach, O.U.P., Bombay, 1967, pp. 21ff; Lewis Coser, The
Functions of Social Conflict, Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1956; Raymond Firth,
‘Factions in Indian and Overseas Societies; Introduction’, British Journal of So¬
ciology, 8, no.4 (Dec., 1957), p. 292.
16 Ralph W. Nicholas, ‘Factions: A Comparative Analysis', in M. Banton (ed.),
Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, London, 1969, p. 21.
17 These positions are examined in Beals and Siegel, op.cit., p.166.
18 Ibid., p. 158.
19 Ibid., p. 166.
20 Ralph Nicholas, ‘Structures of Politics in the Villages of Southern Asia', in
Structure and Change in Indian Society, eds. Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn,
Aldine Publishing, Co., Chicago, 1968, p. 278. Note the difference here from
Appadurai who appears to reserve the term ‘faction’ for manifestations of right-
 Right and Left Hand Castes 179

be necessary to reject the term during the Chola period or at any

time prior to the seventeenth century. The dual social divisions
in South India were not solely nor primarily conflict groups at
this earlier time, and, while ties among each of the divisions may
have been varied, the core of the interests defining each are per¬
sistent and clear. Moreover, to the extent that factions may be
viewed as ‘ego-centred’, essentially individual-participant ‘quasi-
groups’, as Mayer has called them, the South Indian dual divisions
would not qualify. The constituent units of the divisions are always
localized caste groups.21
As neither the concept of ‘faction’ nor ‘guild’ which have been
used to describe the right and left divisions appear to fit certain
of the important characteristics of the divisions, some other way
of speaking about them is necessary. The recent essay about the
right and left division by Arjun Appadurai postulates a cultural
model to deal with the conflict of right and left castes, especially
in Madras city during the seventeenth century where he also uses
the concept of faction. However, for the Chola period, the stress
upon conflict is misconceived. Conflict appears a minor aspect
of the divisions during this early period however important it
becomes later. To emphasize conflict between the divisions at
this early period is to impose later characteristics upon the divisions
of the Chola period and thus to distort an understanding of the
institution in Chola times.
Most Chola inscriptions pertaining to the valangai and idangai
do not refer to conflict, but to the typical subject matter of in¬
scriptions: gifts to Brahmans and temples. From these references,
we learn of various kinds of groups cooperating beyond their local
bases. Among the most prominent were the yalahgai-masenai22
and idahgai-masenai:2i the great armies of the right-hand and
left-hand. Trade activities and especially relations with important

left conflict in Madras city (Arjun Appadurai, Right and Left-Hand Castes in South
India’, I.E.S.H.R., v. 11 [June-Sept. 1974]).
21 Adrian Mayer, ‘Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies’, The Social
Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed. M. Banton, Association of Social Anthro¬
pologists Monograph, Edinburgh, 1966, p. 116.
22 A.R.E. 1933, no.232 and 233 discussed by K.S. Vaidyanathan, "The Members
of the South India Army (senai): Their Assembly and Its Functions’, QJMS. XXXII
(1941-2), pp. 301-3.
23 A.R.E. 1961-2, no. 478 in the script of the eleventh century, from Channapatna
taluk. Bangalore district.
180 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

itinerant trade organizations were other reasons for extra-local

cooperation among locality peoples. Thus there are the numerous
inscriptions referring to nanadesi merchants meeting together with
local merchants of the nadu and nagara, that is merchants of
ordinary agricultural villages of a locality as well as special trade
settlements, including valangai weavers.24 And, finally, there are
rare Chola records of agreements by lower caste people of the
valangai and idangai divisions, in some places at least, for resistance
against ‘the Brahmanas Vellalans who hold the proprietory rights
(kdni) over the lands of the district’.25
The divisions are thus seen not as ‘absolute’ social entities,
for example, as ‘super castes’ as suggested by the terms ‘right-hand
castes’ and ‘left-hand castes’, but as ‘relative’ or ‘potential’ groupings
of established local groups. Such aggregate groupings were capable
of dealing with extra local problems beyond the scope and capability
of existing locality institutions of the time and capable of being
called into existence in response to a variety of problems, including
conflicts, requiring extra-local cooperation.26 At any time and
place, the composition of right and left divisions would vary ac¬
cording to the exigent condition which brought them into being,
and they would lapse into latency with the passing of that condition.
Viewed as relative or potential groupings rather than as enduring
corporate ones (e.g. guilds) or as ad hoc conflict groupings (i.e.
factions), the dual divisions of Chola times assume an anachronisti-
cally modern appearance. That is, the valangai and idangai divi¬
sions of the Chola period appear as broad ethnic coalitions which
are neither internally ranked in the manner of castes into subordi¬
nate sub-castes nor externally ranked with respect to the other
bloc or division. Rather, in the manner of horizontally integrated
South Indian caste associations of the recent past — the Nadars
and Vanniyakula Kshatriyas27—an absolute quality is claimed
on the basis of birth into a named group and the ascriptive right

24 A.R E. 1912, no.342 and para. 25/1913.

23 A.R.E. 1913, no. 34 at Aduturai, Tiruchchirapalli, probably in the time of
Kulottunga III (a.d. 1178-1218).
26 As noted by Marshall Sahlins, ‘The Segmentary Lineage: An Organization
of Predatory Expansion', in Comparative Political Systems, ed. Ronald Cohen
and John Middleton, New York, 1967, pp 105-6.
27 Summarized by Lloyd I. and Susanne H. Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition:
Political Development in India, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967,
pp. 36-64.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 181

to certain emblems and insignia. Hierarchical bases of status or

moral condition are ignored. The whole or part of such large
groupings are capable of acting together for certain purposes,
but they do not lose their localized bases of organization and,
typically, intermarriage among the constituent groups does not
occur.
The need for such supra-local coalitions was particularly great
until well into the thirteenth century by which time urbanization
provided a reliable supra-local focus at least for leading artisan-
trader groups, usually designated ‘left-hand’ people. By the same
time, the widespread merging of nar/w-localities into the periyanadu,
or great nadu, provided for collaboration among leading agrarian
peoples — those of the right-hand — on a supra-local level. Prior
to the thirteenth century, however, the dual divisions, with their
varied constituencies from place to place, represented perhaps
the sole means by which groups other than Brahmans and some
military chiefs could on occasion transcend the borders of the
«adu-locality.
One of the major reasons for seeing the dual divisions as ‘relative’
or ‘potential’ structural entities, rather than ones which had an
absolute (i.e. ‘corporate’) existence in particular places is that
neither division finds mention among those groups named in the
detailed Chola inscriptions dealing with matters requiring the
assent of or the cooperation from important local groups. In
brahmadeya inscriptions, these local bodies inevitably include the
following: the nattar\ assemblies of neighbouring brahmadeyas
represented by their spokesmen (or headmen), the brahmadeya-
kilavar; assemblies of villages («r), part of whose income was
previously granted to support Hindu temples (devaddna), Buddhist
and Jaina shrines (paUiccanda); assemblies of villages which were
trade centres and under merchants’ control, nagarattar or naga-
ragalitar; and assemblies of villages (ur), some portion of whose
income was diverted to other forms of special purposes (kanimur-
uttu and vettiperu).28 Other Chola inscriptions refer to other
bodies, including kil kalanaigal, who are described as including
carpenters (taccan), blacksmiths (kollar), goldsmiths (tattar), and
koliyar (weavers?29).30 Seen in these references are the various

28 These terms are taken from ‘The Larger Leiden Plates of Rajaraja I, E.I.,
■v. 22, p. 258.
29 kaulika appears to be the Sanskrit word upon which the Tamil term koliyar
182 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

caste groups comprising the agrarian-centred division of the

valangai in Tamil country and the mobile artisans of the idangai,
but there is no mention of these divisions themselves.
Hence, rather than use terms such as ‘faction’ or ‘guild’ to
speak of the dual division, the term ‘division’ will be used. The
meaning attached to the term ‘division’ is that of the occasional
combination of agrarian-centred groups, on the one hand, and
artisan-traders on the other at levels beyond the localities in which
both kinds of groups lived.
One of the most important functions of the idangai division
was the assimilation of groups to the expanding order of the
Chola period. From the tenth to the thirteenth century new
tracts of land not previously committed to sedentary agriculture
were being brought into the expanding ambience of the Chola
agrarian order. Whether by conquest or by the peaceful extension
of the Chola agrarian system, people of these new tracts were
brought into the dual divisions, and the groups thus included in
the dual divisions might be agriculturists who had previously
practiced shifting cultivation or they might be artisans or they
might be any one of the various kinds of occupational groups
which were not already aligned with one or the other dual divisions.
In either case, the newly recruited groups could henceforth make
alliance claims upon others in their division and even cause the
division in any place to change from potential to actual groupings
for a variety of purposes.
This process of assimilation is well exemplified in two early
thirteenth century idangai inscriptions. The first, from the Ut-
tamacholan temple of Urrattur, fifteen miles north of the Kaveri
River (Lalgudi taluk, Tiruchirapalli), is dated a.d. 1218 and reads
in part:

In order to kill the demons (that disturbed) the sacrifices of Kasyapa

[the priest of Visvakarma, patron god of artisans] we were made to appear
from the agni-kunda (sacrificial fire pit) and while we were thus protecting
the said sacrifice, Chakravartin Arindama honoured the officiating sage
priests by carrying them in a car and led them to the Brahmana colony
(newly founded by himself). On this occasion we were made to take our
seats on the back of the car and to carry the slippers and umbrellas of

is based (Sircar, Epigraphical Glossary, p. 159 and Monier-Williams, Sanskrit

Dictionary, p. 317, where another meaning is ‘left-hand' sakta worshippers).
30 A.R.E. 1888, no.118; a Chidambram inscription of c. a.d. 1036. (Rajendra
I, 24th year); see Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 1. p. 562.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 183

these sages. Eventually with these Brahmana sages we were made to

settle down in the [same] villages. . . . We received the clan name idangai
because the sages (while they got down from their cars) were supported
by us on their left side. The ancestors of this our sect having lost their
credentials and insignia in the jungles and bushes, we were ignorant of
our origins. Having now once learnt it, we the members of the 98 subsects
enter into a compact, in the fortieth year of the king [Kulottunga III]
that we shall hereafter behave like the sons of the same parents and what
good and evil may befall any one of us, will be shared by all. If anything
derogatory happens to the idangai class, we shall jointly assert our rights
until we establish them. It is also understood that only those who, during
their congregational meetings to settle communal disputes, display the
insignia horn, bugle, and parasol shall belong to our class. Those who
have to recognize us now and hereafter, in public, must do so from our
distinguishing symbols — the feather of the crane and the loose hanging
hair. The horn and the conch shell shall also be sounded in front of us
and the bugle blown according to the fashion obtaining among the
idangai people. Those who act in contravention to these rules shall be
treated as the enemies of our class. Those who behave differently from
the rules (thus) prescribed for the conduct of the idangai classes shall
be excommunicated and shall not be recognized as srutiman (members
of the community). They will be considered slaves of the classes opposed
to us.31

The second record is from Varanjuram (Vriddhachalam taluk,

South Arcot) and is dated a.d. 1227. It reads:

We, the nadus [assemblies of eleven localities] having assembled at the

village of Tiruvalanjuram ... got the following resolution engraved on
the Tiruvalanjuram-udaiyar temple: ‘the malaiyamakkal and the natta-
makka] of these nadus shall henceforth be admitted into the idahgai-
talam [left hand class of men]; they shall be considered the eyes and hands
of the idangai; if we violate this resolution, we shall be considered as
wrong-doers to the caste. 32

The resolution was endorsed by Brahmans, and other leaders of

the locality as well as by those calling themselves of the idangai-

31 A.R.E. 1913, para. 39; summarized by Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 551-2.
Also note the interesting comment on this record by D.C. Sircar, The Guhilas of
Kiskindha, Sanskrit College, Calcutta, pp. 22-3.
32 The nadus mentioned are: irungeRippadi, kutmra-kunam, tunda-nadu, tirumu-
naippddi, cehgunra-nddu, Vanakappddi adaiy-nddu, pahgala-nddu melkai ai-nddu,
gahgappddi and paranurru-nadu. Nilakanta Sastri also refers to this record -
184th/1940-1—which he locates in the Kallakkurichchi taluk of South Arcot
(The Colas, p. 552); the text cited above was from a translation by Y. Subbarayalu,
research scholar. Department of Archaeology, University of Madras.
184 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

tcdam including kaikkohrs and saliyar (weavers), vanigars (mer¬

chants) and others.33
These idangai records of the thirteenth century presume the
existence of an established supra-local social entity into which new
groups could be initiated. In the first inscription it is not clear
who those of the lost credentials and insignia were, though the
'ignorance’ about origins and the references to the jungle suggest
persons who, in other circumstances, would be low in ritual status.
Those mentioned in the second inscription are more readily identi¬
fiable and interesting cases to which reference shall be made shortly.
A point which must be taken up first pertains to the apparent
lack of emphasis upon stratified relations within either the idangai
or the valangai division. It is as if the divisions were homogeneous,
pluralistic aggregates in which all constituent groups shared a
common status and common symbols of rank. There are two ways
in which this apparent homogeneity among the constituent units
of the divisions is expressed. One way is in shared natural sub¬
stance, that is in attributes ascribed to the divisions as living things
which possess unique endowed qualities arising from how they
came into existence. Thus, according to a later source, the Idangai-
valangai Puranam of a.d. 1692-3,34 both divisions were created or
brought into being by the actions of gods. In one context, Siva and
Indra are made responsible for the left-hand division and Brahma
and a rishi (bhrigu, Tamil: piruka) for the right-hand division;
in another context, the divisions are seen as the result of a disagree¬
ment between Siva, as Paramesvara, and his consort Parvati.
More specifically, the Idangai-valangai Puranam assigns to each
division different somatic markers. To the left division, the most
important are blood, skin, and eye-balls; to the right division,
bones, nerves, and brain. The other symbolic way in which the
constituent units of the divisions appear to have been accorded equal
status and thus to constitute a pluralistic aggregate of equivalent
units, was in the common emblems each division possessed even
though each constituent unit had its own emblems. In the Urratur
inscription above, several insignia were given prominence. Ac¬
cording to the Idangai-valangai Jatiyar Varalaru of the Mackenzie

33 In place of the word, idahgai-talam, Nilakanta Sastri has the word, idahgait-
tanattom or ‘other Idangai people of the area' {The Colas, p.552).
34 Dated in 1615 of the saka era or 4794 of the kalTyuga; Oriental Manuscripts
Library, University of Madras, Mss. no. D. 2793.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 185

collection, the ninety-eight castes of the right division had common

emblems of the ‘Brahmani’ kite (Garuda?), the half-human, half¬
animal form (‘purusha-mirukam’), the elephant, ass, and eagle, while
the left division had the tiger, fox, the male bird (pdtu), sword,
crow, ‘Brahmani’ kite, horse, lion, and a mythological animal with
a face bearing features of the lion and elephant (ya/i).35
Such shared insignia and symbols of common ‘natural’ attributes
among units of the divisions may appear to imply ‘corporateness’
in the sense that castes are corporate. That is, the dual divisions
may be supposed to have been something like ‘super-castes’ with
the same quality of durable and diffused solidarity which charac¬
terized a caste. However, this would be incorrect. Rather, the
divisions were groupings with quite specific elements of solidarity,
such as possessed by sectarian groups. The religious sect, with
certain exceptions like the Lingayats, was comprised of persons
of many castes (though excluding the very lowest castes), but strati¬
fied interactions were irrelevant when sect votaries acted in religious
contexts. Thus, in the confines of the sect centre, all sect members,
regardless of their caste affiliations, interacted as equals in ritual
activities.
Differences between the dual divisions and sects are important,
however. The religious sect was an absolute, not relative social
form. Its enduring character was sampradaya, a tradition passed
from sectarian leader, acharya to disciples; its institutional base
was the matha or sect centre. In relation to the sampradaya and
the matha all laic members suspended their caste identities though
such identities obviously continued. Similarly, the dual divisions
were composed of localized caste/occupational groups who interac¬
ted according to caste norms in their own localities. These norms
could be altered to enable joint action with others in a broad,
essentially occupational, alignment on a variety of matters. Co¬
operation in military ventures and in support of religious institu¬
tions is how the divisions are usually seen. These other activities
must be seen as ancillary to the maintenance of occupational

35 Idarigai-valarigai Jatiyar Varalaru [History of the Left Hand and Right Hand
Castes], the Mackenzie Mss., Oriental Mss. Library, University of Madras, no.R.
1572. This is undated; it may be of the eighteenth century. In the enumeration
of insignia for the divisions provided to the Chingleput magistrate Coleman in 1809,
some twenty were described as appropriate for all or any right division caste and
slightly fewer for castes of the left division (J.S.F. Mackenzie, op.cit., p. 345).
186 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

interests at the supralocal level and, of course, at the local level

where it most counted. In disregarding caste distinctions among
their constituent units, the dual divisions were not denying caste
in the sense that sects did in obedience to bhakti principles. Reli¬
gious bodies of the medieval period often affirmed the supernatural
order prevailing at the sect temple centre by suspending the ‘natural’
order of caste relationships. For the right and left divisions it is
rather that caste, whether viewed as localized ethnic groups or
as ritually ranked parts of a moral order, was not salient for the
supra-local, occupational functions of the divisions, at least at this
early time. Thus, caste groups are mentioned, but appear to have
little to do with the way in which the divisions were transformed
from latency to deal with the issues they did.
The endorsement of Brahmans and other prestigious members
of local society in the Varanjuram record cited above does not
clarify the matter of internal stratification of the divisions. Along
with Brahmans, referred to in that inscription as andanar, there
were ekayar, i.e. ascetics, and niyayattars, i.e. local persons of
prominence.36 Weavers and merchants who endorsed the resolution
have the appearance of being persons of wealth, but there is no
definite attribution of their superior status in the record. Since
Brahmans are outside the divisions in most accounts, the association
of Brahmans in both the inscriptions tends to confirm the equality
of status that existed among the constituent castes of the divisions.
It is as attendants of 'Brahmana sages' or through the endorsing
function of Brahmans that the claim of respectability and member¬
ship in one of the divisions is made and justified.37
The absence of references to stratified divisions within the dual
divisions does not eliminate the possibility of internal strata.
For some scholars such strata appear at times to exist. References
to groups like the kaikkolar and other weavers and merchants,
who are mentioned along with Brahmans in the endorsement,
suggest this to C.S. Srinivasachari. In his pioneering work on
the dual divisions he states that there were indeed strata and that
the divisions reveal a process of‘low castes striving for higher social

S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. xliv.

37 Attention is again drawn to Appadurai's recent discussion, especially his
iteration and analysis of various accounts of the origins of the divisions (op. cit.,
p. 233 flf).
 Right and Left Hand Castes 187

positions’.38 Further support for this view is provided by the

nattamakkal folk discussed in the Varanjuram inscription.
Thirty years after the date of the Varanjuram inscription cited
above, the nattamakkal claimed for themselves the status of
pumiputtirar, ‘sons of the soil’, in two inscriptions from Vengur and
Tirukkoyilur, near the site of the Varanjuram record.39 The title
pumiputtirar is significant since it is claimed by Vellalas, the do¬
minant peasants of the right division, the valangai. For the natta-
mdkkal, their membership in the left division but lately attained
(i.e. a.d. 1227) this was an ambitious claim indeed! But such claims
become more common later.40 That the nattamakkal of modern
South Arcot made this claim is supported by usage in Jaffna,
northern Sri Lanka, where nattamakkal are called ‘kings of Vellalas
(orusar veldla)' indicating that those migrating from what is now
South Arcot to Sri Lanka during the medieval period may have
carried this relatively exalted designation.41 However, during the
nineteenth century, the nattamakkal as well as the malaiyamdkkal
mentioned in the a.d. 1227 inscription were still closely linked
territorially and in marriage.42 This suggests that while the plains¬
men (nattaman) of this part of South Arcot might have sought to
differentiate themselves from the hill folk (malaiman) by arrogating
to themselves titles such as pumiputtirar, and by association.

38 Srinivasachari, op. cit., p. 84.

39 Vengur inscription is 206/1936-7, commented upon in para. 43 of A.R.E. 1936-7;
the Tirukkoyilur record is 117/1900 and is discussed in the same place as well as
I M P., v. 1, no.845, p. 226.
40 Buchanan cites evidence of this in recording the disputes between the right-
hand groups of Komati and Pancham Banijiga merchants, the former claiming
leadership of the division on the basis of being Vaisyas whereas the Banijiga were
but Sudras (op. cit., v. 1, p. 80).
41 Tamil Lexicon, v. 4, p. 2149, 'nattamakkal'. The association of these people
with Sri Lanka is further supported by an inscription of a.d. 1518 and one of a.d.
1425 in which Vanniyar warriors are referred to as conquerors of Sri Lanka (in
T.N. Subramaniam, ‘Fresh Light from a Tiruvottiyur Inscription', Seminar on
Inscriptions [Kal-vettu Karutlarahgu], ed. R. Nagaswamy, Books India Private
Ltd., Madras, 1968, p. 197). Further confirmation of the connection of Vanniyars
with Sri Lanka comes in a pur ana allegedly composed in a.d 1615 in which a warrior,
Devakirtti, ‘emperor in all countries where Vanniyars lived, seized Lanka and Vengi’
idangai-valartgai puranam [Ancient Story of Left and Right Castes] (Oriental Mss.
Library, Madras, doc. no. D. 2793). Nattamakkal are associated with the caste
of Vanniyar through their connection with pa/lis.
42 Thurston, op. cit., v. 7, p. 206.
188 Peasant Slate and Society in Medieval South India

Vellala-like status, this claim did not hold. The naltamdkkal

remained a peasant people below the status of the Vellala and were
often identified as part of the Palli caste, a peasant group incon¬
gruously of the left division.43 Hence, if status differences were
at times stressed, these were not always successful.
Military actions by the dual divisions occupy a conspicuous
place in the early records of the divisions and pose most sharply
the question of the potential or relative character of the divisions.
There are references to the ‘great army’ (masenai) of valangai and
idangai, and to fighting men called velaikkara which comprised
part of the Chola army in Sri Lanka during the late eleventh century
according to a Tamil inscription at Polonnaruva.44 Also, inscrip¬
tions of the middle of the eleventh century from Tiruvenkadu in
Tanjavur and Tiruvallam in North Arcot refer to grants by mem¬
bers of both divisions to temples, notwithstanding the fact that in
other places, notably Kanchi, though perhaps not at this early
time, the two divisions used different temples, halls, and dancing
girls.45
The term valangai is first encountered in connection with military
contingents under the first of the great Cholas, Rajaraja I. Analysis
of Chola military organization, granted the meagreness of the
evidence, leads to the conclusion that the designation valangai
could only have referred to armed contingents raised and com¬
manded by the dominant peasantry of the Chola heartland of
Cholamandalam and Tondaimandalam. During the time of Raja¬
raja 1 (985-1014) and Rajendra I (1014-44), inscriptions from
Tanjavur enumerate regiments of the army of which almost one-
half (thirteen of thirty-one) were entitled valangai,46 Other forces

4'Ibid., 212. However, the Mackenzie Collection ‘History of Left Hand and
Right Hand Castes' (tn. 34), refers to nattamakkal and malavmakkal as right-hand
groups.
44 K S. Vaidyanathan, ‘The Members of the Ancient South Indian Army (Senai):
Their Assembly and its Function’, QJMS xxxii (1941-2), pp. 301-3; E.I., v. 18,
no.38, ‘Polonnaruva Inscription of Vijayabahu I', pp. 330-8; A.R E. 1961-2, no.478,
11th C.
45 S.ET.E. v. 3, pt 2, 63. Oppert (op. cit.) refers to the special place of Kanchi
(p. 62) and also mentions that valangai and idangai worshippers at the Selvapillai
Temple of Melkote were given different hours for worship; also mentioned in A.R.E.,
1921, para. 47.
46 The following are the terms mentioned in the Tanjavur inscriptions related
to military units of Rajaraja I; each is followed by the words, terinda-valangai-
 Right and Left Hand Castes 189

included household troops and troops drawn from territories on

the margins of Chola country,1vadugan from the northern, Telugu,
tracts and malaiyalar from the hill borders of modern Kerala in
the west.47 These forces serving the Cholas bore the designation
velaikkarar, and the valangai were further identified by the addition
to their titles of one of the many pseudonymns taken by Rajaraja
and a connective word, terinda, or ‘selected’.48 Thus, there was the
unit called: nittavinoda-terinda-valangai-velaikkarappadaigal, ‘Nit-
tavinoda’s [Rajaraja’s] select right-hand warrior regiment’.49
The meaning of velaikkarar has vexed historians for half a
century, and it is still not clear. That it refers to warriors is unam¬
biguous from the contexts in which it appears in inscriptions and
literary sources of the tenth to the twelfth centuries. But ‘whose’
soldiers they were is still at issue. The central problem involving
this term is whether the velaikkarar were special and permanent
troops of the Chola overlords or whether they were enlisted for
extraordinary or occasional military service as is suggested by the
velai, one of the meanings of which is ‘occasional’.50 If they
were the permanent troops of the Chola overlords, the valangai
units cannot simultaneously be considered local peasant militia
units. Alternatively, if the valangai velaikkarar were recruited to the
military adventures of the Cholas from existing military units among
the peasantry — controlled and led by the peasantry — then the-
association of the valangai with the peasantry would appear as
strong in the early period as it is in the lists of the eighteenth century.
The prevailing view of the velaikkarar is stated most clearly by
Nilakanta Sastri. He says that they ‘were the most permanent
and dependable troops in the royal service . . . they were ever
ready to defend the king and his cause with their lives when occasion
{velai) arose’.51 This view is supported by the editor of the Tamil

velaikkarar except the first two in which the terms vakingai-velaikkdrappadigal

only appear. These are: perundanattu-, sirudananu-; and aragiyu-sora-, chanda-
parakrama-, ilaiyaraja-, kshatriyasikhamani-, muratavikramabharana-, rajaraja-,
nittavinoda-, rdjakan(htrava-, rajavinoda-, ranamukha-bhima-, vikramdbharcma-.
V. Venkayya, S.I.I., v. 2, ‘Introduction’, p. 10.
47 E.ff, w. 1§, no.38, lines 39-44, p. 338.
4* Noted, by .Venkayya, S.I.I., v. 2, ‘Introduction’, pp. 10-11; see also Tamil
Lexit&fsnTV- *2034, ‘teri’.
49 V«»kayya, S.I.I. v. 2, ‘Introduction’, pp. 10-11.
50 Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3844.
51 The Colas, p. 454; Tamil Lexicon. v. 6, p. 3844, v. 2, p. 895.
190 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Lexicon who writes, under the entry, velaikkarar'. ‘devoted servants

who held themselves responsible for a particular service to their
king at stated hours and vow to stab themselves to death if they fail
in that’.52 As evidence for this view, Nilakanta Sastri refers,
with uncharacteristic vagueness, to later literary sources while
the Lexicon cites the commentary of Periyavachchapillai on
Nammalvar’s Tirumoli, to the effect that these soldiers committed
suicide for their king.53
This view of the devotion of the velaikkarar to their king, whom
they served presumably on a permanent basis, replaced an older,
less heroic, view held by the epigraphists Hultzsch, Venkayya,
and Krishna Sastri. They spoke of‘troops of servants’, ‘volunteers’,
or simply, soldiers of lower status (‘working classes’) who fought
in Chola armies.54 Other scholars have suggested that the velaikkd-
rar were mercenary troops as were others in the Chola forces.55
It may also be noted that the word velaikkarar differs from the
word velaikkarar, servant or workman, only in the retroflex ‘1’.
At issue here is whether these warriors, representing half of the
known regiments enumerated in inscriptions of the great Cholas,
could be considered a permanent force, supported from the re¬
sources of the Chola overlords or whether the valahgai velaikkarar
were mobilized from among existing peasant military units for
some limited purpose, and were thus an extension of the valangai
(or idangai) as a potential social formation. The former view is
congenial to that of Nilakanta Sastri and others who have tended
to place heavy reliance upon the comprehensiveness and effective¬
ness of the Chola state. However, there is no evidence of the basic
means of supporting a large army any more than there is for main¬
tenance of an elaborate bureaucracy. Neither, of course, was
necessary. Just as locality institutions provided most of the ad-

52 Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3844.

53 Cited in E.I., v. 18, no.38, p. 334. For a more complete version of this argu¬
ment see: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘A Note on Velaikkarar’, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (Ceylon), v. 4, (N.S., 1954), pp. 67-71.
54£./„ v. 18, p. 334.
55 K.K. Pillay, South India and Ceylon, University of Madras, 1963, p. 80, fn.,
in which he speaks of mercenary soldiers; however, on p. 144, Pillay says they were
a permanent element of the Chola armies. The view that velaikkarar were mer¬
cenaries finds recent support in a doctoral thesis by Kenneth R. Hall, The Nagaram
as a Marketing Center in Early Medieval South India’, unpublished, Dept, of
History, University of Michigan, 1975, pp. 191-2.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 191

ministrative functions required at the time, so, too, it must be

supposed that the major forces involved in the wars of the Cholas
were supplied from the existing organizations of the locality-based
society of the time. To the core of household troops maintained
by the Cholas, who may indeed have held a special loyalty to their
overlord, and some mercenary troops from the western and northern
forests, those under the control of peasant locality leaders alone,
during the tenth and eleventh centuries at least, could have pro¬
vided the military units under Chola command. By the twelfth
century, idangai forces were added to this pool of militarily organi¬
zed folk within the macro region who could be mobilized to join
the Chola kings in defensive and predatory campaigns.
The association of the Coromandel peasantry with valangai
military forces is supported by an important record of the time
of Kulottunga I, a.d. 1072, at Avani (Mulbagal taluk, Kolar
district) in Gangavadi. As discussed above,56 the claim of the
dominant locality folk in this area to membership in ‘48,000
bhumi’ of Tondaimandalam makes their identity as Vellalas from
that adjoining territory a relatively firm one. The central purpose
of the record bears out the unmistakable peasant interests of these
locally dominant folk. Furthermore, this inscription is somewhat
unusual in being one of that small class of stone inscriptions which
do not relate to a temple endowment.
This Kolar inscription records how various local agrarian
groups were to be taxed in a locality, called the ‘eighteen vishaya
of Rajendra-Choja’, under the control of persons identified as
valangai of Tondaimandalam. Commenting on this important
record, Nilakanta Sastri sees in it the capacity of local people to
thwart the efforts of a ‘self-willed and autocratic ruler’ and the
expression of a ‘popular consciousness [that] there was a clear
limit to the taxing power of the government . . . .’57 According
to Professor Sastri, this epigraph records a unilateral modification
of revenue arrangements imposed upon the local peasantry by a
Chola revenue adminstrator.
There are several reasons for suggesting a different interpretation
of this inscription. It is, first of all, extremely unlikely that the
Chola overlords presumed to establish a system of detailed rates
on all the specific sources of revenue mentioned in the record:

56 ch. III.
57 The Colas, p. 539.
192 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the machinery for such control was simply not there. It is further
questionable whether the rates set for land tax (melvaram) in this
record — one-fifth for forest and dry crop tracts and one-third
for tank-irrigated paddy land — was for the benefit of the Chola
state at all.
Nilakanta Sastri and other historians of medieval South India
have taken the term melvaram to mean ‘government’s share’,
when it means: ‘major’, ‘higher’, or ‘first’ share.58 Melvaram
is characteristically used in relationship to the division of produce
from the land; it designates the major share claimed by those who
held dominant land rights. Kudi- (cultivator) or kil- (inferior)
vdram was the lesser share. In his discussion of revenue terms,
Nilakanta Sastri does not include melvaram among a somewhat
doubtful list of terms,59 but, on the contrary, in his discussion of
relations between those who cultivate and those who control the
land, melvaram figures very prominently.60 The equation of
‘major share’ or melvaram with ‘government share' from cultivated
land is based upon nomenclature of the British ryotwari system
rather than upon early South Indian practice. The British adopted
this well-established term relating to divisions of produce between
what they regarded as ‘landlord and tenant’, then, assuming the
politic fiction that the government was landlord, the British claimed
the right to a substantial portion of produce.61 However, in its
historical context, there is no connection between the melvaram
and the share which may have gone to the ‘state’ during the Chola
period.62
The order executed by those in control of the Avani locality,
calling themselves valangai of Tondaimandalam, was addressed
to the local, ruling groups over whom the control of Tondai¬
mandalam soldiery had been extended by conquest at some earlier
time. In Nilakanta Sastri’s discussion of this record, it is treated

58 Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3356.

59 The Colas, pp. 521-3; among the more improbable taxes enumerated is one
upon begging (iraru) !
60 Ibid., pp. 585-6.
61 Examples of this usage; H R. Pate, Tinnevelly Gazetteer. Government Press,
Madras 1917, pp. 283, 321; A.F. Cox, North Arcot Manual, Government Press,
Madras, 1895, p. 282.
62 This view is supported further by the use of the term as understood by others
who have worked on the Chola records; see S.I.T.I., Glossary, p. xxxvii; K.M.
Gupta, op. cit., p. 192; Appadorai, v. 1, op. cit., pp. 172-3, 176-7, 325.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 193

as a protest ‘against unusual levies’ of a ‘self-willed and autocratic

ruler or chieftain’.63 But, the inscription is cast in quite usual
terms with a laudatory preamble dedicated to the Chola king;
it is not an obvious record of protest though it does declare that
an order of the adigdrgal-sdla-muvendavelar would not be followed.
The muvendavelar referred to in the inscription as having pro¬
mulgated this new and inappropriate revenue regulation could
of course have been an agent of the Chola overlords or perhaps a
well-placed military officer acting on his own behalf.64 But,
it is most likely that this person was a leader of the conquering
Tondaimandalam valangai forces claiming to exercise the superior
prerogatives of a chief. In any case, as Nilakanta Sastri has noted,
defiance of his orders are clear: ‘ . . . there being no tax on cows
and she-buffaloes since the rise of the sacred family of Cholas in the
Solamandalam nadu [or] in the Jayarigonda-Sola-mandalam . . .
no such tax should be paid in accordance with the order of the
. . . Soja-muvendavelar . . . .’65 If it is supposed that, like the
warrior spokesmen of the valangai of Avani, this muvendavelar
personage was part of a conquering Chola army, then the conflict
was between him and others of the conquering force which had
taken up residence in and was claiming control over this tract.
Claimed by the latter were the same rights as they enjoyed in
Tondaimandalam. The demand for an enhancement of payments
from this tract by a tax on milch animals was therefore rejected by
those in control of the area on the basis of custom followed in the
neighbouring area from which they had come.
While expressly rejecting the special and, to those Tondaimanda-

63 The Colas, p. 539.

64 As with many other ‘officials’ of the Chola state, the muvendaveldn is difficult
to relate to administrative functions. An officer with this title adjudicated a dispute
involving a temple in Ennayiram, alias rajaraja-chaturvedimangalam, in which
it was granted land taxes as low as other temples of the place; 330/1917, dated a.d.
1048. Another record of an audit of accounts of a temple in Tiruverkadu (Sri-
perembur taluk, Chingleput) names an officer with this title; 386/1958-9, dated
a.d. 1054. See M. Arokaiswami, The Inscriptional Term “Muvendavelan”’, Journal
of Indian History, v. 34 (April 1956) in which he concludes that the term refers to
Vellalas (p. 192), but little else; also see the discussion infra, ch. III.
65 E.C., v. 10, pt 2, p. 87. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri in The Colas, p. 538, mistakenly
speaks of ‘the 78 nadus of Nigarilli-sola-mandalanT; ‘Nigarili’ does not appear
in this record; cf. English translation and the Tamil text provided in E.C., v. 10,
pt 2, p. 54, line 12; also cf. translation of K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical
Sketches, v. 1, p. 351.
194 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

lam colonists in control of the locality, inappropriate demand for

this tax, the rates of revenue to be paid to them as the land controllers
of the locality were explicitly stated. This could only have been
meant for those who cultivated the land around Avani, or the
‘eighteen vishaya of Rajendra-Chola and Kandamadam , as the
place was called. An interesting postscript to the inscription
throws light on who the latter might have been.
Shortly after the a.d. 1072 inscription was engraved, it was
defaced.66 A new record, dated in the same year, was accordingly
incised stating:

We [the inhabitants] of the eighteen great vishaya and the great army of
the right hand [valangai], armed with great weapons, have also caused
it to be engraved in stone that those who [violate] this order shall incur
the heinous sin of having destroyed Brahmanas, herds of tawny cows,
and Varanasi and shall become hereditary enemies of the great vishaya
and the great army of the right hand armed with great weapons while
those who maintain this order shall acquire the merit of having performed
many horse sacrifices ... 67

The strongly worded imprecation of this postscript to the Avani

record of a.d. 1072 appeals to well-recognized moral sanctions
(e.g. the sin of destroying Brahmans and so on), to retribution
from the Tondaimandalam valangai, and, interestingly, to kingly
honour in the form of the horse sacrifice. The last suggests an
effort to influence local chiefs. It is moreover reasonable to assume
that the defacement of the original inscription was done under the
orders of or with the complicity of the ancient ruling groups of the
Avani locality in protest against the revenue demands made upon
them and their cultivators specified in the record of the Tondai¬
mandalam valangai. These demands, even with the tax on live¬
stock excluded, were probably greater than those which had existed
before; in any case, after all, it was not for the benefit of local
cultivators that the general tax on kine was rejected, but for the
benefit of those who had invested themselves with superior rights
through conquest, the Tondaimandalam valangai colonists. It
would be they who would enforce this regulation.
As mentioned, the a.d. 1072 records of Avani are among those

66 E.C.. v. 10, pt 2, Mulbagal, no.il9, a.d. 1072. The epigraphist noted that
this record was presumably meant to substitute for gaps in the original inscription,
no.49a, which had been 'defaced'.
v Ibid.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 195

rare documents which do not relate to a temple endowment or to

temple business, but to the resolution of some problem. It is even
more rare in recording the explicit rejection and modification of
an order of a muvendavelar or some similar personage of authority.
However, the reasons for the rejection are not difficult to under¬
stand.
The Avani region of Kolar was an ancient, settled, apparently
prosperous area of Telugu agriculturists when it came under Chola
dominance through the military enterprise of Tondaimandalam
valangai soldiers. Inscriptions from the neighbourhood of Avani
from as early as the fourth century a.d. speak of the region as part
of andhra-mandala, or Telugu country’, and it was a celebrated
place of antiquity and sanctity — avantikakshetra — associated
with Valmiki, composer of the Ramayana. Its sacred places during
the tenth century included several devoted to figures in the Rama
legend as well as a Smartha matha.6% The Chola conquest therefore
involved the displacement of quite ancient, local ruling families,
or at least their subordination to the recently intrusive Tondai¬
mandalam valangai. It is scarcely surprising therefore to discover
evidence of altered revenue arrangements under the new overlords
of Avani and its general neighbourhood. It is not surprising
either to find resistence to these arrangements by the local Telugu
cultivators of the place and their chiefs who were only recently
subjugated by a people with a different language and customs.
The defacement of the original a.d. 1072 inscription and the post¬
script added later may be attributed to the fact of this conquest.
Still puzzling, though, is the repudiation of the bovine tax order
in the Avani inscription. As there is no further evidence on the
matter, it is assumed that the revenue rates established in a.d.
1072 were put into effect. On that assumption, it cannot be serious¬
ly considered that the defacement of the order which prompted
the strong imprecation of the postscript was the work of the mu¬
vendavelar adigdirgaf Such a feeble response to the rebuff of the
valangai colonists of Avani would appear unworthy of one with
the title of muvendavelar unless it were to be thought that the title
could be claimed and recognized as appropriate by persons of
very modest coercive capacities. This is, of course, a possibility
and one consistent with the view of muvendavelar which is pro-

68 Lewis B. Rice, ‘Mudayanun Plates of Saka 261 of the Bana King Malladeva-
Nandivarman’, Indian Antiquary, v. 15 (June 1886), pp. 174-5.
196 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

posed below. However, the more prudent reading of this aspect

of the Avani record is that, whatever the power of the adigarigaf
the rebuff was accepted by him. This is to agree with Nilakanta
Sastri’s interpretation of the inscription as evidence of the ability
of local power holders to thwart unacceptable impositions, even
by one who may himself have been a valangai chief of the forces of
conquering Tondaimandalam agriculturists.
The left hand, idangai, division of lower social groups in the macro
region during the Chola period was as certainly associated with
mercantile and craft occupations as the right-hand division was
with agrarian activities. The core idangai groups in all parts of the
macro region were certain merchants and craftsmen conventionally
expressed by the numeral ‘five’ as in the terms pahchalar (or pah-
chalattdr or pahch-kammalar) and ahjuvannum,69 These usually
included goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, and skilled car¬
penters and stone cutters. Others characteristically associated
with the left division, according to evidence of the eighteenth
century, were oil processers using presses operated by two or more
bullocks, implying supplies of raw materials and markets which
might be found in urban places. Certain weavers were also of the
division according to later evidence, though most were of the right
division. In the case of weavers, there appears to be no particular
reason for the association with the left division unless scale of
operation and production for the market (rather than for a fixed
clientele) was a factor for weavers as it appeared to be for oil
producers.
It is possible to project the seventeenth and eighteenth century
occupational alignment of the left division backward in time.
One important link with the past is found in rathakara inscriptions
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Craftsmen identified as
rathakara had enjoyed an ancient honourable status according
to Vedic and later Vedic sources,70 but by the early centuries of the
Christian era they had come to be regarded as Sudras according

69 S.I.T.I., 'Glossary', p. xlviii; also p. vi where reference is made to the redundant

term ahju-pancha/attar.
70 See A.A. Macdonnell and A B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects,
v. 2, London, 1912, p. 265 and F. Max Muller, The Sacred Books of the East. 14,
‘The Sacred Books of the Aryas as Taught by the Schools of Apastamba. . . .',
p. xxxviii.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 197

to the Amarakosa.71 Reflecting the early high status of rathakara

in South India, a late fourth century Pallava copperplate inscrip¬
tion found in the Krishna district of modern Andhra, dated in the
fourteenth year of Nandivarman 1, records the grant of an agra-
hara to one of the rathakara caste who was called a chatuvejja,
that is, one who has studied the four Vedas.72
Craftsmen of a later period occasionally used the rathakara
designation in what must be considered an attempt to strengthen
their claims to high status. A well known inscription from Uyya-
kondan-Udaiyar (Tiruchirapalli taluk) of a.d. 1 1 1873 records a
gathering of learned Brahmans (hhatta) at Rajasraya-chaturvedi-
mangalam to consider the status of a group of craftsmen, including
goldsmiths and silversmiths, carpenters, stone cutters and masons
calling themselves rathakarar,74 Having examined sastric autho¬
rities,75 the Brahmans concluded that since rathakarar were of
high and correct birth (mahishya and anuldma),76 they were entitled
to the sacred thread investiture and access to other important
rituals. Another rathakara inscription from Alangudi, alias Jana-
natha-chaturvedi-mangalam (Nannilam taluk, Tanjavur) of a.d.
126477 records an agreement among craftsmen calling themselves
rathakarar, to raise a fund from among their number in specified
localities for the construction of a pavilion in that brahmadeya.78

71 D.D. Kosambi, 'The Working Class in the Amarakosa, Journal of Oriental

Research, v. 24 (1955), p. 60.
72 E.I., v. 31, no.l, ‘Two Salankayana Charters from Kanukollu (Gudivada
Taluk, Krishna District)’, p. 3.
72 A R E. 1909, para. 45, 479/1908.
74 The activities with which these craftsmen were associated were: architecture,
building coaches and chariots, constructing temple towers (gopuram) with sculptures
on them, preparation of instruments used by Brahmans in worship (i.e. ladle or
srik), constructing pavilions (mandapam), and making jewels for kings (ibid.).
7- Among those mentioned are : Yajnavalkya, Gautama, Kautilya, and Bodhayana
(ibid.).
76 The terms used to define their 'good birth’ were, mahishyasa, karani, and
anuldma. Mahishyasa, sons of Kshatriya fathers and Vaisya mothers, were the
fathers of the rathakaras; karani, daughters of Vaisya fathers and Sudra mothers,
were their mothers; thus, the father in each case was of the higher varna, making
it a superior, anuldma, mixed-varna birth (ibid.).
77 Discussed by K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, 'Largest Provincial Organizations
in Ancient India’, QJMS, v. 45, no.2 (1954), pp. 77 ff, and Sundaram, op. cit., pp.
31 ff.
7» This record provides an excellent source of ancient locality names in several
modern taluks of modern Tanjavur. These are listed in Subrahmanya Aiyer, 'Largest
 198 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The fund was to be created from a special cess, inavari, upon

craftsmen, and it was to be collected by Saivite temple functiona¬
ries,79 in the named localities. Among the signatories of the order
were carpenters and goldsmiths. It may safely be assumed, with
the epigraphist K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, that the four classes
of artisans referred to in the Alangudi inscription were pahchalar
or Kammalar, the core group of the left division of that early time
and later.80 They had simply appropriated rathakarar myths
involving the god Visvakarma and his priest, Kasyapa.81
Another element of evidence linking those using the ancient
rathakarar title with left division artisans of the medieval period
is to be found in the identification of rathakarar as kd-kajanai,
subordinate professional people,82 who seemed to have lived in
separate residential quarters (ceri) in larger villages.83 An inscrip¬
tion of a.d. 1036 from Chidambaram distinguishes between non-
Brahman inhabitants of superior status, kudigal, and those of
inferior status, kil-kalanai.^ The kudigal included two merchant
groups, sahkarappadiyar and vyaparin,85 plus three groups usually
associated with the right division: Vellala, Saliyar (cloth merchants)
and Pattinavar (fishermen). The subordinate workmen, kil-kalanai,
were taccar (carpenters), kollar (blacksmiths), tattar (goldsmiths),

Provincial Organizations . .’ QJMS, v. 45, no.2, p. 79.

79 Called vTra-mahesvaras in line 9 of the record (ibid.).
so Ibid.
81 In the Urrattur record cited above, the idangai claim to be created to kill demons
who disturbed the sacrifices of Kasyapa (A.R.E. 1913, para. 39). According to
the Brahmana texts, Kasyapa was the priest of the god Visvakarma; P.V. Kane,
History of Dharmasastra, v. 2, pt II (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
Poona, 1930-62, p. 840). Srinivasachari (op. cit., p. 80), cites references in the
Tondaimandalam Satakam associating artisans with the god Visvakarma; Thurston
(op. cit., vii, p. 362) also records myths of the Kammalar in which their descent
is traced from Visvakarma; according to a Nellore inscription of the eleventh
century, a grant to a temple was made by members of the Visvakarma caste (A R E.
1954-5, no.35 or Inscriptions of the Nellore District, p. 818, no.50).
82 S.I.T.I.. Glossary, p. xxii, kalanai and xxvii, kil-kalanai.
83 Mentioned in Subrahmanya Aiyer, 'Largest Provincial Organizations . .
op. cit., p. 35.
84 E.I., v. 22, no.24, p. 146.
85 sahkarappadiyar are discussed by Subrahmanya Aiyer; the relative status of
vyaparin is touched on in a fifteenth century Sanskrit work, Vaisyavams'asudhakara
(in V. Raghavan, 'The 'Vaisyavamsasudhakara' of Kolacala Malinatha', New
Indian Antiquary, v. 2 (1939-40), p. 444).
 Right and Left Hand Castes 199

and koliyar (weavers).86 The epigraphist Hultzsch, in discussing

some inscriptions of a slightly earlier period, a.d. 1013, noted the
term "kammdnacheri and hazarded that this was the residential
quarter of the kammalar, or artisans; the propinquity of the arti¬
sans’ quarters to those of the paraiyan, faraicceri', suggested the
low status of the artisans.87 Thus, whatever the high status of the
rathakarar in ancient times, and notwithstanding the use which
craftsmen of the Chola period sought to make of this ancient status
in assuming the title of rathakarar, they had come to be identified
with middling and even poor rank in the eleventh century.
During the twelfth century, however, the status of artisans and
merchants associated with the left division began to change. The
Polonnaruva (Sri Lanka) inscription of the first quarter of the
twelfth century speaks of the idangai velaikkarar for the first time
and merchant groups later to be mentioned prominently.88 This
record suggests strongly that the idangai velaikkarar were the
military arm of the merchants marking the beginning of the rise to
prominence of the great itinerant guilds whose military power
was so conspicuous for the next two centuries.89 At the same time,
artisans of the left division began to demand and to receive privileges
which marked an enhancement of their status. A series of ins¬
criptions from the Kongu country during the late twelfth century
refer to the Kammalar of vengalanadu (modern Karur taluk) who
claimed for themselves the right to use the double conch and drums
at times of marriages and funerals, to use footwear (ciruppu), and
to cover their houses with plaster as a mark of their respectabi¬
lity.90 The interpretation by Dr M. Arokiaswami of these Kongu
inscriptions, is that valangai colonists of the region, including
Vellalas and Kaikkolars, had oppressed those of the left-hand
faction until the intervention of the Chola ruler, Kulottunga III
was brought by the left division leaders there, the Kammalar.91

86 Tamil Lexicon, v. 2, p. 1197, kolakan.

87 S I.I., v. 2, 47n, 63n.
88 E.I., v. 18, no.38, lines 25-39 in which the valanjiyar are referred to as the leaders
of those making the grant to the temple of the Tooth Relic in Sri Lanka; nagarattar,
local merchants in contrast to the valanjiyar who appear to be itinerant merchants
(nanadesi), are also mentioned in this inscription. See the discussion by T.N.
Subramaniam, S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, pp. 63-4.
89 S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 65.
90 S.1.1., v. 3, no.46; also see M. Arokiaswami, 'Social Developments Under
the Imperial Cejas’, T.A.S.S.I.. 1956-7, p. 5.
91 Ibid.
200 Peasant State and Society in Medeival South India

Developments similar to these were taking place in Andhra and

Karnataka as well as in Tamil country. During the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, merchants and artisans of Andhra attained
strikingly public presence for the first time, particularly in the rela¬
tively densely settled parts of the Andhra plain called Vengi, com¬
prising modern East Godavari, Krishna, and Guntur districts. In
these places there are numerous temple inscriptions which record
gifts of merchants calling themselves, ‘the lords of Punugonda' and
often citing gotra. names.92 Itinerant merchants plying extensive
trade networks between Karnataka and Andhra endowed temples
in these regions as well as in Tamil country. These endowments
are recorded in inscriptions which extoll the virtue, bravery, and
dharmic pursuits of their members.93 Artisans of Karnataka,
calling themselves Vira Panchala, had formed special relationships
with certain temples and seminaries (mathas) such as the Airiya-
kula-matha in the Hoysala capital of Dorosamudra (modern
Halebid, Hassan district);94 artisans of Andhra, with the name
pahchanamuvdru, were also associated with particular temples of
the time and even referred to themselves as a corporate
group.95 Among the most self-consciously striving groups of the
time were the oil-mongers (teliki) of Bezwada and its vicinity.
They called themselves, ‘the one-thousand’, and in their records
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries boast of being the hereditary
servants of the Eastern Chalukya rulers of the area. According to
a copperplate inscription of a.d. 1084, Teliki bridal couples were
given the special right to visit the king on horseback and to obtain
offerings of betel from his hand.96
Changes in the status of the left division people during the
twelfth century were dependent upon changes in South Indian
society. New importance was accorded to urban artisans and mer¬
chants as a result of the temple urbanization of the period. With

92 Sundaram. op. cit., pp. 62-4.

93 Ibid.; also see Burton Stein, ‘Coromandel Trade in Medieval India', pp. 50-1.
94 S. Chandrasekhara Sastri, ‘Economic Conditions Under Hoysalas', The
Half-Yearly Mysore University Journal, v. 2 (1928), pp. 216-17.
95 Sundaram, op. cit„ p. 26, in which these artisans also refer to themselves as
‘the Seventy-four community' and ibid., p. 30, in which they are associated with
the Kamatesvara temple. Also, Narasimha Rao, op. cit., pp. 64-75.
9h The ‘Teki Plates of the 17th year of Kulottunga T, according to S.I.T.I.. v. 3,
pt 2, p. 68, which should g ^e the year as a.d. 1087; however Sundaram, op. cit.,
p.37, gives the date as a.d. 1084.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 201

that came a fundamental modification of the position of mercantile

and craft groups from that of the previous centuries when they
were not only constrained to accept a subordinate place in relation
to the dominant peasantry, but to suffer the indignity of a corporate
status of pollution which is ineluctably associated with the left-hand.
The terms valangai and idangai and balagey and edagey literally
mean ‘right hand and left hand’ in Tamil and Kannada. While
it is possible to attach excessive importance to the simple positional
distinction of left and right, there is ever-present the taint of pollu¬
tion owing to the use of the left hand in bodily functions. It is
also well to recognize the distinction of left and right at the level
of ritual. The designation of left-hand has been attached to corrupt
or perverse forms of worship called vamls (from vama: ‘left-side’
or ‘reverse’) which are secret Tantric ritual forms of Siva worship.97
This distinction is illustrated by the early sixteenth century story
of how the Saivite teacher Appaya Dikshit of Kalahasti sought
to discredit a Vaishnava teacher of the Tatacharya family by
accusing him of having given a blessing to the Vijayanagara king,
Achyutadevaraya, with his left hand as he did with people of the
lower castes.98
Various explanations have been offered for the left-and right-
hand designations. Macleane's suggested that the ‘hands’ imagery
arose from the fact of five artisan groups of the left division, the
pahehalar or Kammalar, as opposed to five non-artisan castes —
i.e. as fingers on a hand. This is clearly unacceptable, for the
number here, ‘five’, is as conventional as the number ‘ninety-eight’
which is used for each division in many of the sources.99 The
more usual explanations about the right and left hand are posi¬
tional: people of the valangai being on the right-hand side of
gods, sages. Brahmans, or kings in some legendary context
in which status was determined.100 G. Oppert appears to have
been the first to notice the implication of ritual pollution in the

97 H.H. Wilson, Essays and Lectures in the Religion of the Hindus, London,
1862, pp. 250-61 and M. Monier-Williams, Hinduism, London, 1906, p. 126. Monier-
Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 941.
98 R. Shama Shastry, ‘Sivananda’s Life of Appaya Dikshit’, Q.J.M.S., v. 11
(1920-17, pp. 116-17. ,;w -
99 Manual of Madras Administration, v. 1, p. 69.
100 These positions are mentioned in various sources; see Srinivasachari, op.
cit., p. 85 and A.R.E. 1913, para. 39.
202 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

right-and left-hand division. He attributed the dual division with

its pollution implications to the conflict between Jainas and Hindus
during the pre-Pallavan period. In this connection, Oppert stated:
The influence of Jains was perhaps strongest in the towns where
artisan classes form an important portion of the population,
while the Brahmans appealed to the land owning and agricultural
classes.’101
While Brahmans remained neutral with respect to the divisions,
Jainas were apparently associated with the left-hand division,
edagey, in Karnataka until a.d. 1368 when the Vijayanagar ruler,
Bukka Raya, intervened in a dispute involving Vaishnavas and
Jainas over sect emblems and decreed that Jainas were to be con¬
sidered members of the right-hand division.102 As suggested above
in the discussion of the Pallava period, the nominally religious
conflict which was bitterly carried out during that early period
was based upon important ideological factors. Under the Pallavas
and their peasant and Brahman supporters, Jainism was treated
as a dangerous error, and association with Jaina teachers and
institutions polluting. Oppert pointed to a similar orientation of
the Chola rulers toward the Jainas and the Jaina-supporting
Hoysalas.103
Considering the stigma of pollution which attached to the left-
hand, it is to be wondered that those of the idangai would have
acquiesced in the title. That they did is clear from the Urrattur
inscriptions cited above and numerous other inscriptional and
literary documents of the idangai which are to be found in all
parts of the macro region. There are numerous references to
regular local dues collected from the left-hand people as ic^ahgai-
vari as well as subscriptions collected from and on behalf of the
division, the idahgai-magamaid04 During the earliest period for
which there are records, it appears that the idangai occupied an
inferior and perhaps despised position among people of the region.
Later, in the twelfth century and after, when idangai groups under¬
took to alter their positions with respect to the dominant peasant
population, they continued to identify themselves by the idangai
title notwithstanding that this title might have originally been a

101 Oppert, op. cit., p. 62.

102 Hayavadana Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, v. 2, pt 3, p. 1483.
103 Cited in Srinivasachari, op. cit., p. 84.
104 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 2, p. 729; S I T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. xxxii.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 203

sign of their degraded status in the society of the macro region.

The title was retained until the nineteenth century in most places.
Apart from Oppert and, recently, Arjun Appadurai, few modern
commentators on the right-left divisions in South Indian society
recognize the signification of impurity or pollution which accom¬
panies left symbolism;105 none—including these two—addresses
the question of why those of the left division accepted its derogatory
designation. Appadurai notes: 'As in other cultural systems, the
left-hand in South India has connotations of impurity whereas
the right-hand has powerful and positive normative associa¬
tions. . . ,’106 Where Oppert explains the designation as origi¬
nating in the success of the Brahman-led Hinduism of agricul¬
turists over the ‘heretical’ Jaina artisans and merchants of pre-
Pallavan trade centres, he does not ask why the presumed deni¬
grating 'left' title persisted and, especially, why those of the left
division continued to use it in their own records later. Nor does
Appadurai’s thoughtful and bold explanation of the division as
a ‘root paradigm’ of conflict107 permit us to understand finally
why, if, as he says, the left-hand connotes impurity, those of the
idangai use that title.
A possible explanation of this puzzling phenomenon is that the
utility of the idangai title as a well-established symbol of identity
outweighed for its users of the Chola period and later any stigma
which might have attached to the title from an earlier time. It
is after all not only in the labels which are affixed upon or chosen
by a group that basic significance inheres, for new myths can be
made to offset older meanings. The proud adoption of the label
'Slav’ (from 'slave’) in nineteenth century Europe and the more
recent use of the label ‘Black’ in American society remind us of
this property of ethnic labels and labelling. The capacity of ethnic
labels to serve as symbols of identity and mobilization — whatever
the origin of the labels and their possibly once derogatory
105 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Right and Left Hand Castes’, p. 221.
106 Loc. cit..
107 The concept of ‘root paradigm’ is taken by Appadurai from Victor Turner:

‘ . . . these are consciously recognized cultural models which emerge during the
life-crises of individuals or groups, and have reference to the social relationships
of those involved, as well as to the cultural, ideological or cognative patterns which
incline them to alliance on divisiveness. ... As a root paradigm in South Indian
history, the function of this particular metaphor is to give expression to a wide variety
of empirical conflicts, anomalies and antagonisms’ (loc. cit.).
204 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

connotations — explains as well as any reason why the title ‘left’

or ‘left-hand’ continued to be used by a substantial number of
South Indians even after the twelfth century when those using the
title found impressive new opportunities and importance.

Summary and Conclusion

The span of the dual division of lower castes in South India

extended over eight centuries. Only a brief part of that span
has been examined here, and this early phase of its development
may not have been its most important phase. Evidence from the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries suggests that the dual
divisions provided an essential means by which many lower castes
in South India improved their means of coping with the extra¬
ordinary changes attending the development of British institutions,
particularly those of towns and cities.
However, urban contexts are of little consequence during most
of the Chola period, and, to the extent that urbanization became
important in the late Chola period, it contributed to the weakening
of the state and to changes in the society of the macro region
previously within its authority. It is especially during the Vijaya-
nagara period and, later, during the British period, that towns
assume an importance not known before, except, perhaps, during
the Classical age of the Cilapadikaram. Of this most early period,
only speculation is possible and that is the subject of an appending
note on origins of the dual divisions.
During the Chola period, several characteristics distinguish the
divisions from their later history and from other elements of
Chola society apart from the rural context in which they operated.
Among the most important are the military and colonization
activities of each of the divisions. The eleventh century Avani
inscription of the Tondaimandalam valangai from modern Kolar
district and several idangai records from modern South Arcot
pertain to these matters. Each portrays conquest groups who have
successfully installed themselves in new territories and exercise
dominance over them. In these inscriptions and others, another
function of the divisions was the assimilation of persons previously
beyond the expanding frontier of the sedentary agricultural order.
This is attested in the two thirteenth century inscriptions from
Urrattur in modern Tiruchirapalli and Varanjuram in modern
 Right and Left Hand Castes 205

South Arcot. Both places would appear to have been zones of

recent agricultural expansion in the thirteenth century; both were
located on the edges of older riverine settlement areas. Such
newly assimilated folk did not gain new identities, but, having
been granted appropriate insignia, were associated with others in
the loose alliance structure of a division — usually the left division
— and thus eligible for the support of others of the division when
that was required. They also became eligible for participation in
the occasional military forays which expanded the land under
regular cultivation and settlement; they finally supported temples
by occasional cesses and subscriptions (vari and magamai) and
thus became eligible for participation in forms of temple worship
and perhaps temple honours from which they would otherwise
be excluded.
These functions were occasional; the divisions were not absolute,
corporate, or continuous, but potential groupings. This conception
is admittedly an unexpected one and jars the presuppositions
which any student of Hindu society brings to the study of the
subject. For, the divisions of the right and the left are not only
occasional in their organization and functions, but they also appear
to be without the internally ranked segmentation characteristic of
Hindu institutions. They resemble sodalities or sectarian groupings
in these respects, except that there is no core continuity as might
be provided to cults by joint worship at specific tutelary or even
canonical shrines, nor is there the evidence, except in post-Chola
times, of an acharya or a guru who might serve as leader of the
divisions in particular places. The divisions resemble more the
modern socio-political caste associations in linking spatially dis¬
persed groups possessing some shared ethnic identifications or
interests into active associations for occasional cooperation. Like
the modern movements, myths were promulgated by the divisions
to justify their existence, and, like the modern movements, joint
efforts may have involved conflict with others over rights to certain
symbols (e.g. thirteenth century artisans of the left division de¬
manded and received the right to the use of the conch and to
sandals just as the nineteenth century Nadars claimed the breast
cloth). These joint efforts might also involve cooperation in the
support of certain activities (e.g. medieval temple endowments
and modern ‘temple entry’ rights, modern school hostels and
cooperative housing societies). The analogue of the dual divisions
206 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and modern caste associations may be pressed further. In both

cases, public conflict with adversaries was resolved by the inter¬
vention of legitimate authority. Chiefs, kings and Brahmans play
an increasingly public part in the records of the dual divisions
during the later Chola period just as British officials do in the
conflicts between the divisions from the seventeenth to the early
nineteenth century. In the latter cases, conflicts at times give the
impression of being staged or promoted by members of one or the
other division in order to produce intervention and legitimate
adjudication. This would seem to have been the strategy of caste
associations in more recent times, and ‘agitational politics’ is the
term that has come to be applied to the execution of that strategy.
During the Chola period, these strategies can hardly be identified
from the relatively few and dispersed inscriptions, but the forms
do appear to be present, and they are to become clearer during
the Vijayanagara period under the intensified processes of ur¬
banization and political change.
In Chola times, the divisions of the right and left present them¬
selves as linking formations concerned with military activities,
expansion of agrarian forms of the age, and the assimilation of
new peoples to the society of the age. Linkages were essentially
horizontal, that is the divisions brought into potential alliance
structures those groups of neighbouring nadu localities whose
interests were not represented in the dominant nattar of the locality.
Lower agricultural groups, various artisans and traders of agri¬
cultural commodities, as well as field labourers could rely less
and less upon the protection of their interests by the dominant
nattar of their isolated localities. Even more hazardous was the
position of these artisan and merchant groups whose economic
activities articulated poorly with the agricultural economy, whose
products were not exchanged in the nexus of agricultural patron-
client relations, but exchanged more widely and impersonally;
whose economic fortunes, therefore, were often tied closely to
itinerant merchants seen as little better than bandits by settled
agriculturists, and whose pasts were tainted by urban and heretical
connections which, added to everything else, made them objects
of suspicion and disdain.
To both such disadvantaged groups — lower agricultural groups
and mobile artisan-traders — alliances across ancient nadu lines
provided a measure of security and political leverage with respect
 Right and Left Hand Castes 207

to the notables of each nadu, the nattar. These horizontal linkages

across nadu boundaries complemented and were probably the con¬
sequence of the vertical integration of nadus during the time of
the great Cholas, Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, when the Chola
segmentary state was being perfected. The local beneficiaries of
this vertical integration were the most powerful of the nattar
who, in accepting the ritual sovereignty of these great kings and
imitating their royal style, separated themselves as an increasingly
powerful, local ruling stratum. This political development is treated
below in ch.VII. However, even as the horizontal linkages among
the less powerful occupational groupings was occurring as a means
of fortifying their interests against the increased prestige and power
of the nattar, the latter were themselves establishing horizontal
linkages with dominant agricultural groups like themselves in
neighbouring localities, creating the periyanadu, or ‘greater nadu
which comes into historical view during the twelfth century. To
this and to related changes during the twelfth century attention
must now be given.

A Note on Origins

Discussion of the right and left divisions during the Chola period
has been shaped by the necessity of examining the fragmentary
evidence of this early period in the light of the more complete
information of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. However
great the gaps in evidence and understanding of the dual divisions
between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, these are as nothing
compared to the difficulties of considering the origins of the divi¬
sions. The vagueness with which the dual social divisions may
be seen in the period from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries
may appear to make suggestions about origins particularly hazar¬
dous. However, it is precisely because knowledge about the divi¬
sions is so fragmentary at this time and even later that any analysis
must imply a set of notions about their origins. Such implicit
notions are best made explicit.
The development of the dual division of lower castes appears
as the consequence of two significant structural features of the
society of the macro region during its early history. These are the
territorial segmentation of society and culture, and the ambiguous
social status of the non-Brahman population given the commitment
208 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to Brahmanical ideology by the Pallava period. Early attempts

by peoples of the macro region to cope with these structural features
produced a status system pivoting upon the power of the peasantry
of the numerous localities into which the southern peninsula was
divided. For a substantial portion of the population — those who
were not of the dominant peasant groups — the status system of
the Pallava and most of the Chola periods was unsatisfactory,
and by the eleventh century, merchants and artisans along with
their urban and rural dependents — began to function indepen¬
dently of and to some extent in opposition to peasant leaders of
local society. This modification occurred without altering the
basic territorial segmentation of society or the ambiguous status
positions of non-Brahmans in South India, and the dual social
divisions of the eleventh century were to remain important for
centuries. Membership in, or at least association or alliance with,
established status groupings in an increasingly stratified society
was the principal motivation for the division. The process of an
expanding agrarian system — partly by military means, partly by
peaceful means — created the need to assimilate new peoples;
this was an important feature of the Pallava and early Chola
periods. In this process, occupational and residential groupings
were the prime organizational loci. The expanding requirements
for the services of essentially urban-based merchants and artisans
provided the opportunity for the development.
The emergence of groups identifying themselves as the left
division in the eleventh century does not preclude the possibility
that there might have been an earlier foundation for such a division.
One such hypothesis is that the divisions represent peoples of
different racial origin within South India dating from ancient
times.108 Racial admixtures there were, but, apart from the
‘Aryan migration’ which introduced Brahmanical as well as Jaina
and Buddhist institutions, there is no convincing historical evidence
of a significant, racially distinct stratification which could account
for the divisions as known after the tenth century. Nor does the
view here deny a variant of the ancient racial argument which
distinguished between ‘indigenous’ people of a culture area and
‘strangers’ who took up residence there. The latter hypothesis
is supported by occasional references in Karnataka where nadu

108 Hutton, op. cit., pp. 166-8.

 Right and Left Hand Castes 209

and desa (for strangers) are co-equal with edagey and balagey. 109
Valangai \e\aikkdrar are considered by Srinivasa Iyengar to be
‘Tamilians’, whereas the idangai ve(aikkdrar, according to him,
consisted of warriors from Andhra (vadugan), Kerala (malaiyalar),
and others not of the Chola heartland of Cholamandalam and
Tondaimandalam.110 Another manifestation of this ‘stranger’
versus ‘indigenous’ classification is in the epigram of the low caste
of Paraiyan, invariably associated with the right-hand division
in recent centuries: ‘the paraiyar are not of the left hand, they are
Tamilians’.111 While the conception of ‘stranger peoples’ may
have entered into the dual division, the core elements of the divi¬
sions, on both sides, must be considered as ‘indigenous’.
Another view of how earlier divisions in the society of the macro
region may have served as the basis for the subsequent development
of the right- and left-hand divisions appears to be emerging from
recent scholarship on the Classical or Sangam era. In the important
work of N. Subrahmanian, Sangam Polity,112 there are depicted
two, possibly simultaneous social orders. One was urban, cos¬
mopolitan, trade oriented; the other was ‘tribal’, rural, and relatively
simple in economic organization. The interactions between these
two disparate social orders are very unclear. Poets of the one order
may not have been poets of the other, and while certain cultural
continuities existed between the orders — in language and beliefs
at least — it is as yet difficult to see them as constituting a single
civilization. However, these two orders might have comprised a
single society as proposed by Subrahmanian, and this could
have established the basic framework for the later, historical
divisions.113
Such questions of possibly earlier fissures which might have
formed the basis of the later divisions cannot be considered in
greater detail at this point; the state of our knowledge will not permit
that. The need for more archaeological and systematic literary

109 Rice, Mysore, v. I p. 224. An alternative form of nadu in this context was given
as pete.
no Srinivasa Iyengar, Tamil Studies, pp. 106-7; other groups mentioned included
Pallan and Mallar from Pandya country, Bedar from Karnataka, and Madigas
from Andhra.
in Oppert, op. cit.,- 64-5 and 65n.
I'2 Op. cit.
113 See this writer’s review of the Sangam Polity in The Indian Economic and
Social History Review, v. 5, no.l (March 1968), pp. 109-15.
210 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

research is essential for carrying these speculations beyond the

present state. For the purposes of exploring the origins of the
divisions our starting place must be restricted to the period when
the evidence is superior to that afforded by racial drift theories
and the information gained from the undated poems of hundreds
of authors. It is to certain of the general characteristics of society
which were manifest during the Pallava period and after that
attention must be given. Among these is the high degree of territo¬
rial segmentation of society and some of the social structural
consequences of the mature Brahmanical culture of that time.
Territorial segmentation has referred principally to the isolation
of the many locality cores of peasant population, nadus, scattered
over the Tamil plain. The degree of isolation conformed with
physiographical factors to a significant extent; thus, in the central
Kaveri basin, there was less isolation, greater continuity of settle¬
ment, than in the western parts of the basin (parts of modem
Tiruchirapalli, South Arcot, and Salem) and in the tracts South
of the Kaveri. In most of Tondaimandalam, the central Tamil
plain, the nodes of peasant settlement conformed with physical
features, especially the drainage patterns of the principal streams
upon which tank storage of irrigation water depended would have
been especially important. Judging from the distribution of ancient
inscriptional and modern records referring to the right and left
divisions, the greater the degree of isolation among the peasant
cores of settlement, the more important and conspicuous was the
dual division. The central Kaveri basin appears never to have
developed the intensive divisional alignments found in the central
portion of the Tamil plain where the dual divisions were both an
early and persistent phenomenon with Kanchi serving as the centre
for both.
By the late Pallava period, and certainly in the Chola period.
Brahman groups were virtually closed, priestly corporations domi¬
nated by Smartas of various divisions. Most prestigious, perhaps,
were the Vadama Smarta Brahmans. Their names suggest a north¬
ern origin (vada means ‘north’), but the title, vadama could also
refer to the proficiency in Sanskrit and vedic ritual, which then and
earlier were associated with the north. Other Smarta Brahmans
were divided into territorial sub-divisions.114 There was also a

114 These divisions are listed in various places (sec Thurston, op. cit., v. 1, p.
333 ff ).
 Right and Left Hand Castes 211

smaller group of Brahmans of Vaishnava persuasion, the Vaikana-

sas; it was not until some centuries later that Vaishnava Brahmans
began to constitute a somewhat larger proportion of the Brahman
population, and at that later time, the numbers were primarily the
result of a shift of Smartas to the fold of the dynamic and expanding
Sri Vaishnava sampradayas. Increasingly secure and possessing
great secular authority in rural settlements over some of which they
enjoyed complete control, the Brahman monopoly over higher
sacral functions was firm and was to remain so until the thirteenth
century. Brahmans were unchallenged in this sacred or secular
authority either by rival religions or by warriors determined or
disposed to diminish their role. Brahmans thus constituted a strong
and impenetrable strata of the contemporary social system. No
less clearly defined in this social system were those at the bottom.
Enjoying neither the high ritual status nor the status provided
by holding land or possessing skills essential to the maintenance
of peasant agrarian operations, agrestic labourers occupied the
unambiguously lowest strata of contemporary society. With the
expansion of wet rice cultivation based upon secure irrigation sour¬
ces, the numbers of such persons increased. Partly, these increases
represented the assimilation of agricultural groups who had
previously cultivated lands deficient in reliable irrigation sources.
Such peasants were situated at the margins of productive peasant
agriculture. When these marginal tracts were brought under
irrigation by the expansion of prosperous and powerful peasant
groups with requisite organization, capital (mostly in the form ol
superior skills but also livestock), adequate manpower, and superior
military power, the former occupants of these lands were reduced
to labour dependents of the expanding peasantry, or they fled
to still more marginal tracts only to be incorporated later or forced
once again to flee. Another source of this lowest tier of social
groups were those of the forests to whom regular sedentary agri¬
cultural pursuits were unknown. When forests were felled by
expanding peasant agriculture, as they were throughout the Pallava
period, the fate of the forest dwellers was the same as that to whom
agricultural labour was already a fulltime though hazardous
basis of livelihood.
Apart from the degraded status which attached to those who
laboured on the fields of others and were therefore without sub¬
stantial rights or means for ameliorating their conditions except
212 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the threat of absconding, there were those whose purchase in

peasant social organization was even worse, by a slight degree,
because they combined some polluting craft with their principal
agrestic labour. Such were the leather workers, Sakkiliyar and
Madiga, for example, whose low occupational status as field
workers was negatively reinforced by their work with leather and
the preparation of hides. Others included musicians and dancers
who constituted part of the corps of bards in the classical period.115
Between the poorest field workers, artisans and artists and the
highest strata of priests were the majority of the population. During
the recent, modern past, ranking pressures have been the most
severe at this level of society consisting of powerful land-controlling
peasant groups and wealthy merchants, bankers, and artisans.
Beneath these has been a second order of peasants who lacked the
means to support a claim to being dominant peasants, pumipputirar,
‘sons of the soil’. Finally, there have been many kinds of village
artisans and service groups (as washermen, barbers, and potters)
whose work was tainted by a not always logical set of pollution
norms. Among such varied groups, the terminology dictated by
Brahmanical usage, such as ‘Sudra’, serves no analytical purpose,
and, in the recent past, that label has been rejected by those upon
whom it was placed by other Indians or by British administrators.
The modern term ‘non-Brahman’, comes closer than any other
to encompassing the middle groups of the early period in the sense
of being ‘respectable’, socially mobile, and yet clearly neither of the
highest nor lowest strata. To the modern ear, however, ‘non-
Brahman’, is difficult to disassociate from the twentieth century
context when the term was claimed by educated and politically
mobilized groups of Tamil Nadu and Andhra bent on displacing
Brahmans from what they regarded as places of disproportionate
advantage. Still, the term ‘non-Brahman’ is more appropriate
than the varna terms Vaisya and Sudra in the South Indian context
though the latter terms occur in ritual manuals (agama) and ins¬
criptions occasionally. In fact, there appears to be no generic
term for those beneath the status of Brahmans in the medieval
period or earlier. Sectarian terms such as cattatavan and saiva,
denoting votaries of Vishnu and Siva who were not Brahmans,

115 See George L. Hart III, ‘Ancient Tamil Literature: Its Scholarly Past and
Future', in Essays on South India, ed. Burton Stein, University Press of Hawaii,
Honolulu, 1975.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 213

are too narrowly circumscribed in their reference. In the corpus

of South Indian inscriptions, there occur numerous specific ethno-
occupational groups below the status of Brahmans such as:
adavimdr, aydgavar, kaikkolar, saligar (weavers), alavar, parampdr,
vejlan (cultivators), ahjuvanndm, kammalar (artisans), pattinavar,
bharatavar (fishermen), davana-chetti, teliki (merchants), Tlavar
(toddy tappers), kannakkanan (brazier), manndn, vanndn (washer¬
men), manradi (shepherd), ndvisdn (barber), taiyan (tailor); and
ve(kdvdn (potter).116 The terms idangai and valangai are themselves
references to general classes of non-Brahmans, except that the
dual divisions included among their most active members those
of very low status.
It seems evident that there was little of the rank striving and
conflict among local ethnic groupings that one finds in contemporary
South India. The nineteenth and twentieth century claims of some
middle groqps to the status of Brahmans may have occurred
earlier; Vellalas and Reddis, dominant peasants of the modern Tamil
and Andhra plains, occasionally equated their control over land
with the rights of Kshatriyas. Such claims were as irrelevant
in an earlier age as they were during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Ranking postulates are not based upon unilateral
claims, but upon interactions among claimants with each other
and with those considered the lowest and most polluted, on the
other side.
From the earliest references to the dual divisions, their com¬
positions appear to have included a wide range of groups which in
more recent times maintain punctilious differentiation and relative
ranking. Yet, the diction of the idangai and valangai inscriptions
and the administrative and judicial records of the seventeenth to
the twentieth centuries give no importance to relative rank within
the divisions. On the contrary, the divisions represent themselves
or are represented as pluralistic collectivities enjoying an apparent
equality as in various kinds of sodalities. The critical factor in the
divisions of this early period and later was not relative ranking
among the constituents, but shared substance and interests. It
was not rank, but membership within a division which was im¬
portant. Only the very powerful or very marginal could claim

116 These are listed in S I T.I.. Glossary. On p. iv, he suggests the term agambadi-
udaiyan as ‘citizen’ or ‘subject’ with which were associated other terms. Also see
Tamil Lexicon, v. 1, p. 12; v. 2, pp. 970, 968, 974.
214 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

or afford a position of neutrality (e.g. the status of madhyasta in the

Baramahal Records) with respect to the dual-alliance formations.
The powerful nattar were in the best position to separate them¬
selves from others of the ambiguous middle strata. Their economic
control and military authority within the framework of the Chola
overlordship, their claims to ancient respectability and political
primacy, and their close relations with Brahmans all combined
to effect this separation. To those less favourably placed, but still
important in agrarian relationships — peasant groups of lesser
status and certain merchants and artisans — the right division pro¬
vided alliance support of importance. Craftsmen and merchants less
directly involved in agrarian relations sought alliance refuge in
the left division, for in the balancing of status and locality solidarity
which hinged upon links to the land, they had but poor claims.
Moreover, to the extent that such craft and mercantile activities
could be identified with the urban social order, they bore an addi¬
tional status handicap of having been associated with heterodoxy.
A core of military forces stood ready to support the latter coalition
in the form of armed contingents of itinerant traders.
The supra-local system of dual divisions became evident first
in the valangai military units of the first of the great Cholas, Raja-
raja I. At that time there appears to have been no contending
idangai. The designation valangai at this earlier time may have been
the way of referring to the armed peasantry of Cholamandalam
and Tondaimandalam who had overcome a considerable measure
of isolation and had begun to cooperate militarily, first under
various chiefs and later under the great Cholas. They had become
the weapon, the Tight-hand’, of ambitious warrior leaders. These
were potential or relative structures, not absolute and continuous
ones, as suggested in the term vehi, in velaikkdrdr, meaning
'occasional’. It was not until two centuries after the first references
to essentially localized peasant groups collaborating on wider
regional lines for military purposes that the left division appears
to have achieved the same degree of supra-local potential organiza¬
tion. Venkayya’s view that the existence of the valangai soldiers
in the time of Rajaraja I implied the existence of the idangai would,
under this interpretation, be questionable. It is more probable
that the prior existence of the peasant-dominated right division
led to the development of an opposing division at a later time,
that is during the eleventh century.
 Right and Left Hand Castes 215

Removed from the great brahmadeya centres of orthodoxy of

the tenth and eleventh centuries, which afford the most important
sources of information of this period, the rise of the left-hand
division and the establishment of a true dual division was slow to
be registered. Mobile artisan/trader groups, even after they had
shifted their allegiance from the heterodox to the Saivite orthodox
faith of the era, probably continued to be held in suspicion. How¬
ever, such groups could claim an ancient and honourable past
during which they enjoyed respectable status if evidence such as
the Classical epics, Cilappadikaram and Manimekalai are to be
credited even partially and if the rathakdra connection was accepted
widely. Neither these artisan/trader groups nor the itinerant
traders with whom they were linked would long have willingly
accepted the low status which had befallen them in many agrarian
settlements. They would, accordingly, seize upon the new oppor¬
tunities of the twelfth century and after to alter that status. Among
the most important of the opportunities were those associated
with temple development in that age.
 CHAPTER VI

The Transition to Supra-local

Integration in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries

Significant structural changes occurred during the late twelfth

and thirteenth centuries causing instability to the agrarian order
consolidated during the reign of Rajaraja I. These changes include:
(a) the emergence of assemblies called the periyanadu acting over
an enlarged locality and signalling diminished isolation among
previous nuclear regions, or nadus, and, at the same time, augment¬
ing power in the hands of supra-local leaders of the enlarged
locality; (b) the integration of portions of the macro region which
had previously been marginal in settlement and importance, but
which now emerged as mature agrarian regions including much
of the interior area of modern South Arcot which had earlier
separated Tondaimandalam from Cholamandalam, and the upland
tract of Kongu comprising modern Salem and Coimbatore; and
(c) the emergence of a new tier of centres of civilization — towns
— which served to integrate the enlarged localities of the period
and displaced the earlier civilization centres, bralmiadevas, in
both sacred and secular functions. These changes — essentially
a new ordering of the elements of the earliest period of agrarian
integration — provide the clearest explanation of the decline of
the Chola state and the establishment of the political culture of the
Vijayanagara period. However, supra-local integration of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries was transitional in the sense that
earlier forms continue to be important for a considerable time
longer.

Supra-local assemblies

Beginning in the late twelfth century, there is evidence of impressive

integration of local, nadu institutions at higher spatial levels than

216
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 217

ever before achieved. These supra-local institutions were first

commented upon by the senior epigraphist and historian, K.V.
Subrahmanya Aiyer, in a series of articles entitled, ‘The Largest
Provincial Organizations in India’, published in 1954-5.1 Most
recently, Subbarayalu has stressed the importance of these supra-
local assemblies:
. . . from the beginning of the 12th century, the Naqlus ... at times
transcended their territorial limits through assemblies of the Chittrameli-
Periya-Natjar. The Periya-Nattar were none other than the Nd((dr
of the whole [of any section of the] country assembled together. . . ,2

It is well to note that the inscriptions upon which the discussions

of Subrahmanya Aiyer and Subbarayalu are based were known at
the same time as those of the mahasabha institutions, having been
collected during the early years of systematic epigraphical activity
in South India, around 1890. Yet, the supra-local assemblies never
attained the same significance among South Indian historians as
did the brahmadeyas.
The term, ‘supra-local assembly’, is used here for periyanadu
in preference to that used by Subrahmanya Aiyer, ‘provincial’,
because of the implication in the latter usage of an intermediate
level of the state between the monarchy and the locality. Subrah¬
manya Aiyer explicitly associates concrete, centrally-directed,
administrative functions with these assemblies. Referring to a
periyanadu which convened at Mannargudi (Tanjavur district)
in a.d. 1288, he states that they are seen ‘. . . exercising the powers
of the State in three [ways]: the levying of fees on articles of mer¬
chandise, the assignment of revenues so obtained to the temple,
and causing the engraving of the transaction on the temple wall’.3
While a short time later in his discussion he seems to deny the
above assertion, stating that it was ‘a popular assembly . . . not
one appointed by the State’,4 there are other places subsequently

1 Q.J.M.S., v. 45 (New Series), no.l, pp. 29-47; no.2, 70-98; no.4, 270-86; v. 46,
no.l, pp. 8-22.
2 Subbarayalu, op.cit., p. 36.
3 Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.l, p. 35.
4 Ibid., p. 35 ;the padinen-vishayattom 'was ... a popular assembly . . . not one
appointed by the State’. He later states that the ‘provincial assembly’ 'functioned
in place of the king in the country’, ibid., no.4. pp. 283-4, 286. Subrahmanya Aiyer
cites in support of the latter contention the phrase rdjyapari-pdlakanam, but this
term means 'protector of the country’ as well as king or ruler (Tamil Lexicon, v. 4,
p. 2515).
218 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

where the same idea of the assemblies as instruments of a central

government is again expressed.
The assumption that various kinds of supra-local assemblies
of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries were intermediate levels
of a centralized state structure is rejected here. In arguing that
these assemblies were the instruments of the centralized monarchi¬
cal state, Subrahmanya Aiyer ignored the overwhelming evidence
of a weakened Chola overlordship which most historians recognize.
Nor is his assumption supported by any evidence from contempo¬
rary records, for nowhere do these records specify explicit delegated
functions. Rather, his position is based, somewhat inconstantly
as it has been observed, upon the identification of all administrative
and political functions with a putative centralized state structure.
South Indian inscriptions afford too many examples of payments
assessed by local groups upon their members for specific purposes
and the recording of such arrangements on stone to accept this
imputation.
The region comprehended by the term ‘supra-local’, is vague.
It might have varied considerably in different places and at dif¬
ferent times. In the late thirteenth century Mannargudi inscription
mentioned above,5 and in two others from the same place, one of a
slightly earlier time and the other later,6 reference is made to
supra-local assemblies of vishayattar (‘people of the country’)
of eighteen vishayas (padinen-vishayattom). A series of records
from the same place earlier in the thirteenth century, in the twenty-
second regnal year of Rajaraja III, a.d. 1239, register the decision
of an assembly which included the nattavar (nattar) of five localities
(nadus) which are named7 and can be located in the vicinity of
Chidambaram.8 Whether the vishaya and nadu territories are the
same is not clear; both terms may refer to localities, and they
often do.9 Moreover, whether the reference to ‘eighteen vishayas',
can be taken literally is highly doubtful, for ‘eighteen’, like ‘one

5 A.R.E., 1897, no.89; S I.I., v. 6, no.40.

6 A.R.E., 1897, no.95; S.I.I., v. 6, no.47, dated a.d. 1268; A.R.E., 1897, no.90;
S I.I., v. 6, no.41, dated a.d. 1313.
7 A R E., 1897, no. 98; S.I.I., v. 6, nos.50, 58; A R E., 1897, no.96; S I.I., v. 6,
no.48.
8 See ibid.
y Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3744, visayam is given as ‘territory, region of country’;
see ibid., v. 4, p. 2210, ndtu is given as ‘country, district, province’ or ‘locality’ (v. 4).
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 219

hundred and eight’ or ‘one thousand and eighty’,10 appears to have

been a conventional number, one of the several sets which serve
to cast doubt upon much detail in Indian epigraphy. Dikshit has
noted the appelation ‘eighteen districts’ (Kannada: hadinentu
vishaya or hadinentu nadu) in Gangavadi; he and D. Desai have
also drawn attention to the convention in Karnataka of referring
to a complete village as one in which the ‘eighteen social groups’
or ‘castes’ (Kannada: hadinentu samaya) were present.11 One
cannot be absolutely certain, therefore, that at Mannargudi the
scope of the supra-local assembly grew from the five localities
mentioned in a.d. 1239 to eighteen in a.d. 1288; however, it is
certainl> possible that a relatively small grouping of localities of
the early thirteenth century expanded to include others and came
to be regarded as a relatively stable circle of cooperating localities
as seems suggested in the term, ‘eighteen vishayas’ used in the
Mannargudi inscription and in those of other places.12
From extant epigraphical evidence alone, supra-local assemblies
dealt with only a few functions, though there is the assumption of
stable forms of cooperation among constituent locality institutions
involving other functions. Most of the records of supra-local
assemblies relate to temple endowments, of course. In the Mannar¬
gudi inscriptions referred to above, agreements are recorded among
local merchants (nagarattar), presumably in the areca nut trade,
to present a sum of money to two temples of the place in order to
support ritual offerings and repairs. These grants were to be raised
by a duty on the areca nuts as they passed through octroi posts
around the town.13

10 Kanchi is supposed to have had 108 Siva temples and eighteen Vishnu shrines
according to P.V. Jagdisa Ayyar (South Indian Shrines, Madras, 1920, p. 21);
there are supposed to be 108 Vaishnava pahcaratra samhitas, Farquhar, op.cit.,
p. 182; 108 is the usual number of Brahmans upon whom brahmadevas were con¬
ferred, and 108 pots of water were appropriate for the bathing of temple images.
K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 1, p. 339.
11 G.S. Dikshit, Local Self-Government in Medieval Karnataka, Karnataka
University, Dharwar 1964, pp. 34, 72-3; Dinkar Desai, The Mahamandales varas
under the Calukyas of Kalyani, Indian Historical Research Institute, Bombay,
1951, pp. 342-3.
12 The a.d. 1234 record from Narttamalai in Pudukkottai contains the term
padinen bhumi according to A.R.E., 1904, no.364 in v. 3, p. 1640. The Avani
record of Kulottunga I, a.d. 1072 refers to the inhabitants of the eighteen vishayas
(E.C., v. 10, pp.86-7 and K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches . . . , v. 1,
pp. 351-2).
13 Two of these posts are mentioned in the inscriptions.
220 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

In what way the vishayattar of the eighteen vishayas are involved

in this grant is not clear; they appear neither to be donors nor
donees. Instead, the vishayattar seem to assume the position of
general responsibility for the final agreement to establish the new
duty in support of the gift to the temples. This view is based upon
references to the temples whose deities bore the name of the supra-
local assemblies, thus indicating the supervisory or protective
function which the assemblies exercised in relation to the temples.14
In a classic inscription of a supra-local assembly from Tirukkoyilur
(modern South Arcot), the deity, Bhumidevi, (‘Goddess of the
Earth, or Soil’) or, ‘Chittiramelivinnagar of the eighteen lands
(bhumi) and seventy-nine countries (nadus)’, was the beneficiary
of a grant from the citrameli-periyanattdr:15
Lord Hari. Hail! Prosperity! This is the order [sasanam] of the chitra-
mela, just and good to all people, being the prosperous sons of the soil
and those subsisting on cow’s milk. Let this order, which is for the
protection and strengthening of the sons of the land, who are bom of the
four castes, endure in this world. We the Chitrameli-Periyanattar,
who are the sons of the earth goddess [Bhumidevi] who have studied the
pure language [centamil] and the northern knowledge [i.e. Sanskrit
knowledge], who have become adepts at heeding the laws, who are sons
of the goddess of wealth whose flowers never wither, who are the lights
to all quarters, who deal with sweet words in the case of the good and
exorcise evil with harsh words, who prosper in this wide world bounded
by the four seas, with the lord of the winds blowing gently, the lord of
waters [Varuna] showering the water, the lord of the heavens illuminating
all, and the people of all the quarters seated in peace (with the lands filled
with coconut, jackfruit, mango groves, plantain, areca nut, sweetly
scented flowers on the creepers, and the birds flocking enchantingly)
increasing in numbers without waning, with justice prospering and in¬
justice diminishing, with their fame spreading and their enemies capitulat¬
ing, with their mace of authority [cehgoI\ preceding them in all quarters,
having the ploughshare as their god [citrameh], with golden fertility of the
full purse as their goal, conducting the affairs of their organization with
tolerance and sympathy, having high and true justice as the source of
their towering fame, having fully learned the Muttamil malai,1^ make this
benefaction. As even previously the gate decorated with the plough

14 See below.
15 v. 7, no.129; A.R.E., 1900, no.117. On paleographical grounds, this
inscription has been dated in the first quarter of the thirteenth century (personal
communication from K.G. Krishnan, Office of the Epigraphist for India, 16 Oct.
1968).
16 Tamil Lexicon, v. 3, p. 1757; probably muttamil marai: Kural and bhakti
hymns.
 Transition to Supra-Iocal Integration 221

[meU\ and the Goddess Bhumidevi had been installed and as such the
temple of the god in Chittiramelivinnagar of the eighteen lands [bhumt]
of the seventy-nine countries [nadus] alias the Perumaj who is pleased
to stand in Tiruvidaikali in Tirukkdvalur [Tirukkoyilur] in Kurukkai-
kurram in Miladu alias Jananatha-valanadu, had become the respon¬
sibility of our organization and as the endowments we had already made
were lost during the calamities, we again endow a padakku of paddy per
plough and a kuruni of paddy per person including those from outside
our organization.

The opening lines of this Tirukkoyilur are in Sanskrit in contrast

to the rest of the record which is in Tamil. The Sanskrit portion
constitutes what Subrahmanya Aiyer has called, \ . . the charac¬
teristic feature of [the] Provincial Assembly in charge of Administra¬
tion and Agriculture’.17 While the purported delegation of admi¬
nistrative functions of these assemblies as seen by this learned
epigraphist may be questioned, their association with agriculture
is beyond challenge. The names most often taken by such supra-
local bodies involved the words for ‘plough’ (Tamil and Kannada:
meli', Telugu: medi), as in the title, citrameli-periyanattom in the
inscription above, or in two twelfth century northern Kannada
records where the term "meli-1000' [meli sasirvaru) occurs.18
Such records also frequently display a decorative element which
further supports the association with agriculture; this was an
ornamental arch with the representation of a plough incised in
the slab bearing the inscription.19 The titles of the groups under
whose auspices the inscriptions are prepared — periyanattar,
meli-1000, and the assembly of the eighteen districts of the four
quarters (nangu-tisai padinen vishayattom) further support the
close association of the assemblies with agricultural groups, the
nattars, who dominated land relations.20 In some of the inscrip-

17‘Largest Provincial Organizations...’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.l, pp. 44-5; the

verse is given in ibid, p. 70 and in A.R.E., 1953-4, p. 6.
18 A.R.E., 1953-4, p. 6, provides a series of such records. Also see ‘Largest
Provincial Organizations . . .’, Q.J.M.S., v. 46, no.2, p. 71 (text) 1. 7. Further
references to these organizations in Karnataka are contained in A.R.E., 1958-9,
nos.519, 665, 666; A.R.E., 1960-1, p. 25, relating to a record of the time of
Vikramaditya VI (a.d. 1076-1126).
19 ‘Largest Provincial Organizations . . .’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no 1, p. 45 and A.R.E.,
1953-4, p. 6. The epigraphist, T.N. Subramaniam, reports a copperplate inscrip¬
tion of the late thirteenth or fourteenth century dealing with the citrameli and
shaped as a miniature plough (S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 217).
' 20‘Largest Provincial Organizations...’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.l, p. 47; Tamil
Lexicon, v. 3, p. 1867 (tisai).
222 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

tions, the constituent locality representatives, nattar, and their

assemblies, nadu, are referred to explicitly. An inscription from
Nellore, dated a.d. 1197, reads21 as follows after the standard
introductory verse:
In the Saka year 1119, the inhabitants of [the following] nadus: Pedai-
nadu, Peratti-nadu, Mungalarattai-nadu, Kadaiyasinga-nadu, Puiigai-
nadu, Tongai-Punul-nadu, Chhicaia-nadu, Pottappi-nadu of Jayankonda-
chd)amandalam having all assembled at Chittirameli-mandapa [pillared
hall] at Tiruparkadar-Chittiramelivinnagar, gave to the god at Chittira-
melivinnagar, free of tax, lands to the extent of 2,200 kuli.

The record from Mannargudi dated a.d. 1239 mentions land

controlling groups from five nadus who met as a body to settle
complaints by some of their number against the demands of the
Brahman sabha of Mannargudi (Rajadhiraja-chaturvedimanga-
lam).22 An a.d. 1234 record from Tiruppattur (Tirupidavur, in
Musiri taluk, Tiruchirapalli district), refers to an assembly of
twelve nadus,23 and from Varanjuram (Vriddhachalam taluk.
South Arcot) an epigraph dated a.d. 1227, already noted in
connection with the admission of peoples called nattamakkal
and malaiyamakkal into the idangai, was issued on behalf of
eleven nadus.24
Not all grants of the periyanattar were to temples over which they
had supervisory responsibilities. From the shrine of Sri Govinda-
raja at Tirupati, there is the following Tamil record of a.d. 1235.25
Hail, Prosperity! This is the edict of Bhudeviputra-Chitramela issued
for the maintenance of the dharma observed by the four varnas. As
per the oral order of the king issued previously,. . . we, the Periya-Nalta-
var, having assembled in the council-chamber (attached) to the Tiruvi-
[ankoyil [situated] in Tiruchchukanur in full numbers without omission
of the necessary adjuncts, and resolved upon the representation of Sri-
sathakopadasarpihai, Kollikavalidasarpillai, Aruvaraiyanaiyakoyilpillai
and Kalikarridasarpillai in respect of the provision (to be made) for the
amudupadi and sattuppadi (offerings) for (the image of) Tirumaiigaiyalvar,
the bestower of blessings (on the devotees), who was installed in Sri
Govindapperumal’s temple which is a plastered sanctum of Vishnu,
through the charity of the Periya-Ndttdr, have witnessed that the Tiruk

21 A. Butterworth and V. Venugopal Chetty, A Collection of Inscriptions on

Copper-pla'es and Stones in the Nellore District, Madras, 1905, v. 2, p. 824 (at Nellore
town).
22 A.R.E., 1897; S.I.I., v. 6, no.50.
23 v. 3, no. 185, p. 1532.
24 A R E., 1940-1, no. 184.
25 T.T.D.I., v. 1, no.40, pp. 64-6.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 223

kudavurar have granted with libations of water Kottakalvay situated

in Tirukkudavur-nadu to . . . yielding paddy . . . and direct that (its
produce) be amalgamated with and collected along with the income of
Sri Govindapperumal by the supervisors of the treasury of the temple of
Tiruverikatamudaiyan and that this charity be conducted as long as the
moon and the sun (last).

He, who obstructs [the conduct of] this charity, (will surrender) his body
to the Natfavar and will beget the sin of killing a tawny (coloured) cow
on the bank of the Ganges.

We, the Periya-Nattavar (hereby witness this transaction). This is the

signature of the Periya-Nattu-Velan.

This evidence of the continuity of the nattar, their assemblies,

and their cooperation within supra-local assemblies of the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries is significant. It is important that
the latter, as new integrative institutions, did not replace the more
ancient locality bodies, but rather incorporated the latter, thus
achieving improved means for combinations across locality lines.
As such, the supra-local assemblies of the nattar, now periyanattar,
may be seen as an important further development of South Indian
segmentary society. But, there was a cost borne by the older local
assemblies.
The emergence of a ruling strata increasingly divorced from the
locality peasantry accompanied this supra-local cooperation.
This is seen in several ways. One was the differentiation of the
nattar, now collaborating across nadu lines, from the ordinary
peasantry; another was the close cooperation between the supra-
local elite and itinerant merchant groups; finally, there appeared
to be the development of a distinctive sub-culture associated with
what appears as a new ruling class.
This increased status and power differentiation of those who
comprised the supra-local bodies from the local peasantry is
suggested by the set of inscriptions from Mannargudi. During the
twenty-second regnal year of the Chola ruler Rajaraja III, a.d.
1239, a complicated, joint regulation (vyavastha) of the sab ha and
mahasabha of Rajadhiraja-chaturvedimangalam, as Mannargudi
was called, and nattavar of five nadus of the locality was recorded.26

26 A.R E., 1897, no.98. 104; S.I.I., v. 6, nos.50, 58. Also A.R E., 1897, no.96;
S I.I., v. 6, no.48. There is the suggestion in these records, and in a few others, that
in some places the two assemblies — sabha and mahasabha — may have been
different bodies, the latter presumably including non-Brahmans as well as Brahmans.
224 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

It is stated that members of the locality peasantry, Vellalas, had

complained that they could no longer maintain themselves since
their income — cash and paddy crop — was already committed
to too many purposes. Therefore, it was resolved that obligations
of the Vellalas for the repair of the river bunds should be in pro¬
portion to their taxable land; that for various other obligations,27
payments were to be based upon a strict levy per unit (ma) of
cultivated land; and that no additional payments were to be
demanded on various pretexts. It was further provided that new
kudumbus, a term which in this context may be understood as work
groups,28 should comprise only those eligible to cultivate land and
that Brahmans should not interfere in the constitution of the
kudumbus or in matters involving the land taxes29 from the hamlets
of the locality. Finally, the additional demand on Vellala house¬
holds of a special tax to support Brahmans (brahmanar-perkkada-
mai) was prohibited. The regulation concluded with the injunction
that if any Brahmans or Vellalas made false allegations against
other Brahmans or Vellalas of the locality, or against those in
charge of the kudumbus or in charge of the collection of taxes
(puravu) and accounts (urkanakkar) to powerful people beyond

The meeting recorded in 96 of 1897 was at the temple of Sri Kailasamudaiyar which
is one of the most ancient shrines at Mannargudi where one version of this inscrip¬
tion is found.
27 Tirumugan tevai, wages for those carrying out royal orders (?); chennTr-ve((i,
cannot be identified; nettal and kuraivaruppu, connected with dredging the river;
and makkat-chevagapperu, emoluments for village servants.
28 This is to follow the meaning of kudumbu, groupings of families, as Subrah-
manya Aiyer does in his discussion of the Uttaramerur mahasabha inscriptions
(Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 2, ed., K.S. Vidyanathan, Coimbatore
Co-Operative Printing Works, Coimbatore, 1967, pp. 273-4) where it has the same
aggregative meaning as the term kula. This is consonant with the meaning given
in the Tamil Lexicon (v. 2, p. 974), kutumpam, and it deviates from the meaning
which Nilakanta Sastri used in his discussion of the same inscriptions in Studies
in Coja History and Administration, especially where he seems to confound the
terms kudumbu and ceri as sections of the settlement (p. 158). The idea that the
kudumbu might also have been a grouping of agricultural families for purposes of
cooperation in agricultural activities is certainly suggested in this inscription where
the process of periodic reconstitution can hardly be reconciled with fixed kinship
units and where kudumbu membership is specifically restricted to those who cultivate
land.
-l) These are enumerated as follows: ur-viniyogam, village expenditures; kudumbu-
kacu, lineage (or work unit) payments; and various temple dues.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 225

the locality (mudalis), they would be considered as traitors to the

village and nadu.
The mudalis in this inscription can have been none other than
the nattavar of the five nadus themselves, and the purpose of the
regulation would appear to have been to create a better balance
between Brahmans and the local peasantry with respect to divisions
of local resources with some favour being shown to the latter.
The injunction against carrying ‘false allegations’ beyond the
immediate vicinity, i.e. to the mudalis, suggests further the interest
of the supra-local assembly of the nattavar in having local problems
disposed of by those of the immediate locality. The implication
would accordingly be that efforts were made on the part of those
more powerful elements of the peasant population who had attained
an ascendant place over several peasant localities to separate
themselves from the local peasantry. The periyanattar appeared
not to be acting as the patrons of the local peasantry, from which
they derived, but as mediators in the relations between that peasan¬
try and the Brahman sabha of the vicinity who appear to have
lost some of their former prestige.
A more reliable indicator of the separation of the leadership
segment of the peasantry with respect to local peasants as a whole
would be an increased demand from peasant production. To a
degree that seems suggested in the Mannargudi records mentioned
above, it might be supposed that the greater the proportion of
agrarian output taken by the Brahman sabha of Rajadhiraja-
chaturvedimangalam, the less was available to those with supra-
local authority, who might, in turn, have passed some of this to
temples. Thus, the effort to limit and regularize payments for
strictly local purposes, including the support of local Brahmans,
may be understood as a step toward freeing resources for transfer
to the supra-local authority of the nattar for their distribution.
Because revenue details are seldom ever given in the records of the
period and because even such as exist are unclear,30 it is not possible
to strongly support the assertion that there was a shift in the level
of payments from the prime ancient recipients of shares of locality
income, such as Brahmans, to the new class of locality leaders
or that the demand upon the lower peasantry actually rose in the
period.

30 See Appadorai’s discussion, op. cit., v. 2. pp. 676-80.

226 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

One scholar, L.B. Alayev, who has given special attention

to this problem, suggested that during the twelfth century in Chola
country there were indications of an increased demand from
holders of the kJlvaram, i.e. the share of income to the peasantry
proper, judging from the flight of peasants from their lands. Alayev
attributes the increased demand to pressures from the growing
temple institutions of the time which were, already in the twelfth
century, holders of the melvaramd1 An objection may be posed
to his suggestion about the temples as a source of pressure upon
the peasantry since temples themselves possessed no coercive
powers. If the indications to which Alayev points are correct,
they signify the exercise of enhanced power by those who constituted
the supra-local bodies and who were the chief supporters of temples
from this time on. A thirteenth century inscription from Srirangam
would seem to support the view that substantial if not an increasing
portion of peasant output was taken by supra-local chiefs during
the twelfth century and later. This was a record of the Hoysala
ruler Vira Somesvaradeva in about a.d. 126432 which provided
that the locality authorities (nattavar) of idaiyarru-nadu and
kurai-parru were to deposit in a granary (kottakdram) 10,000
kalam of paddy out of the dues (kadamai) taken by them which
amounted to 20,000 kalam,33 This was stated to be in accordance
with the proportion taken previously by the chiefs of the region,
the akalanka-nddajvar, who were apparently displaced by the
Hoysalas.34 The demand of half of the paddy dues, kadamai,
from those who managed local production suggests that the de¬
mands of the latter upon those who cultivated was high. However,

31 Unpublished paper presented to a seminar on "Problems of Social and Cul¬

tural Change in South India , held in Madras, 14 and 15 June 1968, under the auspices
of the Madras Centre of the American Institute of Indian Studies. The paper was
entitled ‘Land Rights in Medieval South India as a Measure of Social Status’.
32 S.I.I., v. 4, no.435.
33 Appadorai provides the information for converting this quantity of paddy
(20,000 kalam) into 120,000 bushels of the grain (op. cit., v. 2. pp. 407-10).
34 A chief with this title was one of two mentioned in an a.d. 1196 inscription
in this part of Tiruchirapalli recording an agreement (nilaimai-tJttu) to cooperate
together against others (A R E., 1908, no.483, discussed in K.A. Nilakanta Sastri,
The Colas, v. 2, pt 2, p. 693). Another inscription which refers to the ascendant
position of the Hoysalas in this part of South India at the time is an a.d. 1245 one
from Tirumayam, Tiruchirapalli district (K.R. Venkataraman. 'An Interesting
Award’, in Nagaswamy, Seminar on Inscriptions, pp. 3-7).
 Transition to Supra-Iocal Integration 227

without better data on the division of shares prior to the twelfth

century, it is not possible to accept Alayev’s contention of an
increased demand.
Another dimension along which the powerful class of supra-
local authorities was separated from their peasant bases and origins
may be seen in the collaboration of the periyanattar with trade and
artisan groups. It is one of the distinctive characteristics of this
transitional period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that
groups which before had no separate corporative existence now
enjoyed increasingly independent identification: the powerful,
agricultural cittrameli-periyanattar\ the itinerant, mercantile tisai
dyirattu aihhurruvar, or nanadesi; and mobile artisans, sometimes
identified by an ancient title, rathakara, at other times by such
terms as Kammalar.35
Relationships among these groups are somewhat clarified in the
set of epigraphs collected by K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer for his
discussion of the ‘provincial organization’. Six of the nine records
examined by him for the period a.d. 1168 to a.d. 1314 involved
arrangements between mercantile groups and the periyanattar,36
From Mannargudi, three inscriptions record provisions for the
payment of a duty on areca nut and the pepper trade to temples of the
place; from Piranmalai (Tiruppattur taluk, Ramnad) a wide range
of trade goods became leviable to support ritual services and repairs
to a temple, 'under the protection of the vishayattdr of the eighteen
vishayas'd1 In these inscriptions, the supra-local authorities, called
vishayattdr, which is the equivalent of periyanattar, assume no
liability for payments to the temples which are the recipients of the
grants. The vishayattdr seem merely to be assenting in and associat¬
ing themselves with an allocation of resources which they, the
supra-local authorities, would otherwise have received. Moreover,
in the Mannargudi records, the mercantile groups (nagarattar),
are local traders subject to the authority of the vishayattdr whereas,
in the Piranmalai record, the mercantile groups include those from

35 S.I.T.I., V. 3, pt 2, p. 203.
36 S.I.I., v. 6, no.40 (89 of 1897), 41 (90 of 1897), 47 (95 of 1897); v. 7, nos.198
(701 of 1902), 291 (21 of 1903); v. 8, no.442 (154 of 1903).
37 This record v. 8, no.442 [154 of 1903]) is an extremely important one
not only for an understanding of the supra-local assemblies of the period but also
for its enumeration of trade goods ('Largest Provincial Organizations . . . , Q.J.M.S.,
v. 46, p. 17).
228 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

specific trade centres in pdndya- and kohgu-mandalam who are

also called nagarattdrd8 But, in addition, there are several groups
of itinerant traders with the title, tisai ayirattaihhurruvar, generally
understood as itinerant traders.39 Thus, while the Mannargudi
inscriptions are those of a supra-local assembly alone registering
their agreement to the arrangement involving duty to be paid by
local merchants, in the Piranmalai grant there appears to be some¬
what greater parity between the vishayattar and the mercantile
groups since both seem to be issuing the grant as suggested by the
terms: citrameli-sasdsanam-tribhuvanasraya-pahchasata-vlra-sdsa-
nam in the opening lines of the inscription.40
On the whole, however, the relationship between the supra-local
assembly of dominant land controllers and the mercantile bodies
referred to in these records assumes the subordination of the latter
to the former. In the a.d. 1235 inscription from Anbil in modern
Tiruchirapalli,41 several groups are mentioned in addition to the
citrameU periyanattom. These are: itinerant merchants (tisaia-
yirattaihhurruvar), local merchants (ndttu chettigal), other mer¬
chants (devala-chettigal and jayapdlar), as well as artisans (kalanai)
and soldiers (mimed and munai virakkodiydr). These are collectively
referred to by the supra-local group as ‘our people' (,nam-makkal).42

38 These include the nagaraitar of several places including: Aruvimangalam

alias Kulasekhara-pattinan, Eripadainallur-vadamattai, Pudutteru alias Seranara-
yana-puram, Tirukottiyur-maniyambalam, Alagapuram alias Seliyanarayanapuram,
Sundarapandiyapuram.
39 There is disagreement among scholars on this term. They are spoken of as
the' 1,500" by Subrahmanya Aiyer ('Largest Provincial Organizations. . . .’, Q.J.M.S.,
v. 46, no.2, p. 73) and as ‘500’ of the thousand districts by Nilakanta Sastri (The
Colas, p. 319); simply as 'merchants and traders in many lands’, by T.N. Subra-
maniam (S.t.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 203).
40 'Largest Provincial Organizations . . . . , Q.J.M.S.. v. 46, no.l, p. 8. It is note¬
worthy that contemporary inscriptions from Karnataka point to developments
similar to those in Tamil country. A damaged record from Mudanur (Shorapur
taluk, Gulbarga) recently noticed contains a resolution of a supra-local assembly
(mahanadu) involving several merchant groups and the regulations they framed
(A R E., 1960-1, no.519). Another record from Gabbur in Raichur of the twelfth
century refers to an organization called meli sasiruvaru ('1000 ploughs’), equated
by the epigraphist with the citrameli, as a guild of agriculturists (ibid., no.665 of
1958-9, p. 25) dating from the time of the Kalyani Chalukya ruler Vikramaditya VI.
41 A.R.E., 1902, no.601, the text of which is found in 'Largest Provincial Organi¬
zations . . .’ (Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.2, p. 74).
42 Ibid., p. 73; reading is 'our sons'.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 229

In the judgement of K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, the supra-local

assemblies of the period were ‘all powerful’ with respect to other
corporate groups, and though there is no reason to accept his
argument that these supra-local groups were instruments of the
kings and ‘exercised State powers’,43 his recognition of their
plenary local power must be accepted.

The Sub-Culture of the Periyanattar

Concomitant with and perhaps underlying the impressive authority

of the supra-local assemblies in the economic and political manage¬
ment of the agrarian order was a cultural development modelled
on existing Brahmanical institutions, but decidedly reflective of
the self-confidence of the ruling members of these assemblies.
The late twelfth and thirteenth centuries may have witnessed the
eclipse of Chola authority, such as to prompt Nilakanta Sastri’s
observation that ‘the period was marked by no striking develop¬
ments in polity or society. . . ,’,44 however, the emergence of
powerful locality authorities, boasting of special relations with
temples and seminaries (mathas) and the increasing importance
of what were essentially new urban places must be considered as
most ‘striking’.
The manner in which influential, non-Brahman, agrarian groups
were involved in the affairs of the sacred centres of South India
during the period of the great Cholas (tenth to twelfth centuries)
has been touched upon in several ways. The nattar played a vital
role in the support of brahmadeyas. It was peasant-agrarian
resources collected by superior locality groups and voluntarily
granted to Brahmans, individually and corporately, that sustained
these most significant agents of ritual and education. Royal
gifts and the support of those close to the great overlords of the

43 See ibid., no.4, 284-5. Here Subrahmanya Aiyer attributes neglect of these
bodies to their confusion as primarily religious in character: ‘The reason for the
non-recognition of this all powerful body [the periyanattar] which wielded the
greatest influence in the land is due to the mistaken notion that the word samaya
or samaya-dharma meant the dharmas of the community in all religions.’ Samaya-
dharma is regarded by him as the same as vyavastha: ‘regulations’ or ‘recorded
transactions’ which are equivalent to raja dharma to be obeyed as if they were the
orders of the king (ibid., p. 281).
44 Historv of South India, p. 202. He goes on to state that industry, trade, and the
arts continued to flourish.
230 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Coromandel plain were of importance principally in the magnificent

Brihadisvara temple at Tanjavur, the temple, at Gahgaikondachola-
puram, and in a few other places. These were as much monuments
to the power of their Chola builders as marks of their piety. Direct
‘royal’ grants were few, relative to the overall pattern of support
to Brahman institutions, though such royal gifts must be considered
as models for the overwhelming support by local dominant groups
to such institutions. To both the local and great overlords, such
support brought honour and fortified legitimation in addition
to serving the motive of piety. The sustaining support for all
but the few institutions which enjoyed direct royal favour came
from the spokesmen and leaders of the peasantry of the region.
To what extent these supporters of Brahmanical institutions
of learning and ritual were direct beneficiaries of these institutions
is, however, questionable. Too little is known about the modes of
temple worship from the tenth to the twelfth centuries to assess
the degree of non-Brahman ritual participation. The probability
is that there was little direct participation. Certain kinds of know¬
ledge related to ritual were transmitted within the context of the
Brahman family or, for higher forms of such knowledge, in a
relationship with a guru or acharya. The place of guru as trans¬
mitter of high sacred knowledge became increasingly important
during later Chola times as differences between Saivite and Vaishna-
vite doctrine became firmer,45 and as these led to religious orders,
'sects’ (Tamil: campiratayam, from the Sanskrit sampradaya).
‘Sectarian’ education conducted in a seminary (matha or ghatika)
provided the comprehensive studies judged necessary for the
maintenance of Brahmanical traditions of the age. Here, careful
screening of students served to exclude all but Brahmans with
appropriate genealogical and sastric credentials. The most com¬
plete educational facilities were the ghatikas of Kanchi, Tiruvadut-
turai, Tiruvorriyur, Ennayiram, and Tribhuvani where curricula
extended beyond sacred knowledge per se to include medicine,
poetics, and other arts. Inscriptions from these places provide
an impression of heavy Brahman control. Most teachers were
Brahmans, the language of instruction was Sanskrit, and most of
the stipendary students were Brahmans.

45 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Development of Religion in South India, pp. 61-5; Far-
quhar, Outline of Religious Literature, p. 257.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 231

Exclusion from these educational contexts to which Brahmans

controlled access does not mean that Sanskrit and the sacred
and sastric lore in that language could not be obtained by non-
Brahmans. Some of the great figures of the age who were not
Brahmans commanded Sanskrit and at least a part of its knowledge.
The thirteenth century formulator of Saiva Siddhanta, Meykandar,
is recalled as a pious Vellala who translated twelve Sanskrit sutras
of the raurava-agama into Tamil.46 Indeed, the classification
of satvik-sudra applied to Vellalas in medieval South India, if
it means anything, means that some of them were deemed worthy
of some Brahmanical education.
The general character of non-Brahman culture in South India,
its pretentions to ritual purity, was based precisely upon such
Brahman norms and knowledge47 as noticed in the Tirukkoyilur
inscription quoted above. How non-Brahmans acquired Brah¬
manical learning is obscured by the dominance of Brahmans over
the most important cultural institutions of which we have record.
However, there is a suggestion that the term kanimurruttu may
refer to support of higher forms of non-Brahman learning during
the tenth to twelfth centuries. This term appears in Chola copper¬
plate grants to indicate a right to income from land enjoyed by
persons outside of the brahmadeyas ; other rights of a similar sort
were those of devadana, paUiccandan, and vettiperu with which the
kanimurruttu right is usually included. The other terms relate
to income rights of persons attached to Hindu temples, Jaina
shrines, and those who clear forest tracts around settled areas and
possibly engage in other public works.48 Kanimurruttu was ex¬
plained by K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer as an income right to those
called kadigaiyar, sometimes identified as announcers of the time,49
but more plausibly as court poets.50 Recently, a learned epi-

46 Ibid., p. 94 and Farquhar, Outline of Religious Literature, p. 257.

47 In the recent past, the ideological writings of leaders of the non-Brahman
movement in Tamil country argue that alleged Brahman norms are really ancient
Vellala ones adopted by Brahmans and used against the Vellalas. See Swami Veda-
chalam, Velalar Nagurigam [The Civilization of Ancient Velalas], T.M. Press, Pal-
lavaram, 1927.
48‘Larger Leiden Plates of Rajaraja T, E.L, v. 22, pp. 213ff; ‘Tiruvalangadu
Plates of Rajendra L, E.I., v. 3, p. 383ff; S.I.T.t., 'Glossaryand Tamil Lexicon,
v. 6, p. 3296, murrutlu.
^ E.I., v. 22, p. 231.
50 Tamil Lexicon, v. 2, p. 668.
232 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

graphist, K.G. Krishnan, has suggested that kanimurruttu may

refer to payments to the learned (perhaps poets?) who were not
Brahmans and who were thus excluded from participation and
benefits from brahmadeyas, ghatikas, and vidyasthanas.51 The
evidence of achievements by non-Brahmans in Sanskrit and higher
forms of knowledge prior to the late twelfth century and the high
probability that non-Brahmans were substantially excluded from
other sources of support, strongly favour Krishnan’s suggestion.
Beyond limited access to the sacred knowledge of Brahmanically
oriented institutions, non-Brahmans would presumably also have
had been denied access to many ritual performances involving
Brahman functionaries. For one reason, the shrines of canonical
deities during the early Chola period and most of the period of the
great Cholas were located in the residential quarters of Brahman
villages, thus non-Brahmans would have suffered restrictions of
movement into these quarters. It would also appear to have been
the case that from the ninth century, most shrines of Brahmanical
gods were simple, even austere, reflecting the aniconic propensities
of the Smartha tradition of the age. This is said to have been a
reversal of the trend to greater iconic worship before a.d. 800 and
thus may reflect a deliberate effort to exclude all but the sastric-
oriented Sivabrahmans.52 The remains of early Chola temples,
stripped of their later elaborate additions — minor shrines, great
walls providing impressive ambulatory corridors (prakdra), great
gate-ways (gopura) — consist of small shelters for a lingam. Here,
during most of the Chola period, the most elaborate ritual would
have consisted of lamp offerings and recitations of Sanskrit mantras
and, increasingly, Tamil hymns in praise of Siva.53 Given the rules
of purity governing sacred places and the modest scale of ritual

51 Personal communication from K.G. Krishnan, Office of the Epigraphist for

India.
52 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Development of Religion in South India, p. 111. K.R.
Srinivasan (superintendent of the Department of Archaeology, southern circle
[Madras], Government of India), has suggested that a transition from iconic to
aniconic forms occurred around a.d. 800, the sivalinga replacing iconic forms:
... a reversal of what had obtained earlier and what has been persisting in lower
sub-strata of society throughout’ (Some Aspects of Religion as Revealed by Early
Monuments and Literature in South India, University of Madras, Madras 1960
P- 62).
53 This dates from the late Pallava period according to Nilakanta Sastri (Develop¬
ment of Religion in South India, pp. 120-1).
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 233

performances, the scope for non-Brahman ritual participation

would have been small. It was only with bluikti ritual in its more
elaborate and popular form based upon the inclusion of folk
elements of iconic worship of the twelfth century and after — a
development associated with the development of Vaishnavism
after Ramanuja — that the non-Brahman place in Brahmanical
temple activities became significant. These developments form
an important episode in South Indian religion.
Direct involvement of the dominant landed folk of the Coro¬
mandel plain and portions of the contiguous upland with Brah¬
manical (Vedic) temples became greater during the twelfth century
and later. Considerable significance must be attributed to reforms
in Vaishnava temples of this period with which the name of Rama¬
nuja has persistently been linked. According to the chronicle
(sthalapurana) of the Srirangam temple at Tiruchirapalli, Koil
Olugu, the great Vaishnava acharya spent an extended period at
the temple, succeeding the Vaishnava teacher Alavandar as superin¬
tendent.54 Among the ten divisions of temple functionaries estab¬
lished by Ramanuja was one consisting of Sudras called sattada
Vaishnavas, a term which means Vaishnavas without 'threads’,
or Vellalas.55 The roles which such non-Brahmans carried out
were those of storehouse managers, guards, accountants, as well
as some ritual posts including the offering of coconuts to the
deity, Ranganatha.56 It appears that the position of the non-
Brahman functionaries at Srirangam was not to endure beyond
the late fourteenth century when, along with non-Brahman func¬
tionaries at the other important Vaishnava shrine at Tirupati,
they were replaced in their duties by Brahmans or by ascetic orders
comprising Brahmans and non-Brahmans.57
However, at lesser Vaishnava shrines, and probably at most
temples of the time, non-Brahman leaders were most consistently

54 Koil Olugu, The Chronicle of the Srirangam Temple with Historical Notes,
ed. V.N. Hari Rao, Rochouse and Sons, Madras, 1961, p. 41fT Also see Hari Rao’s
doctoral thesis, ‘A History of Trichinopoly and Srirangam', University of Madras,
Madras, 1945, consulted at the University of Chicago Library.
55 Ibid., p. 90.
56 Ibid., p. 94.
57 Burton Stein, ‘Social Mobility and Medieval South Indian Sects' in J. Silverberg
(ed.). Social Mobility in the Caste System of India, Mouton, The Hague, 1968, pp. 78-
95. There are suggestions of Brahman opposition to some of the reforms involving
Sudras in the time of Ramanuja (Hari Rao, Koil Olugu, . . .).
234 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

influential. Numerous records of the twelfth and thirteenth cen¬

turies refer to citrameli-vinnagar temples, that is Vaishnava shrines
under the protection of the citrameli-periyandttdr. The ancient
shrine of Trivikrama Perumal in Tirukkoyilur (South Arcot),
also called tiruvidai-kqli-ndyandr, celebrated by the early hymnists
(ddvars), was under the protection of a supra-local assembly accord¬
ing to an early thirteenth century inscription.58 A portion of this
record reads:
To the temple of Elupattonbadu-nattu-padinen-bhumi-cittrameji-vinna-
gar [the Vishnu deity of the supra-local assembly of the 79 countries
and 18 districts] alias Tiruvidaikaji-ninraruliya-perumal at Tirukovalur
in Kurukkai-kurram of Maladu alias [its Chola territorial designation]
Jananatha-vajanadu, which has received the [symbol of the] plough
[meli tdranam] and has been left under our protection [and] bhumideva
[the earth god] having been consecrated by us, we made the following
endowment: as the gifts made by us to this temple in former years had
been lost along with the edicts relating to them during invasions, we have
now ordered that one padakku of paddy on each plough and one kururn
of paddy per individual shall be paid as had been formerly decreed by us.59

In modern Nellore town (Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh) a

Vishnu deity was granted income from 2,200 kuli of land (about
7 acres)60 in a.d. 1197 by a supra-local assembly meeting in the
pillared hall of the temple (mandapam) called the citrameli-man-
dapam. Introducing this record is the standard invocation of the
citrameli-periyanattar, followed by:
In the Saka year 1119, the inhabitants of the nadus [eight are enumerated]
of Jayankondacholoa-mandalam, having all assembled at the chittra-
meli-mandapa at Tiruparkadar-chittirameji-vinnagar, gave to the god. . .
free of tax, lands to the extent of 2,200 kuli.

In the important citrameli-periyandttdr inscription from Piran-

malai (Tiruppattur taluk, Ramnad), already discussed in part,
it is stated:
. . . the sacred temple of Margavagaittirta-mudaliyar-nayanar-udaiyar
... at the foot of Tirukkodunkonram hill in Tirumalai-nadu, with its
sacred tank, matha and Tirumadaivijagam had been left under the pro¬
tection of (assembly of the) Eighteen Districts (padinen-vishaya). . . . 6i

58 A.R.E., 1922, para. 8, pp. 8-9.

59 A.R.E., 1900, no. 117, text and translation in ‘Largest Provincial Organiza¬
tions . . .’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.2, pp. 70ff.
60 Nellore Inscriptions, op. cit., v. 2, p. 824. The conversion of kuli follows Ap-
padorai, op. cit., v. I, 262n, 406.
61 ‘Largest Provincial Organizations . . .’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.4, pp. 270 ff. I M P..
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 235

In a.d. 1217 an inscription registered a gift to the temple Tirumer-

koyil-citrameli-vinnagaralvar at Vijayamangalam (Erode taluk,
Coimbatore) said to be under the protection of the left division
of castes (idangai).62 Another similar record from Paruthipalli
(Salem taluk, Salem) refers to a temple as citrameh-vinnagaram
and to endowments of the citramelina((ar,63 Other places whose
Vishnu temples and mathas were under the protection of the
supra-local assembly and accordingly called citrameh-vinnagaram
were at Valarpuram,64 Sendamangalam,65 and Anbil.66
The reform impulse in contemporary Saivism also involved
participation by non-Brahmans. Saiva Siddhanta philosophy with
its intense monotheism and devotional emphasis was transformed
into a popular sect during the thirteenth century. Its famous
early teachers, using Tamil as the vehicle for their teaching, included
two Vellalas and two Brahmans. Meykandar, the first of the
Tamil expounders of Siddhanta and a Vellala, translated twelve
Sanskrit works into the Tamil Siva-jnana-bodham.61 His disciple
was a Brahman, Arulnandi. Marai, the next great teacher of the
sect, was a Vellala;68 his disciple Umapathi, at the end of the
thirteenth century, was perhaps the most accomplished theologian
and is alleged to have suffered excommunication from his Brahman
community at Chidambaram for his association with Vellalas.69
Other reforms in Saiva worship as this involved active non-Brah-
man participation were the Vira-Saiva movement in Karnataka
and the sect led by Aradhya Brahmans in parts of medieval Andhra
which maintained close relations with the Vira-Saivas.70 Appro-

v. 2, p. 1122, nos. 534, 535, 539, 543, 544, are other examples of these assemblies of
the thirteenth century. The quotation is from A.R.E., 1903, no. 154; S.I.I., v. 8,
no.442.
62 A.R.E., 1905, no.564; v. 1, p. 540. This record refers in an unusual
way to the ‘ninety-nine’ of the left hand.
63 Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, p. 289, citing E.C., v. 4, Hg 17, v. 7, Sk 118.
64 A.R.E., 1911, no.28.
65 Pudukkottai State Inscriptions, no. 171, p. 100.
66 A.R.E., 1900, no.22.
67 Violet Paranjoti, Saiva Siddhanta in the Meykandar Sastra, London, 1938;
Luzac contains a list of important works on the sect, (p. 9).
68 K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, ‘Dravidian Language and Literature; Saiva Siddhanta
Literature’, in R.C. Majumdar (ed.). History and Culture of the Indian People, v. 5,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1966, p. 366.
69 Farquhar, Outlines of Religious Literature, p. 257. Also, K.A. Nilakanta
Sastri, Development of Religion . . p. 94.
70 Ibid., pp. 64-5.
236 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

priate to the intellectual thrust of these developments, seminaries

(mathas) played an important role, and within these institutions
Saivite, non-Brahman agriculturists were conspicuous. Many Sai-
vite mathas, were under the control of non-Brahman gurus or
mathapatis during the thirteenth century. As centres of Saiva
Siddhanta, these mathas were the institutionalized aspect of the
major role taken by the sect’s Vellala progenitors. A study of
Saivite institutions to the fourteenth century by M. Rajamani-
ckam attributes central significance to these seminary institutions.71
Saiva mathas involving non-Brahman participation and leader¬
ship arose in the first half of the thirteenth Century.72 Among the
most important of these were: the Tirunana-sambandham matha
at Tiruchchattimurram (Rajarajapuram in Tanjavur) with branches
in several places;73 the Maligai-matha at Tiruvidaimarudur also
in Tanjavur with branches as distant as Chidambaram (Tillai);74
the Senbaikkudi matha; the Acharamalagiyan-matha at Tiruvarur
in Ramnad;75 the Tiruttondaitogaiyan-matha at Govindaputtur;76
the Siruttondan-matha at Sengattan-gudi (Tiruchchengattangudi),
Tanjavur;77 the Tirutturaiyur-matha in South Arcot; the Tiru-
vadutturai-matha in Tanjavur;78 the Dharmapuram matha in
Mayavaram taluk, Tanjavur.79 These seminaries and their branches
were under the control and supervision of non-Brahman teachers,
sivayogins or mahesvaras, and the mathas themselves were often
named for the non-Brahman Saivite saint (ndyandr) Tirunavuk-
karasar. Seminaries with the latter designation existed at Tiruvili-
milalai in Tanjavur and Tiruppalatturai in Tiruchchirapalli.80
Headships of the respective matha organizations constituted a line
called a santana and usually bore the title mudaliyar, presumably

71 M.Rajamanickam, The Development of Saivism in South India (A.D. 300-

1300), Dharmapuram Adhinam, Dharmapuram, 1964.
72 Ibid., p. 379; there is a major discussion of these institutions in A.R.E., 1909,
para. 53, pp. 103-5.
73 Anaikka, A.R.E., 1908, no.586; Usattanam, ibid., no.218; Vilimilalai, ibid.,
no.392; Valivalam, A R E., 1911, nos. 108, 109.
74 Rajamanickam, op. cit., p. 232.
73 Ibid., pp. 233-4; A.R.E., 1909, para. 53.
76 A.R.E., 1909, para. 53.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
™ Ibid.
so Ibid.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 237

to distinguish them from Brahman matha leaders.81 Still another

distinctive designation, which occurs in the case of the matha
at Tiruvanaikkaval, in Tiruchirapalli, a branch of the Tiruchchatti-
murrattu matha at Rajarajapuram in Tanjavur, is narpattennayi-
ravan-matha, or the ‘48,000’ mathaA2 The ‘48,000’ designation,
as already noted, is one of those applied to Vellalas of Tondai-
mandalam.
There are some indications that the flourishing non-Brahman
mathas were opposed by Brahmans. In one case, that of the
‘48,000’ matha at Tiruvanaikkaval, the institution appears to have
been taken over by Brahmans who changed its name to the Sam-
karacharyaswami-matha.83 In another case, a matha or guhai
established for non-Brahman ascetics at Tirutturaipundi in Tanja¬
vur was the scene of some disturbances (kalagam) in the year
a.d. 1200 and resulted in the appointment of a Brahman teacher.84
Such attempts by Brahmans to overturn the control of non-Brah¬
man leaders at these centres of learning were not, in the main,
successful. As Rajamanickam pointed out in discussing the
disturbances at Tirutturaipundi in a.d. 1200: ‘. . . in the time of
Rajaraja III and subsequently . . . [non-Brahman guhais] flourished
under the patronage of ruling chiefs and private individuals.’85
An important, yet barely noticed, development in temple worship
during this period when non-Brahmans began to have an influential
place was the full emergence of goddess — Amman or Devi —
worship. From the thirteenth century, temples were constructed
to include a shrine for a female deity whose identity was linked
to the major deity of the temple; moreover, these shrines were
added to many of the temples which had been constructed before
that time.86 The significance of this development is that it represen¬
ted an assimilation of folk conceptions of deity.

81 Rajamanickam, op. cit., p. 231.

82 A.R.E., 1909, para. 53, regarding nos.585, 586. K..V. Venkataraman associated
the ‘48,000’ group of Saiva Siddhanta teachers with a line (santanam) called golaki
or lakshadhvayi as well as narpatten-nayirattanar, or ‘the 48,000'; ‘An Interesting
Award’, op. cit., p. 4.
83 A.R.E., 1909, para. 53.
84 A.R.E., 1912, no.471, discussed by Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, v. 2, pt 2,
p. 722. Also see Rajamanickam. op. cit., pp. 239-41; Tamil Lexicon, v. 2, p. 775
(kalakkam).
85 Rajamanickam, op. cit., p. 241.
■ 86 K.R. Srinivasan, ‘Tirukamakottam’, op. cit., p. 53; also his ‘Aspects of Re-
238 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The female deity, then as now the major focus of village, clan,
and locality devotion — in part as protectress, in part as fertility
deity — attained a central place in Vedic temple worship. Generally
called tirukdmakottam, the amman shrine within the Siva temple
complex became a full-blown architectural element during the
thirteenth century after a long, slow evolution beginning in about
the eighth century. According to agama texts and inscriptional
evidence of that early time, goddess images were at times installed
in existing Vedic shrines.87 Among the most important of these
early female deities were Durga, the ‘Seven Mothers’ (sapta-
matrikas), and the somewhat fearsome sister of the benign Lakshmi,
Jyeshtha. Durga is mentioned in one of the two principal Vishnu-
oriented vaikhanasdgamas, and among the iconographic attributes
of this goddess were the conch and discus of Vishnu.88 In the period
after the eleventh century, and particularly from the thirteenth
century, temples of both Siva and Vishnu deities came to include
a shrine for a goddess appropriately named for her association
with the principal male deity, e.g. Brihadesvara and the goddess
Brihannayaki, Peruvudaiyar and Periyanayaki in Tanjavur, Ranga-
natha and Ranganayaki at Srirangam, Sundaresvara and Minakshi
at Madurai, Ekamresvara and Kamakshi at Kanchi.89 Within the
Vaishnava tradition, the more conservative vaikhdnasa ritual form
gave way to that of the pahcardtra, following the reform activities
of Ramanuja, and shrines for Vaishnava consorts (ndcciyar)
became important.90 The female hymnist (cdvar), Andal and the
goddess Lakshmi were among the important deities in such shrines.
The major shrine of Andal (also called kodai and sudikkodutta
nacciydr) at Srivilliputtur in Ramnad is one of the most famous of
Devi shrines among Vaishnavas; it was constructed in about a.d.
1160.91 Other Vaishnava nachchiyar which strikingly bear out this

ligion Revealed by Early Monuments . . op. cit., p. 22 for agamic evidence.

Inscriptional evidence is found, curiously, in Jaina inscriptions of the eighth century
in which the imprecation includes a reference to those who destroy kamakdUams
(discussed in M.D. Sampath 'Jaina Inscriptions of Sattamangalam', in Nagaswamy,
Seminar on Inscriptions, p. 158).
87 Srinivasan, Aspects of Religion Revealed by Early Monuments, p. 22.
88 Ibid., p. 30.
89 Ibid., pp. 32-3.
90 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘Development of Religion . . .’, p. 67; Farquhar, 'Outlines
of Religious Literature . . p. 244.
91 Another date suggested for the installation of this deity is a.d. 973 by the
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 239

argument ot folk cult assimilation are: the Chenchu Nachchiyar at

the Ahobilam Narasimhaswami temple, the Malayalam Nachchiyar
at Kanchi, and the Uraiyur Valli Nachchiyar at Srirangam.92 The
attainment of the status of major deity by goddesses, especially
those with ancient tribal cult associations, even though subordinate
to Vedic male deities, was one of the clearest signs of religious
changes in the thirteenth century and marked the deepened connec¬
tion between the peasant culture and high culture of the age.
Religious changes from the late twelfth century strongly suggest
the efflorescence of a significant cultural variant not before visible
in medieval South India. It is impossible to separate this cultural
development from the leaders of peasant society in the macro
region, for in all cases they are not only intimately involved in the
changes, but they were its promoters. Individuals such as Mey-
kandar and Marai within the Saiva Siddhanta movement and the
numerous santana-mudaliyars were Vellalas; the offices reserved
for non-Brahmans within the leading Vaishnava shrine at Srirangam
and Tirupati were occupied by Vellalas; temples, mathas, and
even Brahman settlements during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries came under the protection of the supra-local assemblies
composed of Vellala nattars of the citrameli-periyanattdr.9i The
emergence of Devi shrines in both Vaishnava and Saivite temples
is further evidence of this transformation.
Considering the significant association of leading peasant
groups with Brahmans from the pre-Pallavan period, considering
too that peasant support of Brahmanical ritual and learning was
entirely voluntary during the mature era of the Pallavas as well as
during the period of the great Cholas, it would be incorrect to speak
of the developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as
new. They, of course, were not. In an essential way, these later
developments may certainly be understood as the evolution of
devotional forms of religion in which the assimilation of folk
elements was present from the beginning in the hymns of the

author T.K. Viraraghavacharya ('The Srivilliputtur Temple of Sudikkodutta

Nachchiyar’, Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanam Bulletin, v. 6, no.4, pp. 1-3).
92 Ibid., v. 6, no.5. pp. 5-6. Also discussed by V. Raghavan, ‘Variety and In¬
tegration in the Pattern of Indian Culture’, Journal of Asian Studies, v. 15, no.4
(1956), p. 500.
93 K.R. Venkatarama Ayyar, ‘Medieval Trade, Craft and Merchant Guilds in
South India’, v. 25 (1947), pp. 274-6.
240 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

alvars and nayanars. It is further to be recognized that the folk-

devotional variant in South Indian Hinduism had always had a
reflective aspect maintained by learned non-Brahmans, proficient
in Sanskrit and informed by sastric knowledge which was trans¬
mitted in Sanskrit. If the interpretation of the term kanimurruttu
as a form of agrarian income meant to provide support to non-Brah-
man savants is correct, it would appear that the maintenance ol
such learning w'as considered appropriate by Brahmans and local
chiefs as well as great Chola overlords.
However, even if this term is incorrectly interpreted, it is obvious
that this highest learning by non-Brahmans was supported in
some manner and that learned non-Brahmans, along with the
ritual functionaries involved with non-Vedic deities and Tamil
siddharacharyas (Tamil: cittar) who were yogic, medical practi¬
tioners,94 enjoyed consistent patronage. Here, as in many other
aspects of peasant life, it must be recognized that such activities
need not have become a part of the extant inscriptional record
since it fell outside the Brahman-centred culture, the records of
which were engraved on the surfaces of thousands of Vedic shrines.
Support by the peasantry of non-Brahman, non-Vedic ritual and
learning was obviously well-established and did not require the
special notice that transfers of resources to Brahmans did. It is
not possible to understand the careers of numerous non-Brahmans
in the Siddhanta movement and in Vira Saivism without supposing
an ancient and established tradition of erudition, in Sanskrit as
well as other South Indian languages, among non-Brahmans.
The conspicuous participation of non-Brahmans in the most
important religious and learned activities of the twelfth and thirteen¬
th centuries does not, therefore, reflect new competences so much
as new opportunities for using quite ancient ones.95 Further,

94 In these traditions from about the tenth to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, non-Brahman teachers condemned idolatry and taught an intense
monotheistic faith (Nilakanta Sastri, ‘Development of Religion . . p. 95. and the
forthcoming essay of N. Subrahmaniam. provisionally entitled ‘Brahmans in South
India’, by the University of Madras based upon lectures at the University of Madras
in 1967. Also, Zvelebil, Smile of Murugan, ch. 14).
95 One notes the contemporary literary figure Kamban, who was a non-Brahman
uvallan, a caste of temple drummers and priests of Kali shrines and the poet Kuttan
who was a weaver (Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, pp. 359-60 and Tamil
Lexicon, v. I, p. 462). Kamban’s patron was also a non-Brahman named Sadaiyappa
Vellala (C.P. Venkatarama Aiyar, Kamban and His Art, Madras. 1913, p. 107).
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 241

the manifest weakness of the Chola overlordship would preclude

even the most enthusiastic modern scholarly proponents of the
view of bureaucratic kingship in medieval South India from attribut¬
ing this support to the Chola rulers.96 On the contrary, this develop¬
ment registers the power and self-confidence of a rural class which
was progressively detaching itself from its peasant base and estab¬
lishing deep relationships with the growing urban segment of
South Indian society and culture.

The Urban Milieu of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

'Town file’ and its relationship to the society and culture of the
countryside continues to be a vexing problem for South Asian
social scientists. Accustomed to the convenient, and on the whole
valid, dichotomization of many contemporary and historical
societies and cultures into 'urban’ and 'rural’ spheres, social
scientists working in South Asia have often encountered serious
problems in the application of these concepts to South Asian
evidence. This is perhaps more true for historians than others,
and historians of the medieval period have been very heavily
dependent for information about towns and town life upon the
reports of those with questionable knowledge of India, foreigners,
beginning with Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and ending with Euro¬
pean traders. Such places as Kanchi, which from Pallava times
at least, was an important pilgrimage centre and locus of regional
sect and social life, and Tanjavur, which during the period of the
great Cholas appears to have been a major regional centre of
pilgrimage, trade, and administration, are but rarely seen. And,
there were few places with the stature of these in medieval South
India.
Of course, the extent to which it is possible to be informed about
medieval society and culture from conditions of the present is
limited and hazardous. Certainly, however, administrative and
market functions of urban places during more recent times cannot

96 The opposite relationship — that of kings dependent upon peasant groups —

is suggested in K.A. Nilakanta Sastri and T.N. Subramaniam (‘Hemavati Pillar
Inscription of Kulottunga Chola III. Year 2’, £./., v. 31, no.37, pp. 274-5). Here
it is stated that the periyanattavar ‘paved the way for the ultimate success of Kulot¬
tunga in getting the Cho|a throne’. This conjecture is deprecated by the E.I. ed.,
D.C. Sircar.
242 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

be assumed for an earlier period when neither the modern bureau¬

cratized political system nor the modern international economy
impinged upon the peasant agrarian context. It may be proposed
that there were no fundamental differences among settlements
in medieval India, South and North, such as to permit the delinea¬
tion of ‘urban places’ of however primitive a character.97 Terms
such as nagaram, puram, pattinam may be seen to be attached to
certain settlements in recognition of their market functions and
possibly their somewhat more diverse (though not necessarily
greater) populations. However, such settlements may be seen
as but minor variations within the complex structure of essentially
rural localities in South India before a.d. 1100. In most settlements
of that time, peasants, merchants and artisans along with others
lived in close association, sharing not only interdependent econo¬
mic relationships, but also a common involvement in the cultural
life of the locality. It is thus difficult to assume that settlements
designated variously as nagaram, puram, or pattinam — and
usually taken to mean towns or cities by many modern researchers
— were ‘centres’ in the sense of being qualitatively different from
most other large settlements of a locality of the macro region.

97 It has been argued recently that the Indian 'urban place’ is not discontinuous
with its rural surroundings and that the 'urban rural’ dichotomy is inappropriate
in India. David F. Pocock has presented this issue most cogently. Speaking of
current sociological research in the Indian cultural sphere, Pocock states:

Where it is recognized the city and village are elements of the same civilization,
how does the question of their continuity arise? Is it not because the sociologist
has assumed (almost unconsciously) a division which his later observations
would lead him to mend? If we have posited the village from the outset we
have automatically opposed it in our minds to the city. When we come to knit
up what we have broken we can only do it by way of a description between the
two entities . . . That the problem is a false one becomes clear when, moving
to the level of relations, the dichotomy disappears.

'Sociologies: Urban and Rural’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, v 4 (April 1960),

p. 81. An application of Pocock’s distinction is made by Owen M. Lynch ('Rural
Cities in India: Continuities and Discontinuities', India and Ceylon: Unity and
Diversity, ed. P. Mason, O.U.P., London, 1967, pp. 142-58). Involved in this dis¬
cussion is another dimension which may be viewed as methodological, or perhaps
epistemological, in which the central question is the condition under which any
'pre-established concepts’ from one cultural context can be applied to another.
See F.G. Bailey, 'For a Sociology of India?' Contributions to Indian Sociology,
v. 3., pp. 80-101 and the editorial rejoinder (Pocock and L. Dumont) in ibid., v. 4,
pp. 82ff.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 243

It cannot even be said of such places that ties of trade and exchange
predominated over those involving the land and its management.
However, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were
a few settlements which did exhibit more clearly the characteristics
of an urban place in most modern usage. Here were found a
greater array of specialists than were to be found in most large,
essentially agricultural settlements — that is, a significant difference
in degree. Another urban characteristic which would be en¬
countered in some places was a major, regional temple (with
its constellation of ancillary institutions such as seminaries, choul¬
tries) and a major regional market, i.e. a difference of a qualitative
kind.
Settlements which differed qualitatively from even the most
populous agrarian settlements in the greater diversity of the resident
groups, might have included many of the older brahmadeyas,
those dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. As settlements
with a substantial population of Brahman teachers and ritual
specialists, a wider array of service groups were to be expected
and appear to have been present according to the brahmadeya
records of that earlier period when such settlements were the most
pluralistic of any. Though there was a decline in the establishment
of new brahmadeyas after the time of Kulottunga I and though
the formerly substantial self-government appears also to have
diminished, these large, pluralistic settlements do not appear to
have changed rapidly. Some seem to have reverted to peasant-
managed settlements, others were placed under the management
of temple authorities as devadana villages; in still other cases these
Brahman settlements became the cores of larger and more diverse
settlements in which different kinds of sacral functions displaced
those of the earlier Brahman settlement and in which market
functions — always an aspect of the largest brahmadeyas — became
even more important.98
Thus it was that while many, perhaps most, Brahman settlements
of the earlier age continued for some time to exist as important

98 This appears to have happened in the case of the brahmadeya Tiruktuda-

mukkil, by which name Kumbakonam town was referred until about a.d. 1018
(T.V. Mahalingam, ‘The Nagesvarasvami Temple’. J.I.H., pt 1 (April 1967), pp. 73-4).
In a general way, this point is even more strongly presented in the summary tables
prepared by Sathianathaier (Studies in the Ancient History of Tondamandalam,
app. 'B', pp. 64ff).
244 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

places within a locality and to maintain an impressive array of

religious specialists, the significance ot these settlements appeared
to have diminished in relation to other large and diverse settlements
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The latter may be
called 'towns’ in the sense of being sociologically distinctive from,
if not discontinuous with, the countryside and in the sense that
these settlements were the loci of functions previously dispersed
over the locality. These centres tended increasingly to become
the dominant political, ritual, and trade places in the enlarged
localities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; they constituted
a new tier of settlements that contributed to the integration of the
periyanadu.
The Vedic temple of the later Chola period is the marker of the
urbanization of the age. Where before the brahmadeya village
had been a major repository of lithic records, the site of the great
temples provides a major source of records of the twelfth century'
and later." Temples of this age were undergoing basic architectural
changes which have long been recognized by art historians. Accord¬
ingly, the census officer in charge of the census temple survey of
1961 divided Chola temples into those of the early period (a.d.
900-85), the middle period (a.d. 985-1070), and the later period
(a.d. 1070-1250) after which time there was a general mergence
of the Chola style temple with what has been called the 'Pandyan
style’.100 Architectural developments of the late eleventh century

99 The reliability of this assertion is not high, nor will such propositions be until
tens of thousands of inscriptions are organized better than they are. However,
if one takes the lists of records for two Chola reigns of approximately equal duration
and with about the same number of extant records, the diminished role of the brah¬
madeya is clear. Thus, using the list of records in Nilakanta Sastri’s The Colas,
v. 1 and v. 2, pt 2, for Rajendra 1 (a.d. 1012-45) in v. 1. pp. 530-71, involving 221
inscriptions, and Rajaraja 111 (a.d. 1216-56) in the latter place, pp. 721-60. involving
284 inscriptions, it was found that in the earlier reign 79 inscriptions (36%) recorded
the affairs of the brahmadeya settlements and in the latter reign 40 inscriptions
(14%) involved the affairs of these settlements. An analysis of the qualitative as¬
pects of the records from these two reigns makes this impression much stronger.
100 Government of India, Census of India, 1961, v. 9, ‘Madras’, pt 11 D, ‘Temples
of Madras State; Chingleput District and Madras City’, comp, by PTC Nambiar
and N. Krishnamurthy (1965), p. 7. Also, S.R. Balasubrahmanyam, Early Chola
An, pt 1, Asia Publishing House. Bombay, 1966, espec. pp. 2531T for his discussion
of periods of early temple styles and James C. Harle, Temple Gateways in South
India', the Architecture and Iconography of the Cidambaram Gopuras, Bruno Cassirer.
Oxford, 1963, pp. xii-xiii.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 245

and after include generally larger and more complex structures

than known before. Ornately carved pillared halls (.mandapam)
are characteristic of this period; long stairways to the sanctorum
ot shrines set on hills was another; tall gateways (gopuram) which
became the massive and distinctive element of the Vijayanagara
period made their regular appearance; and, as already mentioned,
the erection of separate shrines for Amman or Devi worship were
parts of the new temples constructed in this period and were added
to existing temples in many cases.101
These temple centres, on the side of whose buildings and walls
most of the records ol this later period and the following period
are to be found, were dependent upon a large and varied population
in order to function. Important temple centres had always been
so in India. This is noted by the historian of Dharmasastra, P.V.
Kane, who pointed to an ancient recognition that a village, even
a large one, was distinguished from a ‘town’ (,nagaram) on the
basis that in the latter only, all castes were to be found;102 another
scholar, commenting on early South India, stated similarly;

The difference between a village and a town (jNagara) was generally that
the latter had a temple of high reputation. Attached to it were the priests
versed in the Agamas, Brahmins learned in the Vedas, musicians and
others. The aggregation of a large population due to the shrine or due
to the protection afforded by the fort or temple walls gave an industrial
bias to town life. . . ,103
To these general characterizations of the temple centre may be
added K.A. Nilakanta Sastri’s reference to Chola temples;
. . . Every temple, great or small, held in relation to its neighbourhood
exactly the same position that the Great Temple [Brihadisvara temple
at Tanjavur] had in the capital. The difference was only one of degree.
As landholder, employer, and consumer of goods and services, as bank,
school, and museum, as hospital and theatre, in short, as a nucleus which
gathered round itself all that was best in the arts of civilized existence. . .
the medieval Indian temple has few parallels in the annals of mankind.104
That institutions of the scale of the Brihadisvara temple were
rare during the early eleventh century when it was completed,

101 Srinivasan, ‘Tirukamakottam’, op. cit.

102 History of Dharmasastra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law),
v. 3, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1946, p. 183.
103 K.R. Subramanian, ‘Economic Conditions of the Thevaram Period’, Q.J.M.S.,
v. 18 (1927-8), p. 271.
104 The Colas, p. 654.
246 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

but widespread during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is well

documented. Harle's work on the gateways (gopuram) of Chidam¬
baram helps to clarify the relationship between one of the distinctive
architectural elements of the age and the consequences in the scale
of the temple complex.
Gopuras, due to the way in which the South Indian temple evolved after
the twelfth century, came to supersede the central shrine as the largest
and architecturally the most important buildings in the temple. The
same evolution called for additional enclosures and consequently more
and more of these gateways in all the large temples, with the result that
the South Indian temple builders henceforth devoted the greater part of
their talents and energy to building gopuras,105

Along with Chidambaram, the major temple construction which

was completed during the time of Kulottunga III (a.d. 1178-1217),
many other important temple centres have been identified by art
historians as dating from this period: Darasuram (Kumbakonam
taluk, Tanjavur), Tribhuvanam (Pondicherry), Tiruvanaikkaval
(or Jambukesvara on Srirangam Island, Tiruchchirapalli).106
There is further evidence that stylistic elements of this later Chola
temple architecture influenced construction as far away as Konarak
in Orissa where the famed chariot-like (ratha) appearance of this
temple of the thirteenth century was apparently an adaptation
of the same motifs on lesser scale at Darasuram and Chidam¬
baram.107
The enlarged temple precincts of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, the addition of independent shrines with their ritual
functionaries, servants, and workmen, the heightened tempo
of participation by increasing numbers of pilgrims from all res¬
pectable groups — not only Brahmans — direct attention to the
basic change in venue of the prime religious activities of the age.
Sizeable urban settlements became an adjunct of great temples;
where they did not exist, they were created. It is said of the town
of Tirupati that the Vaishnava teacher Ramanuja, while sojourning
in the Vengadam Hills and at its sacred shrine on Tirumalai,
ordered that temple functionaries and others serving in the new
105 Harle, op. cit.. p. viii.
10(1 This identification was made by Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., and concurred
in by Harle (op. cit., pp. 40-1, 70) for Darasuram and Tribhuvani. Tiruvanakkaval
is discussed by Harle (op. cit., pp. 76-7), citing the opinion of Percy Brown
1(1 C . Sivaramamurti, Royal Conquests and Cultural Migrations in South India
and the Deccan, Indian Museum, Calcutta, 1955, pp. 18-19, 23.
 Transition to Supra-Iocal Integration 247

temple of Sri Govindarajaswami at the base of Tirumalai, must

take up residence near the new temple. The town was thus estab¬
lished in about a.d. 1130 to serve the requirements of the shrines
of Venkatesvara and Govindarajaswami.108 In a somewhat similar
way, the Bhaktavatsalam temple at the Saivite centre of Tiruk-
kalukkunram in Chingleput district was built at the base of the hill
shrine during the thirteenth century, forming the nucleus of the
medieval town.109 The western part of modern Ranchi came to
have as its most important shrine that of the god Varadaraja who,
to the eleventh century, was housed ig a small shrine in the village
of Attiyur, a suburb of Kanchi. This small shrine was enlarged
to its grandiose medieval proportions during the twelfth century
to form the core of a Vishnu centre — involving eighteen temples
according to traditions of the place — now called ‘Vishnu-
Kanchi’.110 Substantial enlargement of the ancient Saivite shrine
at Tiruvorriyur (Chingleput district) including the outer walled
enclosure (prakaram) of that temple was built by the chief Adi-
mangalam during the thirty-first year of Kulottunga III, a.d.
1209.111 At Suchindram in the far south (Travancore), the temple
began to become the ‘spiritual metropolis of Nancinad’, as K.K.
Pillay has put it, after the beginning of the thirteenth century when
control shifted from the mahasabha of the place to a group of
temple functionaries called yogakkar. Pillay observed that:
. . . several prosperous villages exercised a considerable influence on
the pagoda, all located within a x'adius of four miles of Sudndram. . . .
Benefactions and endowments have freely flowed from them. Crowds
of visitors and devotees from these places used to flock to the shrine
everyday, and particularly on festive occasions. . . . The people of these
villages have contributed to the prosperity and fame of the pagoda, while
they themselves were influenced by the sacred temple and its institutions.112

Other modem towns around Madras city apparently date from

the same time, judging from architectural remains.

los Viraraghavacharya, The Tirupati Temple, v. I, pp. 357-9.

109 Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., p. 222. Also see Jagdisa Ayyar, South Indian
Shrines, op. cit., p. 25.
no K.V. Soundara Rajan, ‘Kaustubha Prasada — New Light on Jayakha Tantra’,
Journal of the Oriental Institute, v. 17, no. 1 (1967), pp. 73-5. He notes that at the end
of the eleventh century the god was called Attiyur Alvar after the place.
tit K.V. Raman, The Early History of the Madras Region, Amudha Nilayam
Private Ltd.. Madras, 1959, pp. 242, 244-58.
112 Pillay, SucTndram Temple, op. cit.. p. 12.
248 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The very process of construction must have lasted for years as

suggested by Harle113 and would have brought into the neighbour¬
hood of construction workmen, skilled and unskilled, from quite
distant places. Workmen would remain as an urban population
for an extended period and would thus have required the services
of still others. The total effect of such activities would thus have
been to create settlements with modes of organization considerably
different from the peasant villages of the locality and from those
established brahmadeyas which were not themselves the ■ core
settlements of the new towns.
Changes in social organization would have been most evident
among trading groups and artisans. Reference has already been
made to the presumed impact of temple construction and the
generally increased significance of these new centres upon traders
and artisans. Skilled artisans comprising the Kammalar are seen
to have achieved new prerogatives and social privileges during the
late eleventh and twelfth centuries as their services in connection
with temple building appreciated. This enhanced position was
the springboard for launching the effective left-hand grouping
of castes (idangai) in Tamil country. And, north of Tamil country
— in what is now Andhra Pradesh — the work of K. Sundaram
describes the rise to new prominence, during the twelfth and thir¬
teenth centuries, of groups like the Telikis (oil mongers) of Bezwada,
the merchants (Vaisyas) of Penugonda, and the Balanja merchants
of Ayyavali who ‘imitated the chiefs and potentates and assumed. . .
titles likewise’.114 •
The relationship between new temple centres and social and
economic change permit the use of the term 'urbanization' during
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; this is perhaps most clearly
documented in Appadorai’s study of economic conditions. In his
chapter entitled. Towns and Internal Trade’, he states that ‘a
temple has often been made the nucleus around which a town in
course of time grew’.115 As is often the case in his discussion,
there is no effort to discern changes within the five centuries covered
by his study. However, it is inscriptional evidence of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries along with foreign travellers' reports for
the Vijayanagara period upon which his discussion of towns is

113 Op. cit., p. 41.

114 Sundaram, ‘Studies in Economic and Social Conditions . . p. 30.
115 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 1, ch. 3, pp. 338 ff.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 249

based. The only exception to this is in his references to the ancient

towns of Tanjavur and Kanchi.116 Of considerable importance
in his discussion of the 'economic organization of the town’,117
is his attention to the nature of guilds and their relationship to
jatis.
Appadorai contrasts the medieval European guild with what he
calls 'the Indian caste-gild’,118 on the basis of recruitment. In the
former, membership was restricted to those of the same profession
in a relatively confined area whereas in the latter, ‘in practice’ and
'in the main birth-determined membership.119 He further observes
that according to smriti — the Mitakshara of Vijnanesvara of the
twelfth century — guilds (srenT) comprised those who earned
their livelihoods by the same kind of work though belonging to
different castes (/offs).120 That trade and artisan groups were
often members of different castes receives support from inscrip-
tional usage. The term kcdanai is often used to designate artisans;
this has been mentioned in connection with left-hand castes121
where the same term is used to refer to persons of 'mixed caste’.122
Related to this is the suggestion by the epigraphist K.G. Krishnan
that the term sahkarappadiyar, which often appears in inscriptions
from the tenth century on, means those who reside in the quarter
reserved for mixed or confused (sahkara) castes, not, as earlier
suggested by Krishna Sastri, those residing in a quarter for Siva
worshippers.123 Groupings such as the sahkarappadiyar and kil
kalanaiyar or pura-kalanaiyar are collective terms for merchants
and artisans living in populous centres; such terms occur at an
early time. An inscription of a.d. 1036 in the reign of Rajendra I124

116 Ibid., v. 1, p. 350, n.64.

in ibid., 356 ff.
us Ibid., p. 357.
U9 Italics in the original (ibid., p. 357).
12° Ibid., pp. 358-60.
'2i S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary', p. xxii, kalanai, and xxvii, kTl-kalanai. Also, ‘Largest
Provincial Organizations . . Q.S.M.S., v. 45, no.l, p. 35.
•22 A.R.E., 1909 (para. 45) refers to karariT in connection with the artisan group,
the rathakaras.
12* A.R.E., 1964-5 (p. 15) regarding no.305 of that year but also applies to the
following records: 293, 300, 309 from Valikandapuram (Perambalur taluk, Tiru-
chirapalli). This is in contrast to the older view expressed in v. 3, p. 275n.,
as cited by Mahalingam (South Indian Polity, p. 389n).
124 s.I.I., v. 4, no.223, line 2 5 IT.
250 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

refers to the founding of a trade centre (nagaram) in the eastern

hamlet of the great brahmadeya of Chidambaram. This hamlet
came to be called Gunamenagaipuram and was settled by mer¬
chants (vyaparins) and cultivators of high status (vellans), lesser
merchants (sahkappadiyar), cloth merchants (sdliyar) and fisher¬
men (pattinavar), as well as lesser artisans (kil-kalanai) including
carpenters (taccar), goldsmiths (tattar), blacksmiths (hollar), and
coarse cloth weavers (kdliyar).125
These early references to trading and artisan groups whose
economic activities were only tangentially related to agrarian
production, whose consumers were not restricted to specific
landed patrons but necessarily to a wider market, and whose
activities made them mobile in ways different from groups attached
to landed patronage are essentially references to what has here
been called the ‘outer core' of nuclear agrarian territories, nadus.126
However, it is clear that such mobile occupational groups existed
as part of the population of the inner core of nadus as well, in many
brahmadeyas during the tenth to twelfth centuries, and as part of
the general economic order outside these Brahman settlements;
it is also apparent that these mobile, mercantile and craft groups
constituted the prestigious core membership of the left-hand castes.
With the rise of towns during the twelfth century, these groups
attained a greater public presence and importance as supporters
of Vedic temples. Artisans and merchants are referred to by the
collective title pura-kalanai in an a.d. 1343 inscription from Pulip-
parakoyil (Maahurantakam taluk, Chingleput). This term speci¬
fically included cloth merchants (sdliyar and kaikkojar), general
merchants (vanigar), and military as well as temple or palace
shopkeepers (senaiahgadiyar and kdyil-ahgddiyar).127 Urban places
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, provided the basis for vastly
enhanced social power than was achievable by such groups in the

125 Discussed in detail in 'Largest Provincial Organizations . . .’, Q.S.M.S., v. 45,

no.l, p. 35. Subrahmanya Aiyer also discusses this matter in v. 22, no.24,
‘Uttaramallur Inscription of Parantaka I', pp. 146-7. Also note. Tamil Lexicon,
v. 2, p. 1197, kolikar, and koliyan, loc. cit.; and Tamil Lexicon, v. 6, p. 3586, vanikam.
126 An important theoretical statement of these two classes of castes is found in
D. Pocock, ‘Notes on jajmani relationships’, Contributions to Indian Sociology,
v. 6 (1962), pp. 78ff.
127 A R E., 1910, no.298. Relevant portions of this inscription are translated
in E.I., v. 22, no.24, p. 146. n. no.4.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 251

rural context where the inner-core of land-linked relations con¬

tinued to dominate.
Having said all of this and having indicated the processes at
work during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries over substantial
parts of the South Indian macro region, it is still a fact that little
is known about any particular place. Ironically, impressions about
particular urban centres are much more vivid during the Sangam
Age than in any period thereafter until Vijayanagara times when
foreign accounts are a major source of information. One foreign
source for the twelfth century is the Chinese Chu-fan-chi by Chan
Ju-kua.128 Here, there is a reference to thirty-two trade centres
(‘pu-lo’ or pura) twelve of which are on the west coast, eight in
the south, and twelve in the north. Of these, few can be identified
with certainty.129 Another set of vague references to urban places
is found in inscriptions of the citrameli-periyanattar and other
records in which merchant groups are mentioned. In a Piramalai
inscription of the early thirteenth century discussed by K.V. Sub-
rahmanya Aiyer,130 reference is made to eighteen established towns
with palatial buildings (mcidavidu-padinettu-pattinam), thirty-two
growing towns (valarpuram), and sixty-four other urban places
{kadigai-talvalam or sthana).131 These numbers have the suspicious
mark of the conventional about them, and reliance can only be
placed on the list of towns in the last part of the inscription referring
to nagarattdrs from particular places in Pandyamandalam around
Piranmalai (including portions of Kulittalai taluk in Tiruchirapalli)
and some places in Kongumandalam which can be located.132
These latter places are called nagaram, pattinam, and puram;
they are also called ur and perunteru (‘great road’).133
From the twelfth century on, there is considerable evidence
suggesting that trade and urban life were becoming much more
significant than these had been during the period of the great
Cholas when merchants (nagarattar) were almost always linked
subordinately to brahmadeyas and other large agrarian settlements.

128 Translated and annotated by Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill, St. Peters¬
burg, 1911, pp. 93-102.
129 Ibid., pp. 94-5, 99, n. no.5.
130 'Largest Provincial Organizations . . .’, Q.J.M.S., v. 45, no.4, p. 270, Is. 1-4.
131 Ibid., p. 280.
132 Ibid., p. 272.
133 Tamil Lexicon, v. 4, pp. 2036-7, teru.
252 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

That many Brahman villages were in fact settlements of considerable

size, with diverse populations and functions, is quite clear. How¬
ever, during the twelfth century merchants and artisan groups
began to separate themselves from the constraints of Brahman
and peasant rural control. This process of separation, in the
Coromandel plain, at least, was accompanied by new status claims
by merchants and artisans, as noticed in the discussion of the
left division of castes and as further noticed in temple honours
sought and gained by these groups. Essentially, the growing
importance of urban places was dependent upon the increasingly
vigorous trade throughout the macro region resulting from the
wealth and stability of the agrarian integration of the previous
two centuries. Settlements with substantial numbers of merchants
and artisans rose to new importance. An important additional
factor in the rise of such settlements was the increasing tempo
of temple building in which places of perhaps ancient sacred
importance, neglected during the period of the ascendancy of
brahmadeyas as sacred centres, were recognized anew. The require¬
ments of the various new or enlarged pilgrimage centres both
promoted and facilitated the development of urban trade centres.
Simultaneously, an increasingly differentiated ruling class in the
countryside — the periyanattar — found it advantageous to co¬
operate with those townsmen and the powerful, itinerant mercantile
groups with whom urban merchants were affiliated. This is evident
in the many inscriptions from most parts of the macro region
speaking of the citrameli-periyanattavar and the tisai diyirattu-
aihhurruvar to which K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer and others have
drawn attention.134 Supra-locality rulers dramatically extended
the basis of their power beyond the locality peasantry from which
they had emerged and beyond an earlier alliance with rural Brah¬
mans. Towns provided new sources of wealth and new sources of
prestige from association with temples and mathas. While still
essentially a rurally based ruling stratum where, as members of
supra-local bodies, they dominated agrarian affairs, these erstwhile
local peasant leaders found in the weakness of the Chola overlord¬
ship — for which they bore some responsibility — and in the
wealth and prestige of towns the means of enhancing their authority

134 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, ‘Largest Provincial Organizations. . .’, Q.J.M.S.

and K.A. Nilakanta Sastri and T.N. Subramaniam, 'Hcmavati Pillar Inscription
of Kulottungachola (III), Year 2', £./., v. 31, no.37, pp. 274-5.
 Transition to Supra-local Integration 253

as it was not before possible to do. The major shift from an agrarian
base of power in which locality organization was founded upon a
balanced and close relationship between communities of Brahmans
and peasants (nattar) to one in which a part of the latter, as the
periyanattar, had attained hegemonic authority over several,
contiguous localities and their constituent communities appears
to have been accomplished by the fourteenth century. This change
produced an altered relationship with the Chola overlords of the
macro region.
The earliest manifestations of an altered power structure dates
from the twelfth century succession struggles among later Chola
rulers as noticed by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri and T.N. Subramaniam,
who state:
The organization of the Sittirameli-Periyanattavar which came into
existence about this time [the fourth regnal year of Rajadhirajachola II,
c. a.d. 1172] very soon obtained a firm footing in the Tamil country and
was very influential throughout the reign of Kulottunga III. We may
not therefore be wrong in surmising that this organization paved the way
for the ultimate success of Kulottunga in getting the Chola throne.135
During the next three centuries, this stratum of powerful men was
to become merged in the new and highly martial power system of
the Vijayanagara period.

135 k.A. Nilakanta Sastri and T.N. Subramaniam. op, cit., pp. 274-5. It should be
noted that this surmise is questioned by the learned editor of E.I., D.C. Sircar (op.
cit., 275n.).
 CHAPTER VII

The Chola State and the

Agrarian Order

i
Among the greatest states in medieval India in its durability and
the scope of its authority was the Chola state. Considering only
the period of its dominance over most of Tamil country, the Chola
state lasted for three centuries, and, during its great days, from
about a.d. 950 to a.d. 1100 (the reigns of Sundara Chola to Kulot-
tunga I), Chola authority covered most of the southern half of
peninsular India. It is therefore quite understandable that this
state should have received the very substantial attention which
it has from three generations of historians. What is singular,
however, is that notwithstanding the deep study and appreciation
of the Chola state there is profound difficulty in determining the
relation of the state to the agrarian order of that time.
Why this condition should exist is more appropriately the subject
of a separate historiographical essay.1 Here, it may suffice to
consider briefly the way in which the Chola state is conceived in the
conventional historiography and how this conception has prevented
an adequate understanding of either the political system or the
agrarian order of the age. It may also be noted that the problem is
not limited to the Chola state, but includes most South Indian
states prior to the establishment of British rule in South India.
At the outset it should be noted that ideas about the relationship
of the medieval state and the agrarian system most often err with
reference to the state. This is unexpected since South Indian
historiography has been as deficient in economic-historical analysis
as most other regions of the sub-continent. But, and perhaps this

1 See tiie author’s ‘The State and the Agrarian Order in Medieval South India:
A Historiographical Critique', in Essays on South India, ed. Burton Stein, Asian
Studies in Hawaii, no. 15, 1975, The University Press, Hawaii, Honolulu.

254
 The Cholci State and the Agrarian Order 255

is true of pre-modern historical research in other parts of the sub¬

continent, the evidence pertaining to the agrarian economy is the
same as that pertaining to political arrangements. It is the same
limited corpus of stone and metal inscriptions. South Indian
historians, with very few exceptions, have taken the data on
most economic arrangements as given in the inscriptions. These
records describe quite localized systems of agrarian production
and exchange.
When dealing with the state, however, the preconceptions of
the historian have been permitted to intrude upon the basic evidence
with the result that the Chola state as well as other medieval South
Indian states have tended to be conceived as great unitary states
under powerful kings whose will was worked through an elaborate
bureaucratic apparatus assisted by a powerful military establish¬
ment. The more prudent and accurate depiction of agrarian
arrangements results, to some extent, from a neglect of, or at
least a diminished interest in, such material matters whereas the
the deep interest in and attention to political arrangements have
served principally to distort notions about the state.
This contrast is most evident in the treatment of what is almost
always called ‘local government’. Most discussions of the Chola
state speak of several levels of state organization, from the ‘central
royal administration’ to the ‘local government’; most have also
presumed ‘self-sufficient’ villages. Actually, only two levels of
government have been dealt with. These are the king, with ‘his’
military and ‘his’ bureaucratic organizations, and the local level.
Linkages between these two levels are poorly defined; for the
most part, they are inferred. In some cases, linkages are altogether
ignored. Most discussions of local, rural society, display a keen
appreciation for the well-developed, self-governing institutions
of locality society: the village community, castes, and guilds.
Local taxation and the local management of institutions are ex¬
tensively documented since the vernacular portions of inscriptions
recording grants pertain to these issues primarily. At times,
however, this appreciation becomes excessive as when Nilakanta
Sastri likens South Indian villages to the Roman cities of Gaul
and cites Fustel de Coulanges to the effect that if the Gallic city
(and the South Indian villages to which it is compared) ‘was not
a free state; it was at any rate a state’.2 In yet another place Nila-

2 The Colas, p. 515.

256 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

kanta Sastri speaks of Chola society as ‘a federation of ['hereditary

and voluntary’] groups’ appearing to have no territorial basis.3
As compared to the richly documented vigour of locality in¬
stitutions within the territory claimed by the Cholas and in which
their inscriptions are found, the ‘central government’ has a poorly
documented and often tortuously argued existence. Nilakanta
Sastri speaks of ‘the almost Byzantine royalty of Rajaraja’.4
Explicitly, he intends to contrast the kingship of the earlier Classical
period with that of the Chola period. He and others have certainly
produced convincing evidence of a conception of kingship during
the Chola period which is very different from that of the Classical
age. However, the contrast denigrates the changes in South Indian
kingship of the intervening Pallava age when a full-blown, Brah-
manical royal institution was brought into being and shaped the
Chola kingship. In the inscriptions of both kingships, a major
expressive element consisted of royal support of grants to Hindu
temples and to Brahmans. It is noteworthy that ancient royal
sacrifices (yagas) such as the asvamedha, prominent in the early
Pallava period (i.e. before the eighth century), are rarely mentioned
in Chola inscriptions. Instead, the Chola kings devoted substantial
wealth to the construction of great temples such as the Brihadisvara
temple of Rajaraja I at Tanjavur and the Gangaikondacholapuram
temple of Rajendra I. These temples are considered as sepulchral
monuments by some scholars, including Nilakanta Sastri, who
are led to compare this feature to that of the God-king (devaraja)
conception of South-east Asia.5 Still other temples possessed
portrait images of some Chola rulers who might have been
worshipped.6 Some of these issues will be considered further
below.
However, another kind of meaning must be attributed to the
phrase, ‘Byzantine monarchy’. That is, the Chola king is seen as
the executive over a vast and powerful bureaucracy and military
organization. Nilakanta Sastri writes: ‘What distinguished [the
Cola government’] . . . was the superior executive strength it was
able to develop by bringing into existence a highly organized and
thoroughly efficient bureaucracy’.7 A great army and navy are

3 Ibid., p. 462. 6 Ibid., p. 453.

4 Ibid., p. 451. 1 Ibid., p. 462.
3 Ibid., p. 452-3.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 257

presumed to have existed under the control and maintenance

of Chola kings. The existence of a ‘Chola navy’ is based upon a
few questionable references to ‘numberless ships’ in Chola inscrip-
tional preambles and upon the still mysterious adventurers of
Rajendra I in Malayan waters. More cogently, the presumed
maritime activity of the Cholas rests upon the old view still clung
to by many Indian historians of a ‘Greater India’ and Hindu
colonization in South-east Asia, a view which has been brought
into serious question by recent work in the history of that region.8
Chola armies have a more substantial reality. The conquests of
Chola rulers from Sundara Chola (a.d. 956-73) to Kulottunga I
(a.d. 1070-1120) are real enough, but these conquests neither

presuppose nor required a vast, standing army. Military power

was possessed by numerous chiefs, by itinerant merchant groups,
and others throughout the Chola macro region. These were locally
recruited and controlled forces. It is one of the major flaws in
the reading of Chola evidence to see armed force as the monopoly
of the Chola kingship, and it is important to recognize that upon
the specious notion of a vast, central and standing army much of
the justification for the Chola bureaucracy rests.
There is, in fact, no direct evidence of a central bureaucratic
organization with competence over the Chola macro region.
Such an organization is called into existence by the presumption
of a need for it. It is not the case that evidence of the existence
of a centralized, bureaucratized administrative structure prompted
the reasonable question of what this administration was for in
medieval South India. The idea of such an administrative structure
is based on the unsubstantiated supposition of a central military
establishment, and the maintenance of this establishment and
other presumed ‘central’ functions was seen to require a centralized
bureaucratic state structure. It can be shown that there existed
neither a centrally controlled military organization nor centrally
coordinated redistribution of what were regarded as state re¬
sources. Military needs and the support of religious institutions
and Brahmans were met from resources allocated by those under
whose the control such resources were: locality chieftains, not the

8 Eg., O.W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce; A Study of the Origins of

Srlvijava, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1967, pp. 64-5; and Paul Wheatley,
The Golden Khersonese; Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula
before A.D. 1500, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961, pp. 201-3.
258 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Chola rulers, except as the latter were themselves locality leaders

in the central parts of the Kaveri basin.
Nilakanta Sastri has been the most eloquent spokesman for the
presumed centralized state structure of the Cholas, but he is not
alone in this conception. In considering the agrarian system of
the Chola macro region, there is some advantage in examining the
position of A. Appadorai, one of Nilakanta Sastri’s best students.
With his mentor, Appadorai assumes that the royal government
permeated all aspects of life, and yet, Appadorai’s discussion of
the state and the economy is one of the briefest chapters of his
large, two volume work, Economic Conditions in Southern India
(1000-1500 A.D.).9
The key to Appadorai’s understanding of the relationship
between the state and the agrarian order is his understanding of
the term kadamai. He, along with most Chola scholars construe
the term to refer to land revenue paid in kind to the 'central govern¬
ment’. This is confirmed by his distinction between ‘land revenue’
(kadamai) and a group of other taxes which 'were not likely to
reach the central government’.10 In attempting to estimate the rate
of this payment to the 'central government', Appadorai presented
a table based on inscriptional references to payments due in kind
per unit of land.11 These references range from a.d. 1011 to
a.d. 1504. The assessments are given in or converted to kalams
(a dry measure equal to six cubic feet) per veli or md (equal to 6.6
and 1.65 acres respectively).12 The crops include paddy, sugar¬
cane, sesamum, millets, and gingelly. As Appadorai observes,
these data drawn from several parts of the Tamil plain at different
times yield great variation in rates. For paddy alone in two eleventh
century inscriptions from Tanjavur, the difference is a thousand
per cent! Dissatisfied with the variation produced from these data,
Appadorai cited an a.d. 1325 Pandyan inscription from Vada-
vanpatti (modern Sivaganga taluk, Ramnad) where the kadamai
is given as three kalams of paddy per md yielding forty kalams.13
This rate of three-fortieths is rejected by Appadorai as 'too favour¬
able to the peasant' and ‘exceptional’! The rate which is finally

9 Appadorai, op. cit., Ch. VI, ‘The Sphere of the State', v. 2, pp. 661-732.
D Ibid., p. 681.
11 Ibid., pp. 677-8.
12 Ibid., ‘Appendix’, pp. 783-5.
13 A.R.E.. 1924, para. 38; 39/1924.
 The Cholu State and the Agrarian Order 259

settled upon is the classical one-sixth, the conventional fraction

of production due to the king according to smriti texts from the
time of Manu.14 In support of this rate, Appadorai cited a text
of the Vijayanagara period and statements of the early British
administrator, Thomas Munro.15
T.V. Mahalingam, in his South Indian Polity,16 repeated Ap-
padorai’s argument without, however, mentioning his work. Like
Appadorai, Mahalingam does not question to whom the kadamai
was paid, it being assumed that the land revenue went to the
'central government’.17 Also like Appadorai, and all other writers
who hold the same position, Mahalingam does not ask how the
kadamai in kind was converted into income for the ‘central govern¬
ment’. Considering that the kadamai is not expressly stated in
the inscriptions of the period to be a payment to the ‘central govern¬
ment’, crucial importance attaches to the question of how the
proceeds from agricultural production were in fact realized by the
Chola rulers in the Kaveri. The same question does not arise with
the Vijayanagara state on the Tungabhadra with which both
Mahalingam and Appadorai deal because both accept foreign
accounts which describe tribute payments from subordinate
Vijayanagara warriors as the major source of state revenue.
Several factors operate to explain the persistence of the belief
that the Chola state exercised management over the agrarian
economy of the time. One is ideological. Three generations of
South Indian historians have taken pride in what they perceived
to be elaborate, centralized governments during the medieval
period. This sentiment was reinforced by ancient and medieval
political treatises which spoke of powerful monarchical states and
by later British writers with their own commitment to centralized
bureaucratic government and with their, often self-deluded (and
self-serving), notion that the government of the East India Company
simply restored proper government to South India after a century
or more of ‘chaos’. The robustness of the belief of historians

m The Ordinances of Manu, ed. and transl. A.C. Burnell and E.W. Hopkins,
London, 1884, ch. VII, verses 130-1. Actually, three rates are given here: one-sixth,
one-eighth, and one-twelfth.
15 Appadorai, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 679-80.
16 Originally published in 1954 by the University of Madras; revised edition,
1967 used here, pp. 158-72.
17 Mahalingam does question the one-sixth rate, however; ibid., p. 166.
260 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and others in centralized polities of the medieval period apparently

discouraged attempts to formulate a theory of government which
conformed better with the facts known of the medieval period.
This was true despite the suspicion with which literary sources
of the period were held by Nilakanta Sastri especially.18 Even
Mahalingam, though less troubled by the often didactic riiti texts,
appears cautious in his use of a 'manual of administration’ of the
Vijayanagara period attributed to Madhvacharya. First, he cites
the following statement from the Parasara Madhaviya:

As the florist in the garden plucks blossoms successively put forth and
does not eradicate the flowering shrub, so should the king drawing revenue
from his subjects, take the sixth part of the actual produce; like the maker
of charcoal extirpating the tree burns the whole plant, let not the king
so treat his subjects.19

Mahalingam then cautions that:

. . . works like the Parasaramadhaviya deal more with the theoretical

side of taxation than the practical side of it; and unless such indirect
and less reliable evidence are corroberated by the evidence of contemporary
inscriptions it is difficult to accept their value.20

Notwithstanding this prudent reservation, Mahalingam as¬

sumes that the central government — the king — received a portion
of agrarian production from even distant territories. This is as¬
sumed without questioning how these royal claims to revenue
were realized. Medieval riiti formulas are little more reliable than
the speculations of later British administrators with respect to
the function of the state during the medieval period. Both assume
a uniformity of usage which is not substantiated by more reliable
evidence; both also exaggerate the legitimacy and capability of
South Indian medieval rulers to income from tracts over which
they did not exercise direct dominance.
The matter of uniformity has received recent attention from
N. Karashima and B. Sitaraman. Based on one of the most exhaus¬
tive surveys of Chola records,21 these two scholars analysed Chola
19 Mahalingam, South Indian Polity, p. 167.
20 Ibid., p. 169.
21 They estimate that of approximately 9,000 Chola inscriptions that have been
noticed, some 3,500 have been published. Of these, forty per cent refer to revenue
terms, land grants, and land transfers. Noboru Karashima and B. Sitaraman,
‘Revenue Terms in Chola Inscriptions', Journal of Asian and African Studies, Tokyo,
no.5 (1972), p. 88.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 261

inscriptions from a.d. 846 to a.d. 1279 (the reigns of Vijayalaya

to Rajendra III) in the two great territories of the Chola macro
region: Cholamandalam and Tondaimandalam (or, to use the
Chola period designation for the latter, Jayankondacholaman-
dalam). Taking terms which occur ten times or more, twenty-
seven revenue terms are analysed chronologically and topographi¬
cally. It was found that eleven of these frequently used terms
(forty per cent) are found in Tondaimandalam only. The authors
conclude that ‘there existed a different administrative procedure
or economic set-up in one mandalam as distinguished from the
other’.22 While this analysis on a mandalam basis minimized
differences within each of the great territories — differences that
would be very great — these findings should have a sobering
effect upon those who propound, or more often simply imply,
a unitary state theory as do most writers on the Cholas.
Moreover, the analysis of Karashima and Sitaraman casts deep
doubt upon the view that some portion of agrarian production
from even the central core of the territory claimed by the Cholas
found its way to a central treasury. From Karashima’s previous
writing, this view of a centralized fiscal structure may have been
expected.23 Few of the twenty-seven most frequently mentioned
terms refer explicitly to cash payments, e.g. kasu ayam and veli
kasu. The former term, used in Tondaimandalam, means quite
literally a tax or payment in money; the latter term which occurs in
both of the mandalams means a charge of one kasu (probably
a copper coin) per veli, 6.6 acres of cultivated land.24 Others among
the twenty-seven terms may have been cash payments, of course.
Kurrat-tendam was a fine levied in Tondaimandalam and tattar-

22 ibid., p. 90.
23 Among the writings to which reference can be made are: ‘Allur and Isana-
mangalam: Two South Indian Villages of the Cola Times’, Proceedings of the First
International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1966, pp. 426-
37; ‘The Power Structure of the Cola Rule’, Presented to the Second Conference
Seminar on Tamil Studies, January, 1967; ‘Historical Development of South Indian
Society’ (‘Minami indo shakai no re kishi teki hatten’), in Indo shi okeru tochi seido
to kenrvoku Rozd, ed. Toru Matsui and Toshio Yamazuki, Tokyo University Press,
Tokyo, pp. 73-105.
24 ‘Epigraphical Glossary of Terms Relating to Taxes and other Dues Customary
and Feudal (Prepared for a Topographical List of Inscriptions in the Madras and
Kerala States), Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, University of
Madras, 1967 (typescript).
262 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

pa(tam was a tax on goldsmiths applied in both territories.25

Both could have been payable in cash. However, most of the
terms enumerated by Karashima and Sitaraman refer to payments
in labour or in kind. The point previously raised about the manner
in which payments in kind were converted to money or otherwise
made available to the ‘central government’ is underscored by
these findings.
But, it is the kadamai from all parts of the Chola territory which
is regarded as the primary source of revenue for the Cholas as it
was for the British. This term occurs with six others which Kara¬
shima and Sitaraman found were used in both of the mandalams
and which occur with at least twice the frequency of the other
twenty terms. Glossaries of inscriptional terms of the Chola period
identify kadamai as a land tax payable in kind to government;26
most would agree with Appadorai that ‘government’ meant ‘central
government’. More generally, however, the words kadamai or
kadam mean ‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ then as now.27
There is no question that kadamai was used in Chola times to
designate a tax, but there are questions of whether it was a tax
paid to the ‘central government’ as implied in most writing and
whether it was a tax on land only. Appadorai’s view, as already
noticed, is that kadamai was ‘land revenue’ paid to the ‘central
government' and was distinguishable from other taxes on agrarian
production which were ‘utilized for maintaining irrigation works,
for payment of village officers, and for the maintenance of
temples’.28 The last three categories of payments are seen as
local cesses. Similarly, in the analysis of Karashima and Sitara¬
man, the seven most frequent revenue terms found in both Chola-
mandalam and Tondaimandalam include kadamai. These writers
do not consider the meanings of the terms they have classified
chronologically and topographically, but the six other terms would
appear to be local dues exclusively. Thus, the terms echchoru,

25 Karashima and Sitaraman, op. cit.. pp. 90-1.

26 See the glossary of Mahalingam, South Indian Polity, p. 426 and S.I.T.I..
‘Glossary’, p. xx. Also Tamil Lexicon, p. 659.
27 The terms figure prominently, if dubiously at times, in the doctoral thesis of
Stanley J. Heginbotham, ‘Patterns and Sources of Indian Bureaucratic Behaviour;
Organizational Pressures and the Ethic of Duty in a Tamil Nadu Development
Program’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1970. Here, kadamai is un¬
accountably transliterated 'kardemai', and is equated with the term dharma, p. 321.
28 Appadorai, op. cit., n, pp. 680-1.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 263

muttaiy-al and vetti refer to obligations by local groups to perform

labour; the term antarayan refers to taxes levied by local bodies.
Kudimai,29 another of the frequently mentioned terms is generally
understood to refer to all taxes and dues except those from the
land; kudimai is thus contrasted with kadamai. Finally, the term
tattar-pdttam is a professional tax levied on goldsmiths and pos¬
sibly realized in money. Excluding the last term and the generic
terms kudimai and kadamai, the other four most frequently men¬
tioned terms appear to be local dues. In the absence of any known
process for the conversion of payments in kind to money, the
only revenue source which could practicably have been realized
by the ‘central government’ was the professional tax. There is
no evidence to support the view that kadamai was a payment
from localities to the ‘central government’. The generic revenue
terms kadamai and kudimai appear simply to have been terms
for taxes; they imply no reference to the source (i.e. whether from
the land or not) nor the recipient (i.e. whether local or extralocal).
Nilakanta Sastri notes that the meanings of kadamai and kudimai
are ‘quite close in meaning’; both refer to ‘duties of the kudis'
or people, and he assumes that both terms refer to payments to
the ‘King’s government’.30 The latter notion is based on the
extremely slender evidence of phrases in inscriptions such as the
following of Rajaraja I from Tiruvaduturai in Cholamandalam:
‘Any kind of kudimai [is] due at the Sacred Victorious Gate [tiruk-
korra-vdsal including] the taxation (varippadu) levied by the ur
(town or village), and any other type of kudimai,’31 The phrase
tiruk-korru-vasal, upon which much hangs in this interpretation,
can also mean ‘the masonry gateway before the chief god of the
temple’, and since the record cited pertains to an arrangement
for the provision of dues to a temple, the latter meaning of the
phrase may be what was intended. In several places, Nilakanta
Sastri provides evidence against his own definition. He cites
inscriptions in which the kadamai was possessed not by the ‘king’s
government’, but by various kinds of settlements including those
under the control of temples (devadana and tiruvidyaitam), Jains
(paUiccandam), learned persons (agarapparru, madapuram), village

29 Tamil Lexicon, p. 971.

30 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 522-3.
31 Loc. cit.; a summary of this inscription is found in The Colas, i, p. 505, referring
A.R.E. 1925, no.121. Also, Tamil Lexicon, p. 1917 (lirvacal) and p. 1167 (korru).
264 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

servants and officials (jfvataparru), and soldiers (padiaparru and

vanniyapparru).32 Moreover, he provides examples of the use of
the term kadamai to refer to dues on productive capacity other
than regular field agriculture.33 This included several references
to kadamai for oil-mongers and one to kadamai on areca trees.34
This discussion of Chola revenue has intended to draw atten¬
tion to the largely conjectural and imputed nature of the Chola
state in the existing historiography. It is the purpose of this chapter
to propose a model of the Chola state which is fundamentally
different from the existing model, which also fits the known
evidence of the Chola period better.

II

In order to consider a better model of political arrangements

in medieval South Indian states than the existing one, it is neces¬
sary to recognize that there are many kinds of states, of which the
unitary, centralized state is but one. It is, however, precisely
that one which most South Indian historians assume to have
been normative during the medieval period, and, except when
the king was weak or the kingdoms troubled by natural disasters
or invasions, these historians claim actually to have existed. In
fact, this type of unitary state did not exist nor could it have
existed in medieval South India any more than in medieval India
as whole, with the possible exception of the Mughal state of
the seventeenth century; nor did such a state exist in most of the
world prior to the industrial revolution which provided the tech¬
nology and mobile force required to sustain unitary states as we
know them.
In this section, another type of state formation is proposed as
more in conformity with extant evidence. This is the pyramidally
segmented type of state, so-called because the smallest unit of
political organization — for example, a section of a peasant
village — was linked to ever more comprehensive units of political
organization of an ascending order (e.g., village, locality, supra-
locality, and kingdom) for various purposes, but that each unit
stood in opposition to other, similar units (e.g., one section of a

32 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 505, 585.

33 Ibid., pp. 526, 532.
34 Ibid., p. 532.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 265

village as against another) for other purposes. The most fully

elaborated discussion of this type of political system has been
provided by Aidan Southall for an East African society, the Alur.
In his study,35 Southall is concerned with a political order which
he contends is different from, and contrasts with, the unitary
state, but is yet a ‘state’. The ‘state’ in most modern usage is seen
to be comprised of four elements: territorial sovereignty, centra¬
lized government, specialized ruling or administrative classes, and
monopoly of legitimate force or political control by the centre.
To the contention that state forms other than unitary ones are
‘transitory’, Southall responds with the description of a stable,
and, he contends, widespread form which he calls ‘segmentary’.
The characteristics of the segmentary state are the following:

(1) Territorial sovereignty is recognized but limited and essentially

relative, forming a series of zones in which authority is most absolute
near the centre and increasingly restricted towards the periphery, often
shading off into a ritual hegemony.
(2) There is centralized government, yet there are also numerous
peripheral focuses of administration over which the centre exercises
only a limited control.
(3) There is a specialized administrative staff at the centre, but it
is repeated on a reduced scale at all the peripheral focuses of administra¬
tion.
(4) Monopoly of the use of force is successfully claimed to a limited
extent and within a limited range by a central authority, but legitimate
force on a more restricted order inheres at all the peripheral focuses.
(5) Several levels of subordinate focuses may be distinguishable,
organized pyramidally in relation to the central authority. The central
and peripheral authorities reflect the same model, the latter being reduced
images of the former. Similar powers are repeated at each level with a
decreasing range; every authority has certain recognized powers over the
subordinate authorities articulated to it, and formally similar offences
differ in significance according to the order to authorities involved in them.
(6) The more peripheral a subordinate authority is the more chance
it has to change its allegiance from one power to another. Segmentary
states are thus flexible and fluctuating, even comprising peripheral units
which have political standing in several adjacent power pyramids which
thus become interlocked.36

35 Alur Society: A Study in Process and Types of Domination, W. Heffer and Sons
Ltd., Cambridge, 1956.
36 Ibid., pp. 248-9.
266 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India
Professor Southall’s explicitly comparative approach, his efforts
to consider political systems other than the Alur in contemporary
Africa and in other times, invites further consideration. Special
attention may be given to three of the elements of Southall's
definition: sovereignty, centralized government, and administrative
specialization.
Territorial sovereignty in the unitary state and in the segmentary
state is different. In the unitary state, effective political control
and administration defines the territory of the state; it also estab¬
lishes, or constitutes, the quality of sovereignty, that is, the manner
in which political authority and political power coincide. While
in the unitary state there is likely to be no substantial gap between
political control and authority, or what Southall speaks of as
‘ritual hegemony’, in a segmentary state these two aspects of rule
are markedly divergent. Thus Southall, speaking of a segmentary
political situation, states: ‘ritual supremacy is often accepted where
political control is not, and segmentary states may characteristically
be more highly centralized ritually than politically.’37 This affects
the nature of central authority as well as of territory, of course,
but the implications for the latter are important. If one accepts
the validity of the distinction between ritual and political aspects
of rule, as one must in order to deal with the concept of the seg¬
mentary state as Southall presents it, then it would appear necessary
to consider two different notions of ‘territory’ at a given time for
a particular segmentary state. One sense of territory would be the
scope of ritual supremacy, the other of political control. This is
the distinction upon which Southall appears to base his notion of
a ‘series of zones’. It is necessary to recognize that in a segmentary
state there is a dual or divided idea of territoriality. Whereas in a
unitary state this dual sense of territory occurs only when some¬
thing has gone wrong, in the segmentary state, the fact and legitimacy
of this duality is of crucial theoretical and empirical significance.
The dual sense of territorial sovereignty as, on the one hand,
an essentially ritual sort exercised by a king in a segmentary state

37 Ibid., p. 261. In a later statement, Southall seems to modify what is here an

apparent equivalence of‘ritual hegemony’ and ‘authority’ by stating that: ‘Authority
is the legitimate exercise of imperative control (i.e. *. . . the probability that a com¬
mand will be obeyed’); ‘Typology of States and Political Systems’ in M. Banton
(ed). Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, A S.A. Monographs, no.2
(1969), Tavistock Publications, London, p. 120.
 The Chola State ami the Agrarian Order 267

and, on the other hand, as an essentially political or controlling

sort which the king exercises in his own domain, but which is
appropriately exercised by subordinate rulers in their domains, is
seen as appropriate in the medieval Indian situation. The terms
ksatra and rajadharma in dharmasdstra texts denote the distinction.
In the recent work of Lingat,38 these terms are contrasted in
two different ways. First, the terms contrast with respect to the
scope of kingly rule: ksatra perceives the king as a fully competent,
independent political actor charged, as is the father in the family,
with the protection and control of his subjects; rajadharma perceives
the king as an actor of limited power within an interdependent
system of hierarchical relationships, who bears the full moral
consequences of his own actions and those of his subjects.39 The
second contrast is more relevant.

[Rajadharma]40 is a universal rule in this sense, that every king is subject

to it and suffers its sanctions, whatever the extent or situation of his
kingdom. Moreover it is a duty and an obligation of a personal character
which is incumbent on the king’s conscience and obtains stability only
through his will.41
Ksatra ... is a power of a territorial character, exercised within a given
territory and stopping at the frontier of the realm. ... Of the same
nature as property, it implies a direct power over the soil. That is why
the king is also called svamin, a word which can be applied equally to a
proprietor as to a husband or a chief, and which denotes an immediate
power over a thing or over a person.42

A similar contrast is suggested by Louis Dumont in his discus¬

sion of danda and artha as elements of what he calls ‘ “conventional” ’
or ‘ “rational” ’ kingship in India. Dumont contrasts danda,
or legitimate force’, and artha, or ’interest. . . at once economic
and political . . .’, and notes that danda, most abstractly conceived
is ‘a kind of immanent power of justice . . . more or less identical

38 Robert Lingat, The Classical Law of India, trans. with additions by J. Duncan
M. Derrett, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973. Originally published
in 1967 under the title, Les sources du droit dans le systeme traditonnel de I'lnde,
Mouton and Co., Paris.
34 Ibid., pp. 211-12.
40 Dharma' is used in the original but Lingat noted that ‘it is perfectly correct
for the Mahabharata to declare that all dharmas are comprised in the rdjd-dharma
and that all have rdja-dharma at their head' (ibid., p. 208).
41 Ibid., p. 212.
42 Loc. cit.
268 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

with dharma. . . ,’43 Dharma is thus ‘action in conformity with

the universal norm, and hence disinterested, while artha is action
in conformity with interest without regard to the universal
norm. . . .’44
Southall’s second characteristic of the segmentary state, ‘centra¬
lized government’, requires clarification. The segmentary state
has two kinds of‘centres’, or rather, centres exist in two conceptual
and empirical senses. As to the first sense, the segmentary state
exists as a state (and not a congeries of independent political
entities) only insofar as the segmentary units comprising it recognize
a single ritual authority — the king. It must be this recognition
which provides some of the legitimacy for constituent segmentary
units — those ‘numerous peripheral foci of administration' in the
state — which are themselves ‘centres’ in the second sense. In
this connection, it is difficult to understand Southall’s suggestion
that one difference between segmentary and unitary states (and
the factor chiefly involved in the transformation from the former
condition to the latter) is the concept of legitimacy.45 Southall
supposes that legitimacy is lacking in the political relationships
of the segmentary state. Yet, what else but a 'belief in ' "legitimacy”’
(to follow Southall in the use of Weber’s definition of legitimacy)
could explain the efficacy and durability of the Alur state and
other systems to which he applied the label, ‘segmentary state’.
It would seem to be ‘legitimacy’ alone that can be understood in
Southall’s statement that ‘in a segmentary system tribute is received
in direct return for ritual and jural services rather than in recognition
of any regular fiscal obligation'.46 It is a similar sense of legitimacy
which Krader presumably has in mind when he states:47

... in any segmentary polity, the local chiefs or other authorities do

not give their political power to the central ruler; the political power
remains in their hands. Nevertheless, a central office may be established
in these kingdoms with a symbolic function of representing the unity
of the people and the land.

43 The Conception of Kingship in Ancient India' in L. Dumont. Religion/Politics

and History in India; Collected Papers in Indian Sociology. Mouton and Co., The
Hague, 1970, p. 76. He contrasts ‘conventional’ with 'divine', p. 71.
44 Ibid., p. 78.
45 Southall, op. cit., p. 252.
46 Ibid., pp. 261-2.
47 Lawrence Krader, Formation of the State (Foundation of Modem Anthro¬
pology Series), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1968, p. 35.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 269

If legitimacy does not attach to ritual centralization in the segmen¬

tary state, Southall’s second defining characteristic on centralized
government becomes puzzling. For, it appears contradictory to
assert that "there is centralized government’ at the same time that
there are ‘peripheral foci of administration over which the centre
exercises limited control’. It may be granted that there are limits
to central control in even the most modern, unitary state. However,
the distinction which is emphasized in considering the segmentary
state is that overarching central political control may not be very
important at all. This is a very different conception from that of
‘centralized government’. In a segmentary state, while political
control is appropriately distributed among many throughout
the system, ritual supremacy is legitimately conceded to a single
centre.
A similar and related question arises in the ‘monopoly in the use
of force’, Southall’s fourth characteristic of the segmentary state.
Involved here is the same kind of apparent contradiction as that
alluded to in the discussion of ‘centralized government’. It is
difficult to accept that the ‘monopoly of the use of force’ has been
‘successfully claimed’ by the centre when the legitimate, even
if restricted, use of legitimate force also ‘inheres at all peripheral
foci’. This is the same as accepting that a centralized government
could exist which had almost no political control over parts of
the system. These apparent paradoxes are mitigated, if not resolved,
in the distinction between political and ritual authority which has
already been discussed and in the relationships between centres
and their internal subordinate parts, to which attention can now
be directed.
Southall’s fifth characteristic states in part:

Several levels of subordinate foci may be distinguished, organized pyrami¬

dally in relation to the central authority. The central and peripheral
authorities reflect the same model, the latter being a reduced image of
the former.

The concept of pyramidal segmentation has the greatest saliency

in Southall’s formulation; it may be the most distinctive feature
of his formulation of the segmentary state, for the conception of
pyramidal segmentary organization assumes an upward reaching
set of localized units of society, such as peasant families, to the
moral centre of society, the king. As used by Durkheim, the principle
270 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of segmentary structure denoted the horizontal repetition of like

social units at the base of society, units such as clans and lineages,
for example. Later anthropological analysis, especially that of
Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer of Africa have noted that there was
also a form of vertical segmentation. Here, the highest segment
might be a tribe, or major section of a tribe, beneath which nested
what Evans-Pritchard called secondary and perhaps even tertiary
sections of the same tribal unit. The lowest level of this segmentary
structure might include several villages,48 and at this level are to be
seen many of the characteristics of the tribe itself: a distinctive
name,-shared bonds of sentiment, and a territory of its own. How¬
ever, each segment is also internally segmented with oppositions
among its parts. Thus, Evans-Pritchard writes, ‘. . . a tribal segment
is crystallized around a lineage of the dominant clan of the
tribe. . ,’49 in opposition to which stand other lineages. Further:

The political system is an expanding series of opposed segments from the

relations within the smallest tribal section to inter-tribal and foreign
relations, for opposition between the segments of the smallest section
seems to us to be of the same structural character as the opposition between
the tribe and its neighbours. . . ,50

The importance of this conception vests in its simultaneous

attention to the linkage of social units at various horizontal levels
— even very local levels — and the integration of diverse social
units at increasingly more comprehensive spatial and societal
levels. It is of course recognized that there are profound differences
between African societies and those of India, including the far
weaker (but not absent) clan and lineage structures at the lowest
levels of society in India, and the overarching ideological and ritual
integration achieved under Indian conceptions of kingship. But
such differences do not alter the essential structural similarities
of certain fundamental relationships in these two very different
kinds of social orders.
The basic segments of the South Indian medieval segmentary
political system were nadus under the leadership of chiefs. In the
Chola period, such personages held titles such as udaiyar, arasar,

48 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer. Oxford University Press, New York, reprint
1971, p. 139; cited by Southall, op. cit., p. 249.
49 Evans-Pritchard, op. cit., p. 142; also pp. 211-14.
5() Ibid., p. 148.
 The Chola Stale and the Agrarian Order 271

mummudi, or muvendavelar. The dominant basis of opposition

of these localized units of society was not that of ethnically or
culturally differentiated peoples, as in the case of the Alur des¬
cribed by Southall. In medieval South India opposing elements
within the nadu units of society were of a different nature, and
often asymmetrical. These would include the opposition between
families of chiefs and the dominant castes from which they had
emerged, between locally dominant landed groups and subordinate
ones; between agricultural and non-agricultural groups, between
established castes of a locality and newcomers or outsiders, and
among sect and cult groups. Many of these oppositions took
concrete form in the right and left caste groupings.
Within each nadu segment, social units in balanced or com¬
plementary opposition may have conceded to a chief a degree of
executive authority — political and ritual power — sufficient to
satisfy the tasks of governance within a territory, but this was a
limited concession. It was limited by the demands of constituent
groups within the segment that their separate identities and internal
regulation be respected and preserved from usurpation by the
power of the chief on the one hand, and from assimilation by other
groups, on the other hand.51 Maintenance of the internal relations
among groups within the segmentary unit accomplished more
than the limitation of the chiefs power; it also militated against
pressures from beyond the segmentary unit which might threaten
this internal constitution. Thus, preservation of the oppositional
structure of groups within a nadu, while limiting the chief s authority
over the unit, simultaneously strengthened the office of the chief
by assuring support to him in protecting the nadu from external
aggression. Chieftainships of this sort may additionally, though
only temporarily, be supported by intra-segmentary cooperation
in acts of aggression against others. As long as the disparate
interests of groups within the segmentary unit were maintained,
the segmentary political order had stability. A segmentary unit
under gifted leadership or special circumstances, such a natural
catastrophe, may have shifted to the status of a more powerful
chiefdom or, on the other hand, it may have yielded to superior
force and become integrated into a supralocal, centralized political
system. But, neither of these transformations are likely to be

si See Lingat's discussion of Dharmasastra on this point; op. cit., pp. 246-8.
272 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

either easy or enduring. As long as the subordinate social units

preserved the tension of opposition to each other and to the proxi¬
mate central authority, i.e. the local chieftain, each segmentary
unit contributed to the segmentary character of the whole. •
Each segment replicates the overall pattern of central and
peripheral relationships and at every level there are centres. South-
all states:

The distribution of power in the segmentary state is characterized by the

fact that, within any one segment, at any level of the pyramidal structure,
there is at any one moment a certain degree of monopoly of political
power, development of administrative staff and definition of territorial
limits, whereas, within the system as a whole, the political relations of
the various segments are determined by much the same factors as in the
case of segmentary societies which have no political specialization at all.
Such specialized power as exists at the top of the pyramid becomes pro¬
gressively weaker in proportion to distance from the center, but the
degree of power centralization within segments may vary very little from
one segment to another within each pyramidal system.52

All subordinate centres of a segmentary order are bound together

by their joint recognition of the ritual sovereignty of the highest
central office or personage considered as the authoritative source
of ritual cohesiveness for the state as a whole. What distinguishes
centres from each other at various levels of the system is the vertical
discontinuity of power relations. Hence, the scope of political
control falls upon diminished numbers of persons as one descends
from the apex of the segmentary state (the raja) to the base, the
local chief (e.g., udaiyar). But the nature of authority of each
centre is the same.
It is essentially this point of many centres in relationship to
superior and subordinate levels with which Southall is concerned
in his distinction between pyramidal social structures and hierarchi¬
cal power structures.53 In the former every legitimate kind of
political authority and control can be found at all levels, but these
operate upon a diminishing constituency as one moves from level
to level. In hierarchical power structures, different kinds of
authority and control are appropriate to centres at different levels,
and what marks the passage from one to another level is a particular
bundle of executive authority and power. That which is ‘reduced’

52 Southall, op. cit., pp. 251-2.

55 Ibid., pp. 250-1.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 273

in the ‘reduced image’ of pyramidal levels is the range of com¬

petence not the kind of political control.
‘Specialized administrative staff, the third basic element of
Southall’s definition refers to agents of a centralized authority
who are the means by which centralized authority and power are
articulated. However, in his usage and that of most students of
pre-industrialized societies, apart from China, perhaps, the reference
is not to specialists of the sort associated with modern, unitary,
bureaucratized states. The latter are functional specialists res¬
ponsible for attending a fractional aspect of central political
control such as when a magistrate adjudicates disputed claims
according to codified-, statutory law. What appears to be meant
by ‘specialized administrative staff in Southall’s conception of the
segmentary state is the existence within a society of persons with
distinct political roles in contrast to the fused character of kinship
and politics in stateless societies. Moreover, in Southall’s formula¬
tion, the reference is not to administrative specialists in the sense
that a magistrate or a tax collector is one, but, in fact, to a general
agent of central authority, a mantri in the strict sense of the
term.
Considering the very important distinctions in the concept
of the segmentary state which are made between ritual and
political authority and power on the one hand, and central
and segmentary focuses on the other, it would be expected
that the administrative personnel — those with clear political
roles — are of two kinds. First, there are those who are agents
of the central authority’s actual political control within the
limited sphere of that competence; secondly, there are those
who are agents of the central authority’s ritual function in
binding subordinate authorities together into either subordinate
pyramidal segments or state systems comprised of such units.
Perceived in these terms, Southall’s third characteristic may
perhaps be stated as follows:

Specialized administrative personnel are of two kinds. One is essentially

involved in political control, and the scope of their activities may not
extend beyond the segmentary unit (recognizing that the segmentary
unit of the great chief may be much larger than others). The second
kind of administrative personnel is involved in essentially ritual activities
and tends to be inter-segmentary in scope.

A partial summary of the clarification and elaboration of South-

274 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

all’s conception of the ‘segmentary state’ which have been discussed

above may now be offered.54
1) In a segmentary state sovereignty is dual. It consists of
actual political sovereignty, or control, and what Southall terms
‘ritual hegemony’ or ‘ritual sovereignty’. These correspond in
Indian usage to ksatra and rdjadharma respectively.
2) In a segmentary state there may be numerous ‘centres’ of
which one has primacy as a source of ritual sovereignty, but all
exercise actual political control over a part, or segment, of the
political system encompassed by the state.
3) The ‘specialized adminstrative staff’ — what in some unitary
states would be called ‘the bureaucracy’ — is not an exclusive
feature of the primary centre, but is found operating at and within
the segments of which the state consists.
4) Subordinate levels, or ‘zones’ of the segmentary state may
be distinguished and the organization of these is ‘pyramidal’.
That is, the relationship between the centre and the peripheral units
of any single segment is the same — in reduced form — as the
relationship between the prime centre and all peripheral focuses
of power. There is a contrast here with hierarchical forms of
political organization in which, at successively subordinate levels
of a system there are different kinds of executive authority whereas
in the segmentary state, executive authority is the same at the prime
centre and at any subordinate segmental centre except that it is
exercised over fewer people. In the Indian context this principle
is expressed in the terms ‘little kingdoms’ and ‘little kings' to
describe a local ruler whose ‘kingly’ authority is that of any great
king, but more limited in scope.
The principle of pyramidal segmentation — of complementary
opposition among segments within an expanding framework
of vertical integration — is as salient in the concept of segmentary
states as the conceptual bifurcation of the ritual and political
aspects of rule. A unitary political order in the process of formation
or decay may exhibit these characteristics. However, when the
fundamental structure of political relationships is predicated upon
the legitimacy of pyramidal segmentation and of the kind of separa¬
tion of authority and power delineated here, the system is extremely
54 While there have been discussions between the author and Southall on most
of the issues raised here, it is not suggested that the concept of the segmentary
state as used here is 'authorized’ or ‘endorsed’ by Southall.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 275

difficult to bring under unitary rule from above or to alter from

below because political authority is inextricably tied to opposed,
localized segments. Given the pyramidal segmentary form of
organization, the only possible supra-local, extra-segmentary
integration which could occur would be of a ritual sort. Seg¬
mentary social organization may, and often does, occur in stateless
societies or in tribal societies; segmentary social organization
among peasant peoples, whose dominant form of political organiza¬
tion is the chiefdom, would require some kind of segmentary state
with characteristics conforming to those outlined by Southall.
The conception outlined above pertains to the ways in which
relatively self-sufficient, enduring, and often quite ancient localized
societies can be linked together to form a state. Such a state is not
an amalgamation or absorption of localized units into an organic
greater unit such as implied in the unitary state, but is an arrange¬
ment in which the local units — segments — retain their essential
being as segmental parts of a whole. One reason why each of
the segmental units remains autonomous is that each is pyramidal,
that is, each consists of balanced and opposed internal groupings
which zealously cling to their independent identities, privileges and
internal governance, and demand that these units be protected by
their local rulers.
Another quite different reason for the durability of these arrange¬
ments is that rulership — whether that of chieftainship or kingship
— is sacral: it is dependent upon ritual, not administrative, in¬
corporation. The very term raja alerts us to the ritually incor¬
porate character of Indian kingship since one meaning of the root,
raj, is ‘stretching out’, ‘the king being one who “stretched himself
out and protected (other men) under his powerful arms” ’ as do
divine powers (the Vedic Savitar and Agni).55 Segmentary forms
of organization cannot exist except under such ritually incorporate
leadership.
Rulership in medieval South India was based upon ancient
canons of Aryan kingship. This was true from the Pallava period,
when brahmanical kingship was established, modifying the earlier
form of kingship described in the puram poems of the Classical,
or Sangam, tradition. While both the earlier and later forms of

55 J. Gonda, Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View, E.J. Brill,
Leiden, 1966, p. 122; he draws here upon the work of T. Burrow.
276 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

rulership — of chief or king — were sacral in character, the form

introduced in the Pallava age provided the means for attaining
encompassing, incorporative universal kingship. The pre-Palla-
van, or Classical, period was one in which three kingships and a
great number of chieftainships existed among Tamils; from the
Pallava period, the Tamils could have but one great king, one who,
by means of ritual, incorporated all lesser rulers. Ritual incorpora¬
tion was the essence of medieval South Indian kingship, and the
introduction of this conception into South India was as politically
significant as was the introduction, later, of bureaucracy, by the
British, for modern South India.
Ritually incorporative kingship has been neglected by all but
a few writers on Indian kingship and the Hindu state. Among the
scholars of the Chola period, sacral kingship is entirely ignored.
Nilakanta Sastri’s discussion of Chola kingship, in The Colas
and other writings, is concerned with the king as warrior, as the
putative director of an elaborate administrative structure, as the
benefactor of Brahmans and temples, and as the follower of con¬
ventional rajadharma in other ways.56 T.V. Mahalingam’s treat¬
ment of kingship is more detailed, but not essentially different
from that of his mentor, Nilakanta Sastri.57 Though Mahalingam
gives more serious attention to literary and poetic sources than
Nilakanta Sastri, he shares the latter's distrust of them. Hence,
he considers 'overdrawn' poetic references to the king as mediator
between the cosmos and earthly society, such as the following lines
from the Manimekalai: ‘If the king swerved from his righteous
path, 'The planets would all change their course. . . .'58
Among a few scholars, however, the sacral character of Indian
kingship is absolutely central. Two elaborate treatments of the
subject are found in J. Gonda’s Ancient Indian Kingship from the
Religious Point of View and A.M. Hocart’s Kings and Councillors.59
Gonda’s title is somewhat misleading since it is clear that he regards
Indian kingship as intelligible only from the religious point of view.
Thus, while allowing that the view of Kautilya of the 'practical

56 Op. cit., pp. 460 ff.

57 South Indian Polity, pp. 11 ff.
58 Ibid., p. 15.
59 Gonda, op. cit., and A.M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors; An Essay in the
Comparative Anatomy of Human Society, University of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 197;
originally published in Cairo, 1936.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 277

side of Indian public life as opposed to the religious’ was important

in recognizing the king to be the ‘central figure of the state’, he con¬
cludes his disquisition with the observation that the social order
which the king was bound to nourish and sustain was prior to the
state.60 As protector of this social order and its people, the king
possessed ‘a morality of his own’.61 The major thrust of Gonda’s
essay is the sacrificially attained divinity of the Indian king. Created
from ‘eternal and essential particles of Indra and the seven other
great devas the king is one of the lokapalas (guardians of the world)
according to Manu and later writers.62 The Vedic ratnins, seen
by many historians as an ‘administrative council’ of the ancient
Indian king, are better seen, according to Gonda and his student
Heesterman, as a group of persons endowed with ‘sacral qualities’
which are incorporated by the king in a marriage-like ritual.63
The king as married to his realm or to the goddesses of fortune,
victory, and the earth are figures of speech frequently found in
royal inscriptions of medieval India.64 As gods are honoured by
man, so are kings because of the latters’ anointment in the mahci-
bhisekha which consecrates (i.e., ritually transforms) each human
king just as it did the primordial divine king, Indra.65 Sacrificially
created power is thereafter passed through the king as in the asva-
medha sacrifices. Gonda points out that the royal horse sacrifice
does not merely assert ownership over the territory circumambu¬
lated by the king’s sacrificial horse; the horse transmits to that
territory its divine power acquired as a result of ritual.66 The
horse sacrifice is repeated each year by the royal sacrificer and
hence becomes a cycle of sacrificial regeneration of the land and
its people.
Hocart provides the most general conception of incorporative

60 Gonda, op. cit., pp. 137-8. Elsewhere (p. 103): ‘It is therefore no happy idea
sharply to distinguish between the religious and secular aspects of kingship, the
former requiring from the monarch certain acts of propitiating gods and unseen
powers . . . with the help of the purohita and sacrificial priests, the latter including
acts that lead to prosperity of realm and subjects.'
61 Ibid., p. 138.
62 Ibid., pp. 24-30.
63 Gonda, op. cit., p. 44; J.C. Heesterman, The Ancient Indian Royal Consecra¬
tion's, Mouton and Co., s-Gravenhage, 1957, p. 52.
64 Lingat, op. cit., p. 212 and Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, p. 35 In.
65 Gonda, op. cit., pp. 56, 82-3.
66 Ibid., pp. 110-14.
278 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

kingship in which the ancient Indian monarchical tradition is but

one example. Sacrifice is the central means by which the king
is made sacred and is the means by which all other elements of
the realm are incorporated and controlled: lesser kings and chiefs,
and their territories; other gods and their priests. E.W. Hopkins'
view of Indian sacral kingship deserves special mention, for he
introduces a dynamic element missing from the conceptions outlined
above. Hopkins notes that the concept of divine kingship is at the
foundation of all ancient Indian texts dealing with governance.67
His contrast of the Brahman and the king in later Vedic thought
is instructive: the Brahman is ‘born divine. . . a king becomes divine
only by virtue of a religious ritual’ regardless of his birth as a
Kshatriya.68 This conception, Hopkins states, is found in many
later law texts (dharmasastras). Thus, Kautilya speaks of the
anointed king as one to be honoured and obeyed as a god, and
Manu goes even further to equate the anointed king not only with
Indra — king of the Vedic gods, but with seven other great gods
who protect the world (gods of the sun, moon, fire, wind, wealth,
judgement or Varuna, and death).69 Later, epic poets speak of
five rather than eight divine protectors of the world, including the
king, and epic poets ‘never say that the king is like a great divinity. . .
the king is a great divinity; he is like this or that god’.70
Epic poets also introduced a new element into the notion of
sacred kingship, that of ‘divine incarnation’. Thus, of the first
king, Prthu, Hopkins states: ‘Visnu entered his body, and so the
world bows to this king as to a god among human gods.’71 The
avatar form of incarnation provided the means of assimilating
Rama and Krishna to Vishnu as human forms of the god, and
provides a conceptual model for the sacral transformation of human
kings to divinity in medieval South Indian kingship.72
Dharmasdstra texts extend the temporal range of sources on
sacral kingship to the period of the Cholas.73 Lingat has noted that
67 ‘The Divinity of Kings’, JAOS, v. 50 (1931), p. 309.
68 Loc. cit.
69 Ibid., p. 311.
70 Ibid., p. 313.
71 Ibid., p. 313.
72 Ibid., p. 314; and Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, p. 337.
77 J. Duncan M. Derrett has drawn attention to this fact in his ‘Two Inscriptions
Concerning the Status of Kammalas and the Application of the Dharmasastra',
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 279

while many ot the sastric texts on dharma speak of the divinity of

kings, the idea is rarely encountered in the earlier dharmasutras;
he also notes a difference in the way this divine aspect of kingship
is perceived in early, Vedic, texts and later, dharmasdstra, texts.
Vedic texts attribute divinity to kings because of their participation
in ritual which identified the king with a god; this is well illustrated
in Gonda’s discussion, of course. The same sense of sacred kingship
is conveyed in the meaning attached to the terms raja and rcijyam
in Vedic usage, that is the idea of the ‘splendor, magnificence and
prestige' of the king ‘rather than his power to command and
the idea of power and force'.74 But, Lingat argues, by the time
of the dharmasdstras of Manu and Narada, the divinity of kings
is posited on other grounds, namely as a reason for obedience
to royal orders. It is, therefore, the institution, not the royal
person, which is deified.

The dominant idea of the dharmasdstra writers seems to have been that
it was not the king who had a divine nature, but the royal function it¬
self. . . ,75 The exercise of the royal function is equivalent to the celebra¬
tion of a sacrifice of long duration (sattra), and that is why the king
remains pure, whatever acts he is led to commit. . . ,76

An interesting and corrolary conception which Lingat finds

in his study of dharmasdstra is that the social origin of kings is
not considered important; it matters only that the king has been
anointed (abhisikta) and that he is an able warrior. Kshatriya
birth is insisted upon by Manu,77 but most other dharamasdstras
do not. Kulluka, a Bengal sastrika of the late twelfth century,
attributes the title of raja to any man duly anointed and affording
royal protection, regardless of his varna.78
Notwithstanding the various aspects of sacral kingship which
Lingat has evinced, his summary judgement of the conception of
kingship in the medieval dharmasdstra tradition is puzzling in its
emphasis upon the secular:

in Prof. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri 80th Birthday Felicitation Volume, Madras, 1971;
a brief on this appears in Lingat, op. cit., pp. 273-4.
74 Lingat, op. cit., p. 211 n.
75 Ibid., p. 208. He notes that this conception has been the subject of heated
controversy among scholars.
76 Ibid., p. 215.
77 Ibid., p. 209.
78 Ibid., p. 210; also see Kane, op. cit., v. 1, pt 2, pp. 756-9.
280 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

... the king appears to owe his authority neither to divine will, nor to
his birth, nor to any social compact, but solely to the force at his disposal.
... His authority is entirely temporal and secular. Punishment is the
sole instrument of his policies. But like any mortal, he has his own
dharma. . . [and] though he is an absolute sovereign, he is subject to the
law of karma. . . ,79

What Lingat appears to mean here is that for the dharmasastra

writers, the possession of force, which alone provides the eligibility
for kingship, is made perfect as danda: pure force which becomes
a divine institution of punishment for the welfare of all.80 Perfec¬
tion of that force can only occur with proper anointment, and this
creates the royal function; secular force is danda only as it is em¬
bedded in the extended sacrifice (sattra) which kingship is construed
to be. During this time, the king is freed from the consequences
of sin or error, though in his after-life he is as fully accountable for
both as any person. This dharmasastra conception of kingship is
certainly different from the conception conveyed in Vedic texts
upon which Gonda, Hocart, and Hopkins primarily depended, but
the effect of this dharmasastra view is not to diminish, but rather
to amplify and elaborate the notion of sacral kingship. It is to be
excepted that the concept of royal authority in these smriti texts,
based as they are upon Vedic sruti sources as revealed in the com¬
mentaries of learned Brahmans, would tend to yield little more to
kings than the responsibility and the attendant force (danda) to
compel obedience by the king to the instructions of the Brahman
lawgivers. One consequence of this was the depersonalization
of kingship by emphasizing the royal function and making of it
an extended sacrifice81, thus conferring contingent divinity upon
the king as agent. But this can be hardly said to diminish the
sacral attributes of medieval kings; it seems rather to augment
them.
Two quite different kinds of formulations — the pyramidally
segmentary state and sacral kingship — have been presented here
to provide the basis for a better understanding of the medieval
political system of South India and for a better explanation of

79 Loc. cit..
so Ibid., p. 214.
81 Gonda too (op. cit., p. 15) remarks on Manu's conception of the extended
sacrifice of which kingship is supposed to consist as a necessary condition freeing
the king from asanca, or impurity and the consequent restriction from the perform¬
ance of religious acts.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 281

political evidence from that period. These apparently disparate

formulations are held to comprise a complex, unified conception of
the South Indian states of the time. Neither formulation alone can
be considered adequate even though many scholars might agree that
all medieval Indian states were segmentary and many might also
recognize that the Hindu concepuon of monarchy was essentially
sacred in the sense that kings were created by ritual and maintained
through the moral authority engendered by ritual. The incom¬
pleteness of the former conception stems from obvious differences
between African societies, analyses of which produced the concept
of pyramidal segmentation, and those of India. Crucial here is
the differential importance of clan/lineage organization in African
and Indian varieties as well as differences in the degree of elabora¬
tion, complexity, and pervasiveness of ideas pertaining to kingship
and society in India and Africa. The sacral kingly conception
is not less incomplete, for the means by which India’s sacred kings
actually ruled territories as vast as that of the Chola state can
hardly be fitted to the modest scale implied in the discussions of
those who have, quite rightly, spoken of sacral kingship in India
(i.e., Gonda, Hocart, Heesterman, and Hopkins). It is only as
these formulations of pyramidal segmentation and sacral kingship
are brought together that a single cogent model of state formation
and statecraft can be realized.
The concepts of pyramidal segmentation and sacral kingship both
imply a political system of fluidity and indeterminacy which may
offend our modern notions of states as fixed and certain entities.
Yet, it is precisely the fluid and indeterminate — or what Southall
called the ‘fragile’ — character of medieval Indian states which
most clearly strikes all who study them. Boundaries are often
vague and shifting as are capitals. Gaps and bends in the royal
line frequently occur. Great states are reduced to minor ones
kaleidoscopically. The reach of royal intervention is at times
astonishing as when a great king personally sets aright the ritual
arrangements at some small temple very distant from his capital.
For some scholars, this is evidence not only of a centralized state,
but of one in which the king is its most active agent! Most of the
time, however, the king is not only a distant figure, but one of
such god-like majesty or fierce war-like mien as to make him an
utterly improbable agent for the resolution of minor, local prob¬
lems. A sacred king does possess all of these attributes: he is a
282 Peasant State ami Society in Medieval South India

god; he is a great warrior; he is responsible for order and prosperity

throughout his realm of however great an extent that may be;
he is the personification of divine energy (sakti) which is without
limit. But it is in being all of this that makes for difficulty in grasping
the political system as something other than a stage for the enact¬
ment of a sacred drama.
There are elements of a more fixed and certain nature in the
medieval South Indian state, and they are combined as a state
only in that they are incorporated under a king’s energetic protection
of the world, his realm. In Chola times these elements existed
concretely at the level of the nadu. Here there were villages under
the control of assemblies (urs) of the dominant cultivating groups
of the locality corporately known as nattars; here there were trade
settlements, nagarams under the control of local merchant groups;
here, finally, were chiefs who, from the time of the Pallava king
Nandivarman II, Pallavamalla (a.d. 731-96), were honoured in
royal inscriptions as the protectors of a locality, ‘little kings’ who
were ‘married’ to the nadu realm just as kings were ‘married’ to
their royal realm.
The nadu was not a sealed world, nor was it a seamless one. Most
of the constituent elements within a nadu had connections beyond
its borders which were activated on occasion: the nattar to other
nattar groups with whom, by the twelfth century, they cooperated
on an almost continuous basis as the periyandttdr; merchants of
the nagaram with other locality merchant groups and with the
itinerant merchant groups of the southern peninsula; Brahmans
with other brahmadeyas and with sacred centres; and chiefs with
others like themselves serving in the armies of the kings to defend
the kingdom or to seize booty or to add to the lustre of their king
by wars with other kingdoms. These relationships between nadu
groups and other like groups in other nadus are one significant
aspect of the pyramidal articulation of segments in Chola society,
a massing of an ascending order that reached the royal centre of the
state.
But, equally significant and characteristic of pyramidal segmen¬
tation were the segmental divisions within-each nadu. All of the
elements mentioned above plus the dual division of right and left
lower castes constituted integral units in their own right, and ulti¬
mately, maintaining the integrity of each and all, was the responsi¬
bility of local chiefs and, finally, the king.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 283

Above all else, the two formulations joined together in this

discussion serve to focus attention on the matter of chieftainship.
In Chola historiography, the institution of chieftainship is virtually
ignored, a victim of the centralist-bureaucratic bias of Nilakanta
Sastri and others. Thus, the institution does not appear in the
sections of The Colas devoted to the Chola system of government.
However, in every one of the chapters of this important work,
there are numerous references to houses of chiefs with whom the
Chola kings interacted, at times as enemies, but often as supporters,
in which case chiefs are called ‘officials' or ‘feudatories’. The same
lapse appears in Mahalingam’s South Indian Polity.
Chieftainship of various kinds existed during the Chola period
and later. Some of these were great houses of chiefs which on
occasion produced a warrior leader of such ability as to break
the surface of obscurity to which most such personages are con¬
signed in the inscriptions of the time. In the time of Parantaka I
(a.d. 907-55) the Paluvettaraiyan chiefs' of modern Tiruchirapalli
district attained sufficient prominence to give a bride to the royal
family,82 and during the time of Rajaraja I, descendants of this
line of chiefs built temples in imitation of the Chola king.83 When
Rajendra I faced a serious threat in the conquered regions of
Pandya and Chera'(Kerala) countries in the late years of his reign,
one of his opponents was a chief of Iramkudam.84 Among Rajen-
dra’s most dependable supporters was the Vallavaraiyar chief of
modern Salem district; a nadu there was named after this family.85
And, in the northern portions of the Chola overlordship, in modem
Coorg and Karnataka, two distinguished families of chiefs held sway
as Chola supporters: the Cangavalvas and the Kongavalvas.86
Again, in the time of Kulottunga I, major support to the royal
fortunes came from the Kadava chieftains who claimed connection
with the ancient Pallavas and were centred in modern South
Arcot.87 Finally, in the troubled reigns of Rajadhiraja II and
Kulottunga III, of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,
numerous lines of chiefs are mentioned; indeed, it is the prominence

82 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 187.

83 Ibid., p. 187.
84 Ibid., p. 221.
85 Ibid., p. 226
8<> Ibid., p. 227.
82 Ibid., pp. 349-50.
284 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of these cheiftains at the time, which is seen as having contributed

decisively to the decline of the dynasty.88
Such great chieftains are most often assimilated to Chola polity
as ‘officials’, a term suggesting that these powerful persons owed
their political existences to positions in the Chola government.
But, the evidence presented by Nilakanta Sastri and others
quite belies this. Great chiefs and lesser chiefs, the latter often
designated by the title adigdri (and thus identified by Nilakanta
Sastri as ‘officials of the government’)89 or the title muvendaveldr
(a chief whose family served the three kings: Chola, Chera, and
Pandya) were fully independent local rulers. Nilakanta Sastri
cites a commentary on the twelfth century poem of Ottakuttan,
the Takkayagapparani, regarding the pretentions of chiefs to
entitlement to all of the honours of kingship except the crown
itself.90 He calls this a ‘quaint account’, but it is quite mistaken
to trivialize claims of chiefs of this sort. For such claims to authority
have the same nature as fully royal ones; they derive from the same
ideology of rule.
Chieftains, just as kings during the medieval period of South
Indian history, possessed the attributes of ksatra and dharma.
Ksatra, the power to command and possess resources, inhered in
the chiefs by virtue of their connection with dominant agricultural
groups whose leaders they were. Along with this went political
control within the territory of chiefs and the ability to amass
resources from all within the locality, whether these were in money,
in kind, or in service. Ksatra for chiefs as well as kings was a claim
to resources based upon force; in this case, as with kings, /satra
implied a set of reciprocal relationships—one might say contractual
relationships — between the chief and the various groups within
his realm: in return for protection from the chief, resources were
given. As with kings, so with chiefs, this force became an entitle¬
ment, or was purified, by dharma which meant the pooling of
resources and their redistribution. Dharma was appropriately
claimed and realized through the redistributional nexus within the
territory of the chief; at the centre of this stood the chief. The
clearest and most persistent forms of dharmic activities of great
and minor chiefs were religious. The alienation of income from
ss Ibid., pp. 388, 400-7.
so Ibid., p. 513.
90 Ibid., p. 463.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 285

established agrarian settlements to Brahmans and to temples was

an expression of the dharmic, yajamana, function, and the cere¬
monies which accompanied such grants symbolically enacted
the moral and dharmic unity of the chiefs, territory just as similar
grants and ceremonies involving kings enacted the unity of the
kingdom as a whole.

Ill
Three levels of structure must be identified in the South Indian
segmentary state system. Taking the macro region as a whole during
and shortly after the period of Chola ascendency, the three levels
of structure, or 'zones’, to use Southall’s term, are: the central
zone of the Chola segmentary state, Cholamandalam; three inter¬
mediate zones of which Tondaimandalam and Pandimandalam
were most important, and Naduvil-nadu, less important;91 and
the peripheral zones of Kongu and Gangavadi. Each of these
zones, in turn, can be further differentiated into central, inter¬
mediate, and peripheral areas according to the types of nadus which
are found, as already suggested in Chapter III. (See Map VII-1.)
Chola country in the Kaveri basin, the central zone of the Chola
segmentary state, was called, Cholanadu, until the early eleventh
century when Rajaraja I adopted the designation mandalam for
this territory as well as for other major zones of the Chola state.92
At about the same time, Tondainadu became Jayankondachola-
mandalam and Pandinadu became Rajarajamandalam. Bounded
by the northern and southern Vellaru rivers according to references
in Classical works as well as those of the Chola period, the core of
Chola country was the Kaveri river along its east-west traverse
to the sea. Where the Kaveri changes from its north-south course
to its east-west graded movement to the sea, to the west of what
was called mahi-nadu, Kongu country began.93
Prior to about a.d. 1000, inscriptions refer to 'eighteen’ establish¬
ed localities (nadus) comprising Cholanadu. These were concentra¬
ted in the riverine core area of the territory, the northern, central

91 Other names for this territory are nadu-nddu and naduvu-nadu.

92 The earliest reference to cdlamandcdam came in a.d. 1009; A R E.. 1922, no.22.
93 K. Vaidyanathan. ‘Ancient Geographical Divisions of Tamil Nadu", op. cit.,
p. 234; also his, 'Mala-Nadu', QJMS (Culture and Heritage Number), pp. 225-60.
286 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

and western portions of modern Tanjavur district, and are referred

to in inscriptions of the ninth and tenth centuries with the indication
that they were either on the north bank of the Kaveri or the south
bank (vadakarai or tenkarai). To this perhaps conventionally
designated ancient core were added about 120 more nadus be¬
longing to Chola country by a.d. 1300. As argued above, these
additional localities represent not newly established areas of
settlement in most cases, but more probably the inclusion of
previously settled places under the expanding overlordship of the
Cholas.94 By the fourteenth century, there were well over a thou¬
sand villages in this overall territory of some 8500 square miles
whose deltaic core comprised about 3000 square miles.95
The deltaic portion of Cholamandalam can be designated the
central area of the central domain of the Chola segmentary state.
It was here that the power of the kings from Rajaraja I to Kulot-
tunga I was concentrated; this was their nadu; they were the leaders
of its natiar. Curiously, however, it is difficult to locate the seat
of Chola power within this deltaic core. Vijayalaya, the founder
of the great Chola line, established Tanjavur (then, Tanjapuri)
as his capital in the middle of the ninth century, and this continued
to be the fortified centre of the Chola overlords through the time
of Rajaraja I. Rajendra I shifted the capital to Gangaikondachola-
puram on the northern bank of the Kollidam, about thirty-five
miles north-west of Rajaraja’s capital. In both cases, the selection
of the major centre of government may have been in part dictated
by strategic considerations related to the protection of the riverine
source of wealth to all of the central zone. Two other places also
appear to have been especially important for the Cholas. One was
near the western fringe of the old delta, Uraiyur (near modern

94 Subbarayalu lists the earliest nadus as the following: Arvalakurram (Man-

nargudi taluk, Tanjavur), Avur-k. (Kumbakonam/Papanasam t.). Ingan-nadu
(Nannilam/Tanjavur t.), Innambar-n. (Kumbakonam/Papanasam t.), Kilar-k.
(Papanasam/Tanjavur t.), Kulamangalam-n. (Alangudi Kalattur t ), Manni-n.
(Kumbakonam t.), Pambuni-k. (Mannargudi t.), Panaiyur-n. (Nannilam t.),
Poygai-n. (Tanjavur and Lalgudi/Udaiyarpalam t., Tiruchirapalli), Poyyil-k.
(Tanjavur t.), Purangarembui-n. (Mannargudi t.), Tirunaraiyur-n. (Kumbakonam
t.), Tiruvali-n. (Shiyali t.), Tiruvalandur-n. (Mayuram. t.), Tiruarur-k. (Nagapat-
tanam t.), Tiruvindalur-n. (Mayuram t.), Uraiyur-k (Tiruchirapalli/Kulittalai
t.); p. 18, (Appendix 1).
95 Ibid., p. 31.
VII-1 The Chola Macro Region c. a.d. 1300
 The Chola Stale and the Agrarian Order 287

Tiruchirapalli), from whence the Cholas apparently originated.96

The other was the trade centre of Nagapatanam on the sea.
These capitals and major centres at the fringes of the core of the
river basin suggest that the core region was well developed by the
tenth century and that the perceived task of the Cholas was to
protect the basin from its most dangerous enemies, such as the
Muttaraiyar chiefs, who had previously held the central core,
and the allies of the latter, the Pandyas, to the south. From the
locations of the Chola capitals, protection was more important
than the fostering of settlement and development of the region.
From such fringe positions, it is difficult to see the Cholas as
managers of a ‘Byzantine monarchy’! What is more in evidence
in this central area of the Chola state is a kingship established upon
firm bonds with existing locality leaders of the rich lands of the
inner core — the deltaic fan — and, maintaining a network of
ritual allegiances to fortify their military power. It is important
to note that no apparent ancient sacredness attached to the Tanja-
puri site of Rajaraja’s great shrine, Rajarajesvaram, nor that of
Rajendra’s royal shrine at Gangaikondacholapuram. The shrines
were not for the shelter and honour of ancient gods of these places,
but were symbols of royal power. The key to Chola authority
within their central domain being military power, another factor
in the location of the Chola capitals was to facilitate better control
over the intermediate area adjoining the central area of the central
domain.
The largest part of the Kaveri basin, about 5000 square miles,
comprised the intermediate and peripheral areas of the central
domain of the Cholas. The intermediate area included the large,
relatively sparsely populated, nadus of the western part of the
Kaveri where the river bends toward the sea and close to where
Kongu country begins. This intermediate area extended eastward,
toward the sea along the north bank of the Kaveri to where rough
terrain begins (the Kollimalai and Panchaimalai hills) and along
the southern bank to a depth of about fifteen miles where rugged
country is again encountered. The southern peripheral area of the
central zone was known as Konadu, Jayansingakula-valanadu,
and Rajaraja-valanadu which formed part of the modern Puduk-
kottai state whose core was the southern Vellaru river, the tradi¬
tional southern boundary of Chola country. To the north of the

96 Nilakant3 Sastri. The Colas, p. 110.

288 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Kaveri, the area between the Kollidam and the northern Vellaru
rivers constituted another peripheral area of Chola country.
Naduvil-nadu, beyond the northern Vellaru and west of the narrow
coastal plain at this point, may thus be considered an independent
zone between Chola and Tondai countries.
Chola control over the Kaveri core began with the founder’s
— Vijayalaya — displacement of the Muttaraiyar chiefs from
Tanjapuri and his successful defence against the Pandyan leader
Varagunavarman. Aditya Chola, who succeeded Vijayalaya and
ruled from a.d. 871-907, was similarly successful against the Pallava
overlord Aparajita who sought to re-establish an earlier Pallava
overlordship in the Kaveri. It is to be recognized that the Pallavas
were the first South Indian dynasty to establish a kingship incor¬
porating the many locality chieftainships of the macro region and
to use ritual authority as the basis of their authority. But, outside
the Pallava heartland of Tondaimandalam, this accomplishment
was short-lived, soon to be displaced by the Kaveri-based Cholas.
The Pallavas having been repulsed from the Kaveri, Aditya
even succeeded in securing a Chola foothold in Tondaimandalam
by a.d. 890 as well as in Kongu country by the end of his reign.97
Parantaka I, in the first half of the tenth century, pressed the Chola
hegemony in several directions. In a series of raids into Pandya
country, the Cholas established what was to be a long and difficult
presence in the southern peninsula and Sri Lanka. Chola warriors
also raided and subordinated some of the great and ancient chiefs
on the northern fringe of Tondaimandalam. In these military
activities, Parantaka had the collaboration of other chiefs formerly
under Pandyan overlordship, especially the Irukkuvels of Kodum-
balur in Konadu, whose territory on the southern Vellaru sat
uneasily between Pandya and Chola countries. Such chieftains
allied to the Cholas gained in their association with Chola expansion.
The Konadu chiefs, for example, established themselves as almost
independent kings in Kongu for several centuries.98 Other ancient
families of chiefs — Banas and Vaidambas in northern Tondai¬
mandalam — who had recognized the overlordship of the Rashtra-
kutas of the Bombay-Karnatak, were sharply reduced in influence.
Rashtrakuta power, under Krishna III, brought an end to this

91 Ibid., pp. 112-13.

98 E.I., v. 30, no.19, ‘Seven vatteluttu Inscriptions from the Kongu Country', ed.
K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, pp. 95-112.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 289

phase of Chola expansion. Krishna’s inscriptions in Tondai-

mandalam for almost thirty-five years — a.d. 945-70 — are elo¬
quent testimony of the resistence to the Chola bid to replace Pallava
influence in the central Tamil plain.99 Under Rajaraja I, the issue
of whether the central and northern Tamil plain was to be a peri¬
pheral zone of Rashtrakuta (or Deccan) influence, through the
intermediate zone of Gangavadi under the agency of Ganga chiefs
like Butaga, or an intermediate zone of Kaveri influence was
finally settled in favour of the Cholas.100 Notwithstanding the
setback of Chola power of Tondaimandalam by Krishna III, the
decisive sign of Chola influence in the central and northern Tamil
plain — the first of such influence by them — came in the time
of Parantaka I. His inscriptions relating to the autonomy of
brahmadeyas in Tondaimandalam both date and help to define
this important part of the Chola segmentary state.
Tondaimandalam and Pandimandalam were the two inter¬
mediate zones of the Chola state. Each possessed its own central
area: the Palar basin with Kanchi, the Vaigai basin with Madurai;
in each there was an established tradition of kingship, and, in the
case of the Pandyas, one as ancient as that of the Chola. Each of
these intermediate zones of the Chola state also had its own inter¬
mediate and peripheral areas with distinctive qualities of their own.
Except for Sathianathaier,101 none who have written on the
Chola period have adequately recognized the extent of the dif¬
ferences between Cholamandalam and Tondaimandalam in the
time of the great Cholas. It is not necessary to accept his argument
that the distinctiveness of Tondaimandalam derived from its having
been included in the empire of Ashoka, for he does not, and cannot,
suggest why that, if true, might have been important. However,
the significance that he attributes to the fact that Buddhism had a
longer life in Tondaimandalam than elsewhere in the Tamil plain
appears more cogent.102 These pre-Pallavan developments are
difficult to assess. But, with the establishment of Pallava power
at Kanchi, the distinctiveness of Tondaimandalam emerges
clearly. According to Sathianathaier, the Pallavas of Kanchi were

99 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Sketches of the Ancient Dekhan, i, pp. 55, 226-31.
100 Ibid., p. 54.
101 R. Sathianathaier, Studies in the Ancient History of Tondamandalam.
102 Ibid., pp. 1-26.
290 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

responsible for the establishment of brahmadeyas, those large,

populous settlements under the regulation of an assembly of
Brahmans (mahdsabha). It is his contention that this institution
to which he attributes great importance in the determination
of the quality of Pallavan culture — was first developed in Tondai-
mandalam and that during Pallava times, the eighth to the tenth
centuries, most of the records of mahasabhas come from villages
in Tondaimandalam.103 The late eighth century records of Danti-
varman Pallava, both Sathianathaier and Nilakanta Sastri agree,
show the first development of the committee (variyam) system
which was characteristic of the governance system of these villages
in the Chola period.
Whether, as Sathianathaier asserts, the classical brahmadeya
was first developed in Tondaimandalam, or whether the develop¬
ment of brahmadeyas occurred at the same time in both the central
and southern parts of the Tamil plain, perhaps even in Venadu
(modern Kerala), it is clear that Tondaimandalam was a major
region for the concentration of these institutions. In contrast to
both Cholamandalam and Tondaimandalam in which there are a
large number of brahmadeya inscriptions dating from the ninth
to the fourteenth centuries, the other parts of the Tamil region
provided many fewer.104 This analysis of Sathianathaier is based
upon fifty brahmadeyas which yield four or more mahasabha
inscriptions for the five centuries as of about 1940. MapIV-1 locates
brahmadeyas mentioned in one or more inscriptions and covers
the period of epigraphic activity to the middle 1960s. This map
shows a markedly different pattern from that discovered by Sathia¬
nathaier; more than three times as many brahmadeyas are located
in Chola country than in Tondaimandalam.105 Since the problems
of locating with certainty those modern villages which were pre¬
viously Brahman centres are no greater in one of the plains regions

103 Ibid., p. 27. He notes seventeen places where mahasabha inscriptions of the
Pallavas have been discovered. Of these seven were in Chingleput, six in North
Arcot and Chittoor, one from Tanjavur, one from South Arcot, and two from Tiru-
chirapalli.
104 Sathianathaier’s totals for the period are: Tondaimandalam, 307; Chola¬
mandalam, 300; Pandyamandalam, 25; Kongumandalam, 14; total, 646.
105 Cholamandalam (Tanjavur, Tiruchirapalli, and the Chidambaram taluk of
South Arcot): 223; Tondaimandalam (Chittoor, Chingleput, North Arcot, and
most of South Arcot): 83; Pandyamandalam (Madurai and Tirunelvelli): 42;
Kongumandalam: 9.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 291

than the other, it is necessary to conclude that Sathianathaier’s

notion about the primacy of Tondaimandalam in relation to these
settlements is incorrect, or, at least, questionable.
Other issues raised by him to account for the alleged primacy
of Tondaimandalam in the matter of the distinctive Brahman
village are less easily evaluated. The seventh century Chinese
Buddhist pilgrim Hsiian Tsang is read by Sathianathaier to indicate
that Buddhist institutions continued to survive, if not to thrive,
in the central Tamil plain after they had declined in the Kistna-
Godavari and Kaveri deltas and elsewhere.106 Also, Hsiian Tsang
is understood to suggest that there was at Kanchi as great a centre
of Buddhist learning as at Nalanda. Jaina learned men are also
reported to have been important here. Noting that the Pallava
records of the middle of the ninth century from Bahur (modem
Pondicherry) refer to centres of higher Brahmanical learning
(vidyasthanas), Sathianathaier is led to conclude that the factors
responsible for Buddhist survivals in Tondaimandalam also
account for later ‘local self-government and . . . higher educa¬
tion’.107 Thus, he argues that the significance of Brahman centres
in Tondaimandalam, committed to learning as well as to the
propagation of resurgent Vedic religion, were a direct outgrowth
of the previous importance of Buddhist and Jaina intellectual
and religious activities against which the subsequent enthusiastic
sponsorship of Brahmanical learning and religion by the Pallavas
of the Simhavishnu line were directed.
Difficult though it may be to assess these factors presumed to be
important in explaining the alleged primacy of Tondaimandalam
in the provenance and the number of brahmadeyas, one must agree
with Sathianathaier — and all historians do — that this institution
was of the greatest importance in the preservation and dissemination
of Brahmanical knowledge and religion. One must, moreover,
agree that Tondaimandalam saw the early, if not the earliest,
development of this institution, though it is not the case that the
number of brahmadeyas in Tondaimandalam and Cholamandalam
was so nearly equal as Sathianathaier argues. The concentration
of Brahmans and those settlements which they controlled appears
to have been much greater in the Kaveri core than in the central
plain. Moreover, if it is granted, as an explanation of the signifi¬

es Ibid., pp. 23-6.

‘07 Ibid., pp. 26, 50-1.
292 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

cance of hrahmadeyas there, that the persistence of Buddhist and

Jaina influence in Tondaimandalam was greater than elsewhere,
we have no way of ascertaining why this should have been so. Why
did Buddhism and Jainism flourish in Tondaimandalam for a
longer lime?
The answers suggested are not final. One factor in the persistence
of 'heterodox’ faiths was the city of Kanchi. As a major trade
centre strategically sited on the principal route between the tw'o
deltaic regions of the Kistna-Godavari and Kaveri population
centres, with good access to the interior upland behind the plain
as well as an opening to sea-born coastal and long-distance trade,
Kanchi is recorded in early Chinese sources. Trade centres near
Kanchi (e.g. Markanam) are also mentioned in the Perip/us.l0S
This evidence of the ancient economic significance of Kanchi is
bolstered by what may have been an important association of
artisan-traders with the place. In later times, Kanchi was a prime
centre of artisans of the left-hand castes (idangai).109 Oppert and
Mclean, writing in the late nineteenth century believed that the
left-hand division of castes at Kanchi harked back to an ancient
association of these merchants and craftsmen with Jainism in
a manner similar to the association of merchants with Buddhism.110
Another factor which must be considered is that even beyond the
support of Buddhism and Jainism by merchants and artisans —
a pan-Indian phenomenon of antiquity — there is reason to
suppose that these two faiths may have enjoyed wide, general accep¬
tance among peasant folk of the Palar-Cheyaru basin core of the
Kanchi region. This is suggested by the facts that relatively few
Saivite bhakti hymnists (nayanars) are identified with Tondaiman¬
dalam and that there are relatively few sites sacred to these hymnists
in this area as compared to the Kaveri. Of the sixty-three Saivite
saints traditionally honoured (assimilating the Jaina conception
of sixty-three 'great souls’), only six were of Tondaimandalam as

108 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Foreign Notices .... pp. 4, 45 from Pan Kuo of the
first century a.d.; ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei’ (in R.C. Majumdar, The Classical
Accounts of India, Calcutta, 1960, p. 307) where three ports on this section of the
Coromandel coast are named: Camara, Poduca and Sopatma
109 Maclean, Manual of Madras Administration, v. 3, p. 1037.
110 Maclean, ibid., and G. Oppert ( Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa . . .
p. 62), who notes that at the temple centre of Melkote, there was a special hall and
other facilities for castes of the left-hand
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 293

against most of the rest who were of the Kaveri area.111 Moreover,
of the 279 sacred places referred to in the Saivite hymns, Devdram,
260 can be located in South India and Sri Lanka, and of these the
largest number, over 200, were in Cholamandalam. The distribu¬
tion of Vaishnava hymnists is less strikingly biased in favour of
the Kaveri. Five of the ten alvars appear to have come from Tondai-
mandalam, though only twenty-two of the 108 sacred places of the
Vaishnavas (tirupatis) are in Tondaimandalam.112
The disparity in the sacredness associated with Tondaimandalam,
in contrast to Cholamandalam in the hagiography of South Indian
bhakti Hinduism, may perhaps be explained in many ways. Among
the explanations, however, is that Buddhism and Jainism had
established a position of primacy among peasant folk as well as
townsmen in the central Tamil plain.
In the Kaveri, by contrast, the form of Aryan religion which
had come to be most valued by peasant folk was that devoted
to Vedic gods, and this provided a more receptive context for the
devotional hymns of the devotees of the Puranic gods Siva and
Vishnu. This may account, too, for the choice of the great teacher
Sankaracharya of Kanchi as the site for one of his centres (mathas)
for the dissemination of Advaita Vedanta. If the tradition of the
origin of the Sankaracharya matha is accepted, then one explanation
of this eighth century decision was to mount an attack upon Bud¬
dhism and Jainism in the very centre of their strength, Kanchi.
If that was its purpose, it was surely successful, for all overt vestiges
of these religions have long been expunged from Kanchi. In
addition, according to some Saivite traditions, the powerful
female deity, Kamakshi, was transformed by the piety of Sankara

111 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches of the Ancient Dekhan, v. 1,

p. 9, note no.3.
112 George W. Spencer, The Sacred Geography of the Tamil Shaivite Hymns’,
NUMEN; International Review of the History of Religion, v. 17 (December 1970),
pp. 236-7. Spencer lists thirteen sites in South Arcot district of which most, if not
all, can be included in Chola country. In addition Tanjavur had 160 and Tiruchira-
palli district had eighteen. Also see: K.V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, Historical Sketches
of the Ancient Dekhan. v. 1, p. 9, note 4 and P.V. Jagdisa Ayyar, op. cit., pp. 221-30.
Nilakanta Sastri has argued that the first four Vaishnava saints, all of Tondai¬
mandalam (viz., Poygai, Puclam, Pey and Tirumalisai), were ‘waifs and strays',
that is, of low birth, thus strengthening the difference between the Kaveri, where
Saivite .devotees came from all castes, and Tondaimandalam, where the first four
were of apparently very low status; (‘Vaishnavism and the early Alvars’, T.A.S.S.I
Silver Jubilee Volume, 1962, pp. 123-4).
294 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to a benign, hhakti deity providing Kanchi, and Tondaimandalam

in general, with what has continued to be its most popular devotional
deity.113
Existing evidence scarcely permits a final choice of explanations
for the distinctions between Tondaimandalam and Cholamandalam
in the matter of religion, but the differences in the two regions with
respect to religion appear quite clear. The durability of Buddhism
and Jainism in the central plain may indeed have been an important
factor in the proliferation of prestigious Brahman settlements as
suggested by Sathianathaier.
But the most significant reason for the emergence of Tondai¬
mandalam as an intermediate zone of the Chola segmentary state
was the impressive kingship and state established by the Pallavas.
From Simhavishnu in the late sixth century to Nandivarman II,
Pallavamalla, in about the middle of the eighth century, a line of
powerful warriors secured an effective overlordship in Tondai¬
mandalam and southward into the Kaveri and Vaigai basins.
Cholas and Pandyas were compelled to recognize the Pallava hege¬
mony, as were those chiefs north and west toward the Deccan
strength of the Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas. After the middle of
the eighth century, Pallava control was weakened, and for the
next 150 years the Pallavas were linked, perhaps subordinate^,
to warriors of southern Karnataka, the Gangas. This vestigal
Pallava overlordship was finally ended in the early years of the
tenth century when the Pallava Aparajita was conquered by Aditya
Chola I.
The broad outlines of the Pallava state are too well-known to
require reiteration here. It is sufficient merely to speak of the
evidence of a powerful kingship and a network of political loyalities
in most of Tondaimandalam and, for a time, much of the Coro¬
mandel plain. The Pallava state was a more impressive state than
any previous one in the macro region. Beyond politics, one notes
its participation in the revival of Hindu institutions to a place of
dominance after the long ascendancy of Buddhism and Jainism;
its monumental architectural accomplishments in Kanchi, Maha-
balipuram and elsewhere which permanently influenced the forms
of temple structures in South India and beyond; its participation in
the agricultural development of Tondaimandalam which made of

113 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer. Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 1, p. 14.

 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 295

the central Tamil plain the significant secondary core of peasant

agrarian organization in the macro region from that time. The
primary question which arises from these accomplishments between
the sixth and ninth centuries is why Tondaimandalam did not be¬
come the central domain of a state encompassing the entire plain
from the Kistna-Godavari delta to the tip of the peninsula, Kanya
Kumari. The essential answer to this question would appear to
involve three factors: (1) the fact of an ancient, indigenous Chola
kingship in the Kaveri basin; (2) the superior population and
wealth of the Kaveri and (3) the special importance of that area
for the hymnists of devotional Saivism. These were surely signifi¬
cant in the long run, but still leave unclear more proximate reasons.
For a brief time in the early seventh century, as already noticed,
the Pallavas did in fact achieve widespread dominion in the macro
region. Simhavishnu (c. a.d. 574-600) having first cleared the
plain of the ‘Kalabhras’, thus ending that perceived menace,
successfully campaigned against the Cholas, then a power of
little consequence, and against the more formidable Pandyas of
Madurai. He and his successor Mahendravarman I (c. a.d. 600-
630) also pressed their authority northward, perhaps to the Kistna-
Godavari. However, by the end of Mahendravarman’s reign,
Pallava power had reached its peak. Mahendra was a king whom
history has remembered with much admiration for his building
at Mahaballipuram and Kanchi, his conversion from Jainism by
the hymnist saint Appar (himself a convert to Saivism from Jainism)
and his repute as a poet and musician. Mahendra’s successors
could do little more than to protect the wealth of the central plain
from the raids of their long-standing enemies of the Deccan, the
Chalukyas of Badami. Later Pallavas were only partially successful
in this effort, for the Chalukya Vikramaditya II (a.d. 733-744)
is said to have taken and looted Kanchi three times, a testimony to
the wealth which Tondaimandalam had come to possess and
its attraction for military adventurers of the age. To this may be
added the succession problems of the Pallavas which produced a
break in the main line with Nandivarman II, or Pallavamalla.
Nandivarman II was almost certainly a usurper of the Pallava
throne,114 one who may have come from a distant place, perhaps
even from South-east Asia as some scholars have suggested.115

U4 Ibid., v. 1, p. 135 and Nilakanta Sastri, HSI,, p. 148.

us T.N. Subramaniam, The Pallavas of Kanchi and South-east Asia, The Swadesa-

t
296 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

But, more important than his usurpation — though perhaps a

result of that act — the Pallava kingship aitered its expression of
authority and sovereignty in fundamental ways. No longer were
Pallava kings referred to as the descendants of kings whose rule
was legitimated by reference to founders who performed Vedic
sacrifices, but rather on the basis of being the source of dcina,
gifts, to Brahmans and to gods. Though this is a shift in the language
of royal authority, Pallava kingship was certainly no less sacral
than it had been. The king was still the anointed ruler whose
military prowess was overwhelming and was purified by the maha-
hhiseka as depicted in the panels sculpted upon the walls of the
Vaikunthaperumal temple in Kanchi.116 But, thence-forward,
Pallava kings present themselves as munificent yajamdnas, centres
of a redistributional system of resources which encompassed the
world, their realm.
As significant as this change in the expression of royal authority
was a change in the conception of the king's sovereignty in which
great local chieftains attained a status of generous dominion only
slightly less than the king’s. This was achieved in the references
in inscriptional prasastis to the vijhapti, or petitioner of grants
from the kings. In Pallava inscriptions earlier than Nandivarman
II, a dominant figure in inscriptions recording grants to Brahmans
and to gods was the ajhapti, or executor of royal gifts, usually a
warrior companion of the king. Records of the time of Nandi¬
varman and his successors make no reference to this ajhapti,
but give great attention to the petitioner of a grant who, in all
cases, is presented as a powerful local chieftain. These records
portray this local personage as one who not only confers wealth
which is his own, within the scope of his ksatra, but following
an established form of subordination to regal power seeks the
assent of the king for his grant. Moreover, the portion of the
record praising the liberality of the local petitioning chieftain
was not much less elaborate in praise of him than verses that
praised the reigning king.
An unpublished paper of Nicholas Dirks117 provides a partial

mitran Ltd.. Madras, 1967, pp. 81-95.

1 lhC. Minakshi, 'The Historical Sculptures of the Vaikunthaperumal Temple.
KancV, Memoires of the Archaeological Survey of India, no.63. Manager of Publica¬
tions, Delhi, 1941.
117 ‘Political Systems in Ancient South India’. February, 1974, Department of
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 297

basis for the preceding discussion of changes in the expression

of Pallava authority and sovereignty. It is argued there that the
broadened conception of sovereignty represented by the more
conspicuous place of local chiefs as king-like prestators was forced
upon the Pallava kings by the exigent pressure of its enemies from
beyond Tondaimandalam. Such pressures cannot be discounted
of course, but what is more persuasively shown by Dirk’s analysis
and the work of others is the broad acceptance of the Pallava
kingship as the focus of loyalty and participation by the great
chiefs of Tondaimandalam; that is, as a proper regional kingship
co-equal with any of the macro region. From the late eighth
century onwards, Pallava kings using established ritual formulas—
of which the inscriptional prasasti is one element — succeeded in
incorporating the established prestige of regional chieftainships;
it is upon such incorporation that kingship depended.
But their kingship was substantially restricted to this area
owing to the almost constant pressure of predatory raids of the
Chalukyas and their allies, the Gangas, from the north, and the
Pandyas and their allies, the Sinhalese, from the south. In all
of this, Chola country was reduced to the political ignominy of a
shatter zone over which Pallava and Pandyan soldiers moved
even as the sacred character of the Chola country was being etched
by the hymnist devotees of Siva and Vishnu. All that we see of
Cholas at this time is a line of warriors in the dry country north
of Tondaimandalam (modern Cuddapah, Kurnool, and Bellary)
who called themselves Chola (or Choda) in inscriptions; they are
reported by Hsiian Tsang as ruling in these northern parts. Of
the Uraiyur Cholas nothing is known.118
Pandyas, not Cholas, were the great contenders with the Pallavas
for power in the southern peninsula prior to Vijayalaya Choja;
later, during the period of Chola ascendency, Pandyan territory
in the modern districts of Madurai and Tirunelveli, along with
Tondaimandalam, constituted the second, major intermediate
zone of the Chola segmentary state. Pandya country shared with
Chola country a regal tradition in classical antiquity which Tondai¬
mandalam and the Pallavas did not. Beginning with the obscure
Pandya Kadungon (c. a.d. 590-620), a line of warriors began their

History, University of Chicago.

118 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches oj Ancient Dekhan. v. 1, pp.
112-13. Epigraphists refer to Telugu Chodas.
298 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

kingly rise at the same time as the line of Pallava Simhavishnu.

As in the case of most Indian dynasties — south and north — the
origin and early successes of the early rulers are known from a
few inscriptions. The Pandyan line is reconstructed from four
sets of copperplates of the late eighth and tenth centuries.119
These plates set forth mythic and real genealogical details and a
record of the peoples against whom the ruling lineage first contended
to establish their authority in the territory which became their
central domain — the Vaigai basin for the Pandyas — and then
those peoples arid territories over which an overlordship was
extended.
The earliest Pandyan warriors mentioned in these inscriptions
are the same as those named in some of the Classical poems (e.g.,
the Purananuru) and refer to kings whom the poems show to have
been great warriors and supporters of Brahmans and Vedic sacri¬
fices (yagas) including the rajasuya and asvamedha. From the
account of the ubiquitous Hsiian Tsang, the inference can be
drawn that the central domain of the Pandyas, in the seventh
century at least, was probably a land of poor agriculture owing
to the salinity of its soil, though its people were avid traders.120
This conforms reasonably well with references to the Vaigai region
in Classical works and suggests that the interest of Pandyan warriors
in the Kaveri to the north, which they came to dominate in the
early ninth century, displacing the short-lived Pallava overlordship
there, may have been prompted by the rich food resources of the
western Kaveri delta.121 As in the case of the Pallavas, one of the
early rulers was spectacularly converted from Jainism. The
Pandyan Arikesari Maravarman of the late seventh century is
said to have been won to the Saivite faith by the saint, Jnanasam-
bandar.122 Finally, the Pandyan connection with Lanka from the
ninth century provides yet another sign of the energetic and ag¬
gressive propensities of these rulers to strengthen the base of their
political operations. Beginning with Srimara Srivallabha in the

119 Discussed conveniently in ibid., pp. 99 ff: the late eighth century ‘Madras
Museum Plates of Jatilavarman'; the 'Velvikudi Plates of Nedunjadayan'; the
‘Smaller Sinnamanur Plates'; and the tenth century ‘Larger Sinnamanur Plates'.
120 Ibid., p. 120 where Hsiian Tsang's ‘Malakuta' is identified as milai-kurram.
121 Ibid., p. 115.
122 The dates of this ruler are given by Subrahmanya Ayyar. ibid., p. 127, as a.d.
650-80 and by Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 165, as a.d. 670-700.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 299

early ninth century and continuing through the time of Varaguna-

varman (a.d. 862-880),123 Pandyans were actively involved in
Lanka politics not simply as predators, but seemingly seeking
a durable connection with it. Here again, the sea is to be seen not
as a barrier, but as a route of opportunity no more hazardous
than the tracts of desolate country vhich bordered other important
population cores of the peninsula.
Unlike the Tondaimandalam intermediate zone of the Chola
segmentary state, Pandya country proved a difficult place for the
Chola overlords. Again and again the country lying south of the
Kaveri required punitive expeditions against would-be restorers
of Pandyan kingship. Indeed, so implacable was the resistance
to Chola rule that the policy of Rajendra I to directly rule modern
Madurai and Tirunelveli through a viceroy could not be sustained
later. Parantaka I invaded Pandya country three times between
a.d. 907 and 953, and though he claimed the title madiraikonda
(‘who took Madurai’) and, after his third incursion, the title
madiraiyum-Tlamum-konda (‘who took Madurai and Lanka’),
assertions of a separate kingship by warriors of the southern country
continued. Throughout the Chola period, Pandyan warriors,
often in alliance with warriors of Lanka, challenged the Chola
claims to hegemony in the relatively well-settled core regions of
the Vaigai and Tambraparni (Ambasamudram). In the more
desolate parts of the southern country the Chola overlordship was
often non-existent. Rajaraja I in a.d. 995 made the reconquest of
Pandya country one his first great ventures outside of Chola country,
renaming it, rajaraja-pandinadu. Under Rajendra I, resistance
to the Chola overlords resulted in the short-lived viceregal arrange¬
ment, but this was to no avail.124
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Chola power
waned, a series of Pandyan warriors, notably one Kulasekhara,
had free rein over Lanka and constituted a major source of molesta¬
tion there according to the Lanka chronicle, the Mahavamsa.125
He and others also pressed claims to overlordship of the northern
parts of the macro region as well, and under Maravarman Sundara
Pandya I (a.d. 1216-27) and Jatavarman Sundara Pandya II (a.d.

123 Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 165.

124 Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 1, pp. 143-
55; Nilakanta Sastri, The Pandyan Kingdom, pp. 100 ft'.
125 Subrahmanya Aiyer, Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 1, pp. 155-60.
300 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

1227-51), Pandyan power became supreme in the southern penin¬

sula, looting and extracting homage from warriors in southern
Chola country, Tondaimandalam, and the Hoysalas of Gangavadi
and Kongu.126 This century of Pandyan expansion was brought
to an end by the invasion of Muslims in a.d. 1310.
Pandya country differed from Tondaimandalam in the continuous
resistance of its chiefs to an overlordship of the Cholas. One factor
in this resistance was that Pandyans shared with the Cholas an
ancient tradition of kingship. Yet, the development of institutions
in this southern portion of Tamil country were similar to those
of the central plain. In Pandya country, as in Tondaimandalam,
there came to be large tracts of fertile land under the control of a
peasantry which called itself ‘Vellala’ and which shared a mythic
origin as well as the pretension to ritual parity with the dominant
peasantry of the Kaveri and the central plain. Here, too, there
were brahmadeyas established with the ceremonial collaboration
of such peasant groups and their chiefs and dedicated to the same
Brahmanical learning as elsewhere. These Brahman villages,
as shown on Map IV-1, are concentrated in the river basins of the
southern peninsula at Ambasamudram, where ten can be located,
and at Tiruchchendur, Tirunelveli, Nanguneri, Srivaikuntam,
Sankaranainarkoil, Kovilpatti, Tenkasi, and Srivilliputtur. Around
Madurai, there were brahmadeyas at Periyakulam, Madurai itself,
Nilakkottai (in Dindigal taluk of the nineteenth century), and
Palni. These latter were in the western portions of modern Madurai
district which constituted a fertile catchment area for run-off
from the hill boundaries of the district. Many of these villages
date from the Chola period, some are earlier, and many were
formed during the heroic days of Pandyan expansion in the
thirteenth century when a large number of peasant villages were
brought together to form great settlements under the supervision of
a mahasabha. Finally, in Pandya country, as in Tondaimandalam,
and in Chola country itself, there were substantial tracts of inferior
land, unimproved by irrigation and generally hazardous to man
and beast alike where there lived people whose culture and society
and predatory ways were such as to make their territories marginal
to each zone as a whole.
In Pandya country, as in Chola country, the names of the inhabi-

126 Ibid., pp. 164-71 and Nilakanta Sastri, The Pandyan Kingdom, pp. 122ff.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 301

tants of such marginal or peripheral tracts were Maravar and

Kallar; in Tondaimandalam, such groups were more diverse,
including Telugu and Kannada speakers in the northern parts
of Tondaimandalam and, in the southern parts, Tamil-speaking
Pallis (who also were important in the western parts of Naduvil-
nadu). These folk were but intermittently linked to the normative
order over which the Brahmans occupied an important place and
where the landed people, closely tied to Brahmans, exercised major
dominance under chiefs who recognized the overlordship of the
Chola kings. Some accommodation of these often fierce, clan-like
folk was made by the peasantry and chiefs of the central domain
of the Cholas and those of the intermediate zones of Pandimanda-
lam and Tondaimandalam, but in the main, peripheral areas can
be so designated because they were physically removed from the
core cultures of the zones proper. Thus, while these isolated tracts
or peripheral areas were considered a part of the central and inter¬
mediate zones and though they were in regular contact with the
major tracts of established peasant society and culture, these isolated
places developed distinctive characteristics of their own.
Much of modern Ramnad comprised a peripheral area within
the intermediate Pandya zone of the Chola segmentary state.
Most of this area was palai according to the tinai classification of
the Classical poetry. It was a land so poorly endowed by nature
as to preclude large populations and reliable agriculture. During
medieval times, three kinds of folk can be identified there, and the
interaction among the three provided for a distinctive social,
political, and economic configuration. The three peoples were:
Maravars, a militarily capable, clan-organized people who did
not fully acquire peasant culture until the nineteenth century when
irrigation provided a margin of security to the hazardous agriculture
of the region; a sizable community of fisher-folk along the some¬
what sheltered coast of the Palk Strait; and a vigorous trading
people, the Nattukkottai Chettis, who date their immigration into
the Tiruppattur and Devakottai divisions of modern Sivaganga
and Ramnad from Chola times.127 During the late Chola period
and the time of Pandyan expansion of the thirteenth century, this
part of the southern peninsula was rarely graced by temples and
127 Thurston, Castes and Tribes, v. 5, pp. 250-2. This claim to ancient residence
is reportedly denied by other trading groups of this region.
302 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

inscriptions, and obviously stood apart from the dominant culture

zones to the west, though tenuously connected by trade and some
interaction. The Nattukkottai Chettis, in recent times a prosperous
trading and money-lending community in the southern peninsula
and in South-east Asia, apparently began their trade activities
as carriers and traders of salt. An early name for these traders
was Uppu (meaning ‘salt’ in Tamil) Chettis.128
Maravars had an early ethnic identity in Classical works where
they are depicted as personifications of the harsh and forbidding
pdlai. Throughout the medieval period, these were a people apart
though they were never reduced to the opprobrium of the British
period when they were called, with others, ‘criminal castes’.129
Indeed, Maravar chiefs achieved considerable eminence and
became major political actors in the southern peninsula during the
time of the Nayaks of Madurai, in the seventeenth century. Later,
even after the British had branded Maravars as a ‘criminal caste'
they conferred recognition upon some of them who had not chal¬
lenged, but at times assisted, the establishment of British control
during the eighteenth century. The latter were granted zamindari
estates and the greatest of them was recognized as the Sethupati
of Ramnad.130 The progenitors of many of the Maravar chiefs
who played important roles in the seventeenth century and later,
may have been immigrants from the Kaveri or from Pandya
country displaced by the earlier consolidations of these zones rather
than descendents of the people described in Classical poems.
For the adventurous warrior, or simply one forced to flee his
ancestral lands, this wild, dry country at the margins of increasingly
well settled lands dominated by zonal ruling houses would have
provided opportunities, albeit dangerous ones.
What modern Ramnad was for the Pandyan intermediate zone
— a land of poor agricultural capability, sparsely peopled, and
dominated politically by clan-organized peoples — modern Puduk
kottai was for Chola country. The northern edge of this Chola-
mandalam peripheral area, modern Kulattur taluk, is directly south
of modern Tiruchirapalli. In Chola times, this area consistec
of a large, sparsely peopled territory called Konadu or Trattapadi-

128 Ibid., p. 262.

!29 F.S. Mullaly, Notes on the Criminal Tribes of the Madras Presidency, Madras.
1892.
120 Ibid., 111-12.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 303

kondachola-valanddu which extended to the southern Vellaru

river. For the most part, then, as more recently, this tract had few
reliable water sources and poor soil of high salinity (ka/ar soil).131
The area constituted a substantial barrier between the population
of the Kaveri around Uraiyur (modern Tiruchirapalli) and the
Vellaru basin in its upper and middle course near Kodambalur,
about twenty-five miles from the Kaveri. The southern Vellaru
marked the edge of the peripheral area below the Kaveri; it formed
the basis for a large, if scattered, population concentrated in a few
large settlements with sufficient wealth to support some brahmadeya
settlements and temples. Almost all of these are within a few miles of
the river.132 The inscriptions of the southern Vellaru heartland
of modern Pudukkottai State refer to sixteen brahmadeyas of which
five existed in the Chola period, the balance having been established
during the Panayan expansion in the thirteenth century.133 On this
somewhat narrow ecological base, a minor power centre developed
which was uneasily poised between the Pandyans and the Cholas.
Here, the Irukkuvel chiefs exercised local dominance and some
degree of larger influence on Chola politics.
These chiefs at Kodambalur maintained themselves in the
hazardous interplay of Chola and Pandya conflict during the time
of Chola consolidation under Parantaka I and Aditya I. An
ancient line of chiefs, the Irukkuvels appear to have been in close
relations with the dreaded Kalabhras, and it is the speculation of
some scholars that they were part of the Kalabhras.1-34 During
the ninth century, the Irukkuvels prudently cast their lot with the
Cholas and became the mainstay of Chola power, serving in Chola
armies and intermarrying with the ruling family.135 During the
twelfth century these warriors suffered the fate of many other
chiefs at any earlier time — they ceased to be visible as important

131 K.R. Venkatarama, A Manual of the Pudukkottai State, Pudukkottai. 1944,

v. 2, pt 2, p. 1012.
132 A Chronological List of Inscriptions of Pudukkottai State, Pudukkottai, 1929,
pp. 8 ft, tor Chola inscriptions.
133 Venkatarama, op. cit., v. 2, pt 2, p. 652.
134 M. Arokiaswami, The Early History of the Vellar Basin; with Special Reference
to the Irukkuvels of Kodumbalur, Amudha Nilayam Ltd., Madras, 1954.
135 Ibid., pp. 100-1. Arokiaswami claimed that the title of muvendaveldr was
the special prerogative of th'e Irukkuvels. thus vastly exaggerating the importance
of these chiefs. His later discussion of the term in the IHQ, op. cit., without referring
•to this earlier discussion, corrects that view.
304 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

political actors; unlike other chiefs whose independent identities

were incorporated by the Chola overlordship, however, the Iruk-
kuvels may have lost their dominance over the southern Vellaru
basin completely, and shifted their base of power to Kongu whose
chiefs, the Kongu Cholas, identified themselves as kdndttdr (of
konddu).
In Arokiaswami’s study of this line of chiefs, the major thesis
about the Irukkuvels and their origins is that they were the progeni¬
tors of the Vellala people of the peninsula! It is a view which grants
to the mythology of origin a plausibility seldom accorded, and it is
a view which is unacceptable. This dry tract. Kodambalur, in
the narrow, fertile land formed by the Vellaru its core, had chiefs
not drawn from Vellala peasants primarily but from the tough
hunters and pastoralists who peopled the Ramnad region in this
early period. Kallars of Pudukkottai, like those of Ramnad, and
Maravars of both dry regions, were the primary sections of the
population. Here, land in only a few places was capable of support¬
ing the full orchestration of elements which marked the society
and culture of the plains proper. Only slowly — in many places
not until the last two centuries — did peasant peoples from the
Kaveri seek fields and villages in these ecological and culturally
marginal areas. And, it was only under extreme pressure — much
of it caused by threats from those tightly organized, rugged people
of the dry country — that peasant people found their way into
these areas. Such pressure is suggested by the ensconced presence
of kaUar-makkal in the lush kulamahgala-nddu around Tirup-
puvanam in modern Kumbakonam taluk of Tanjavur according
to a thirteenth century Pandyan inscription there.136 Simultane¬
ously, of course, as tank-supported irrigated agriculture was very
slowly established in these dry places of the southern Tamil plain,
people there modified their lives to take advantage of these changes.
Some groups of Kallars and Maravars were transformed to the
status of Vellalas by imitating the modes of life appropriate to the
peasantry, accounting for the Tamil proverb descriptive of these
places: Kallars in time become Maravars who. in turn, changed
to Vellalas.137
Having surveyed some of the general features of the component

136 Thurston, op. cit., v. 3, p. 63.

137 IMP. v. 2, p. 1245; A.R E. 1911, no.159.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 305

parts of the Chola segmentary state, closer attention can now be

given to certain variations. Among indicators of differences
among the broad divisions of the South Indian macro region as
well as differences within each such division, the distribution of
brahmadeyas and temple inscriptions are perhaps the most sensitive
and important.
The central Tamil plain contained two groupings of segmentary
units: the major grouping comprising the intermediate zone of
Tondaimandalam and a minor grouping comprising the discrete
sub-region of Naduvil-nadu. Since each of these can be divided
into a large number of constituent parts, one is confronted with a
very complex region as a whole.
Partly, this complexity arises from the dispersed pattern of
settlement over the central Tamil plain, a pattern determined by
the fact that at fairly regular intervals the plain receives drainage
from the interior upland which, given an ability to preserve water
through tank storage, made it possible to sustain clusters of ag¬
rarian population. Through numerous breaks in the upland catch¬
ment area at around the 1000 foot contour, some sixty-five miles
from the coast, these streams nourish the soil upon which are
dependent the two large populations of peasant peoples in Tondai¬
mandalam and Naduvil-nadu, and many minor ones from Lake
Pulicat in the north to the Ponnaiyar basin in the south. The two
major population concentrations are the primary one of the Palar
Cheyyar basins around Kanchi and the secondary one of the
Ponnaiyar-Mallattar basins around Tirukkoyilur. Numerous
streams draining the Kalarayan and Javadi hills traverse the plain
between the two major settlement areas.
The distribution of brahmadeyas and temple inscriptions of the
Chola period are strongly correlated with these physical characteris¬
tics of the plain, given tank irrigation. Brahmadeyas are found
in the central, Kanchi, portion of Tondaimandalam, in the middle
course of the Cheyyar, and along the 250 foot contour between the
Cheyyar and Kortalaiyar river (13:15 degrees north). In the modem
district of Chingleput, this would include the taluks of Chingleput,
Conjeevaram, and Saidapet. Only a few Brahman settlements are
found in Madhurantakam taluk and fewer in Ponneri and Tiru-
vallur taluks. In North Arcot district, most of such marker
settlements are found in Cheyyar taluk (Arcot of the late nine¬
teenth century and earlier), Arkonam, Gudiyattam, with a few
306 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

in the western parts of Wandiwash where the Cheyyar flows.

As to the southern cluster of the central Tamil plain, the locus
of brahmadeyas and inscriptions is the Ponnaiyar basin. This
riverine tract and its surrounding territory, comprised Naduvil-
nadu. This zone seems never to have been long included in either
of the major concentrations of population in Tondaimandalam or
Cholamandalam, though, at times, it may have been considered
a part of two broad vakinddu territories which lay in the peripheral
area of Chola country north of the Kollidam: rajendrasimha-
valanddu and viirurdjabhayahkara-valanddu. A substantial popu¬
lation was concentrated in the Ponnaiyar basin, but beyond this
core, population was sparse and the basis of peasant agriculture
too slender to support much beyond the hardy Palli peasantry
(Vanniyars of later times), the only major cultivating people to be
consistently associated with left castes (idahgai).
The coastal plain supporting these major peasant regions is from
forty to sixty miles deep; between the two clusters centred on
Kanchi and Tirukkoyilur the plain shrinks to about half of that
depth. Almost no Brahman settlements are found above the 250
foot contour, and none are above the 500 foot contour which
runs at a depth of fifty miles from the sea. Within this narrow,
well-watered corridor, the distribution of brahmadeyas and ins¬
criptions of the age can be used to define the central, intermediate,
and peripheral areas of the two clusters.
Table VII-1 displays some highly selective Chola data comparing
the central Tamil plain with the core of the Kaveri basin. The table
is based upon inscriptions collected between 1888 and 1915, and
published by the Department of Epigraphy, Government of India.
V. Rangacharya organized these inscriptions arranged by taluk,
and district for the Madras Presidency,138 and the table is partially
based upon that topographical compilation.139 In addition, data
upon which Map IV-1 is based have been used for the taluk-wise

138 A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency. 3 vols.,

Madras, 1919.
139 As in any aggregative, as opposed to anecdotal, use of inscriptions, it is im¬
portant to consider that all of the extant inscriptions have not been noticed and
copied and that a large number of inscriptions have been destroyed and damaged.
Of the inscriptions used here it is also important to note that included are only those
Collected to 1915 which means that they are very incomplete as well as biased toward
the more prominent of the Chola sites, thus exaggerating some of the differences
drawn here. . .
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 307

distribution of brahmadeyas. While a number of serious reserva¬

tions must inevitably be raised about all of these data and their
use. Table VIM is intended to do no more than indicate certain
gross differences in the distribution of these marker elements in
the central Tamil plain during Chola times. These data represent
a first approximation of major kinds of segmentary units of the
time.
Chola temple inscriptions and brahmadeyas are unevenly dis¬
tributed in ways which would be anticipated from a knowledge of
factors related to agricultural production, hence to population
and wealth. Taluks with the greatest number of Chola inscriptions
or those which have the largest proportion of their total inscriptions
from Chola times also tend to have the largest number of brahma¬
deyas. In Tondaimandalam, these taluks are: Arkonam and
Gudiyattam in North Arcot and Saidapet and Conjeevaram in
Chingleput; in Naduvil-nadu, the core localities are Tirukkoyilur
and parts of Tindivanam, Cuddalore, and Villupuram (Chidam¬
baram taluk being grouped with Cholamandalam). Certain anoma¬
lies in these data should not be overlooked, however. Tiru-
vannamalai taluk with about seventeen per cent of the inscriptions
for North Arcot district, of which about the same proportion
dates from the Chola period, shows only one brahmadeya, Puh-
yurnadi-chaturvedimangalam. There are also distortions which
must inevitably occur in aggregating data according to the taluk
and district territories of British India, for these administrative
units were constituted regions bearing no considered relationship
to modern social realities (except as the creation of these units
established such realities), much less historical ones. Notwith¬
standing such anomalies and distortions, the core portions of
Tondaimandalam and Naduvil-nadu are seen to have a lower
density of both Chola inscriptions and brahmadeyas though the
absolute number of both inscriptions and Brahman settlements
for the whole of Tondaimandalam (as shown in the taluks of
Table VII-1) slightly exceed those of the core portions of Chola¬
mandalam (as shown in the data from Tanjavur district).
The same data are presented in Table V1I-2 in a form which
presents areal clusters of the central Tamil plain according to
whether they were central, intermediate, or peripheral within the
two zones. The effect generally is to emphasize the graded quality
of the dispersal pattern over the entire central plain. Bounding the
 308 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Table VII-1

Distribution of Chola Inscriptions and Brahmadeyas by

Selected Madras Taluks to 1915

Total Chola Percentage of

District/Taluk Inscriptions Inscriptions Chola Brahmadeyas
Inscriptions

North Arcot 727 284 38 28

Arkonam 151 136 90 8
Ami 70 4 5 0
Cheyyar 91 34 27 6
Gudiyattam 60 35 58 6
Polur 30 8 26 0
Tiruppattur 6 1 15 1
Tiruvannamalai 124 22 18 1
Vellore 61 18 30 1
Walajapet 49 19 39 3
Wandiwash 85 37 43 3

Chingleput 1221 596 49 47

Chingleput 230 93 40 6
Conjeevaram 219 118 55 16
Madurantakam 214 91 42 5
Ponneri 89 38 42 2
Saidapet 378 228 60 14
Tiruvallur 91 28 30 4

Chittoor

Chandragiri 22 8 36 1
Chittoor 15 4 26 1
Kalahasti 110 75 68 0
Punganur 62 19 30 3
Puttur 30 16 53 0
Tiruttani 80 48 60 4
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 309

Nellore

Gudur 133 57 43 0
Polur 45 9 20 1

South Arcot 1094 316 35 32

Chidambaram 195 52 38 6
Cuddalore 160 97 60 3
Kallakurichchi 2 0 0 0
Tindivanam 85 50 59 4
Tirukkoyilur 480 271 56 11
Villupuram 93 61 65 4
Vriddhachalam 46 6 13 4

Tanjavur 1639 1300 80 93

Arantangi 7 2 0 0
Kumbakonam 478 324 68 25
Mannargudi 116 85 73 6
Mayavaram 131 93 70 24
Nannilam 169 124 73 6
Nagapatnam 77 58 75 4
Papanasam 121 99 82 9
Pattukkottai 49 30 60 4
Shiyali 34 32 95 5
Tanjavur 336 325 98 10
Tirutturaipundi 130 118 90 2

central clusters of Tondaimandalam and Naduvil-nadu were

localities of diminishing populations sited with increasing jeopardy
as the rising, drier lands of the bordering hill country is approached
and phasing into the peripheral zones of Kongu on the west and
Gangavadi to the north. Zonal divisions of Tondaimandalam are
shown in \fap VI1-2. The central (C), intermediate (I), and
peripheral (P) zones are represented along with some of the more
important sacred centres and settlements of the mandalam.
Kongu country and Gangavadi were peripheral zones of the
Chola segmentary state system. Their links with the Chola system
310 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

are less related to conquests by Chola armies from the plains

than to the movement of cultivators to these previously isolated
upland extensions of the Tamil and Mysore plains. Prior to the
time of the Cholas, the isolation of Kongu, a relatively sparsely
settled region,140 was only occasionally disturbed by marauding
warriors and peoples moving between the Coromandel plain and
Karnataka. At such times, Kongu was a shatter zone and, like
other such regions in India, showed complex overlappings of peoples
and cultures. Gangavadi, on the other hand, had long been the
centre of a minor peninsular dynasty — the Gangas — after whom
the area was named. It was conquered by Rajaraja I in a.d. 1004
and was thereafter subjected to heavy Tamil in-migration consisting
not only of Tamil peasant groups but of Tamil Brahmans as well.141
From the eleventh to the fifteenth century the fundamental influence
upon both peripheral zones came from the Kaveri, and the result
was an overlay of Chola culture and institutions which did not
expunge the earlier diversity of these places but only added to their
variegated character.
Kongu was a troubled frontier region during the early period
of the great Cholas. Called malai-nadu in the Tiruvalangadu
Plates, or viracholamandalam in most other Chola inscriptions, it
was a place where Chola and Pandyan warriors sought dominance
and where distinctions were not always made between Kongu,
southern Karnataka (Gangavadi), and modern Coorg.142 An
a.d. 1012 Tamil inscription145 of Rajaraja I from Balmuri in
Gangavadi refers to his conquests in Gangavadi, Malenad (Coorg
and the western hill portion of modern Karnataka), and Kongu
as well as Nolambavadi (modern south-central Karnataka),
Andhra, Kalinga, and Pandya countries. However, after Rajaraja
I’s time there are few Chola records. Chola inscriptions of
Parantaka I, Parakesarivarman Uttama-Chola, Rajaraja I,
Rajendra I, Rajendra II, Virarajendra, and Kulottunga II and III
are found at Erode, Valappanadu, Tiruchchengodu, and Karur

140 Arokiaiswami, Kongu Country, p. 257.

141 Rice, Mysore; A Gazetteer, p. 316.

142 Arokiaswami, Kongu Contry, p. 202; also Subrahmanya Aiyer, 'The History
of Kongu Country’, in Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 2. where other
names for Kongu are listed: Adhtrajarajamandalam in the eleventh century and
Cholakeralamandalam in the twelfth century, p. 55.
143 Cited in Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, p. 205; E C., v. 3, sr. no.140.
VII-2 Tondaimandalam Zonal Divisions c. a.d. 1300
 The Chola Stale and the Agrarian Order 311

in the northern and eastern parts of Kongu. The southern and

western portions of the territory appear to have been less directly
affected by the Cholas. Though the inscriptional link to the Cholas
and the Tamil plain were tenuous, there was certainly a movement
of peasant peoples from the plains to the Kongu upland, and this
migration was little affected by the replacement of Chola by Hoysala
ascendency in the early twelfth century.144 Hoysala Ballala I
in about a.d. 1120 extended his dominance over Kongu from
Talakad on the upper ICaveri in Gangavadi (and formerly the
Ganga capital), thus joining for a time the two peripheral zones
of the Chola segmentary state to provide a base for an assault
upon the lower Kaveri itself by his Hoysala successors.
Though Kongu was an isolated area, there was continuous
contact with the Kaveri region by an ancient road, the kohgu-
peruvali, connecting the Coromandel and Malabar coasts along
which have been discovered hoards of Roman coins.145 Moreover,
the devotional movement of Tamil Saivites touched Kongu where
there are seven sacred sites according to the Devaram,146 Not¬
withstanding these contacts, the isolated, or at best the route
character of Kongu is underscored by an analysis of inscriptions
found there.
Arokiaswami has estimated that about 900 Kongu inscriptions
had been noticed by epigraphists by the mid 1950s. Of these about
630 can be attributed with fair accuracy to particular dynastic
periods, the remainder being miscellaneous grants to temples
by local notables recognizing no overlordship.147 Well over half
of the inscriptions which can be associated with an overlordship
in Kongu belong to three lineages of chiefs, each of which took as
their surnames, titles, and epithets those of one of the great ruling
lineages of the macro region.148 Thus, there were Kongu-Gangas

144 Subrahmanya Aiyer, in Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 2, p. 55.

145 Ibid., p. 44.
146 Ibid., p. 49.
147 Arokiaswami, Kongu Country, p. 22.
148 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer ('History of the Kongu Country’, p. 45 Historical
Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 2) points out that the Kongu Cholas even used the
rotational terms parakesari and rajakesari. In the same author’s edition of several
Kongu inscriptions of the tenth and eleventh centuries, he argues that this line of
chiefs should be called 'Kongu Konattar’ (from Konadu in modern Pudukkottai:
El v. 30, no. 19, ‘Seven Vatteluttu Inscriptions from the Kongu Country’, p. 95).
312 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

from the eighth century with ten inscriptions, Kongu-Cholas during

the period from a.d 1004 to 1275 with about 300 inscriptions, and
Kongu-Pandyas of the thirteenth century with some 120 records.149
In each case, titles and personal names are taken from rulers of
dominant regional dynasties and used by great Kongu chieftains
who bore no relationship — kinship or otherwise — to the royal
Cholas, Pandyas, or Gangas.150 It was a rudimentary form of
kingship appropriate to the peripheral zone of a segmentary state
in which the royal style was quite specifically linked to that of the
great kingships, of the macro region because there were lacking
traditions of legitimacy to sustain a fully autonomous kingship
in these places. Borrowed, or vicarious, legitimacy was necessary
and this apparently sufficed to provide for the Kongu region
a ritual centre around which locality chiefs could order their
political relationships and attempt to cope with increasing pressures
of external spoilers in the form of invading armies from the south
and north as well as with the influx of new people.

Table VI1-2

Segmentary Areal Groupings in the Central Tamil Plain

during Chola Times a

Classification KottamjNadu District/Taluk

TONDAIMANDALAM

Peripheral Areas
North and West Tiruvengadu-k. Chittoor Kalahasti
Chittoor Puttur
Pavattiri-k. Chittoor Chandragiri
Panganuru
Paiyyur-l]an-k. Chittoor
Nellore Gudur
Kunravattana-k.
Nellore P5lur

a. Based on Subbarayalu, op. cit., Appendices and Maps.

149 Arokiaswami. Kongu Country, p. 242.
150 Ibid., p. 22 and K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, 'History of the Kongu Country’,
Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 2, p. 60. The latter (p.44) argues that
Kongu was not a kingdom, but merely a territory, since its rulers lacked titles of
their own. However, the functions of these rulers were royal in the then prevailing
sense of it on a primitive level and without benefit of clergy (e.g., the mahabisekha).
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 313

Chingleput Tiruttani
Chingleput Tiruvallur
Ikkattu-k. N. Arcot
Manayil-k. Walajapet
Melur-k. N. Arcot Vellore
Intermediate Areas
North and West Paduvur-k. Chingleput Ponneri
Paiyyur-k. Chingleput Tiruvallur
Palakunra-k. Chingleput Tiruttani
Pulal-k.
Central Area Amur-k. N. Arcot Arkonam
Chengattu-k. N. Arcot Gudiyattam
Eyil-k. N. Arcot Cheyyar
Kalattur-k. Chingleput Chingleput
Kaliyur-k. Chingleput Conjeevaram
Puliyur-k. Chingleput Saidapet
Tamar-k.
Intermediate Areas Urrukattu-k.
South and West Chembur-k. N. Arcot Arni
Indur-k. N. Arcot Polur
Venkunra-k. N. Arcot Tiruvannamalai
N. Arcot Wandiwash
N. Arcot Tiruppattur
Chingleput Madhurantakam

Oyma-n. S. Arcot Tindivanam

Peripheral Areas Singapura-n.
South and West
Peru-Mukkil-n.

NADUVIL-NADU

Peripheral Area Adaiyur-n. N. Arcot Tiruvannamalai

North and West
Intermediate Area Vavalur-n. S. Arcot Villupuram
North and West
Central Areas Kllkondai-n. S. Arcot Tirukkoyilur
Udaikkattu-n.
Kurukkai-kurram
Idaiyarru-n.
Kudal-Iladaippadi-n.
Intermediate Areas KTlanmur-n. S. Arcot Cuddalore
South and West Kayappakkai-n. S. Arcot Vriddhachalam

Vagur-n.
Merkur-n.

b. Tiruttani has been part of Chittoor district at times.

314 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Kudal-n.
Peripheral Area Melarrur-kurram S. Arcot Kallakurchi
South and West

In his work on Kongu — one of the few serious attempts at

local history during the pre-modem period — Arokiaswami out¬
lines the way in which new peoples were assimilated into the
society of the isolated upland region from about a.d. 1000. He
sees the horizontal segmentation of caste groupings as a means
by which newcomers found places in the emergent society of this
peripheral zone. The pahja jati, or five Kongu castes of modern
Coimbatore,151 are an example of that process which dates from
the first Chola incursions in the tenth century. The peoples displaced
by these newcomers from the Tamil plain were pastoral and hunting
peoples referred to as Kurumbar and Vedar in the chronicle
literature used by Arokiaswami.152 Among the migrants to Kongu
of the early imperial Chola period who took the appelation of
Kongu as a caste name, there came to exist special, close and
interdependent relationships reflected in the kinship terminology
and in ritual interactions.
These multiplex bonds served to differentiate the immigrants
of the tenth and eleventh centuries from those who came in the
thirteenth century according to Arokiaswami.153 The latter are
distinguished by different caste appelations and by a different
order of interrelationships such as to constitute a parrallel ordering
of castes ranging from respectable Sendalai Vellalas (tentisai-
chdliya-veUdlar) of the Kaveri and Padaiyatchi-Vellalas of Tondai-
mandalam to untouchables.
Arokiaswami’s view of this process may exaggerate the extent
to which Kongu was opened to peasant occupation and agriculture
in a time as late as the Chola Period. The inscriptions of the Kongu-
Gangas and others of the pre-Chola period suggest a well-estab¬
lished, if sparsely settled, agrarian society, and there are very
early references to two of the bulwarks of Kongu agriculture: well
irrigation and a superior strain of draft bullock from around

151 Kongu Country, p. 267; these include cultivators (Vellalas or Kavundars),

merchants (Chettis), barbers, washermen, and untouchable field labourers.
152 Notably, the Kongudesarajakkal, English trans. by the Rev. William Taylor,
The Madras Journal of Literature and Science, v. 14, pt 1 (1847), pp. 1-66.
153 Kongu Country, pp. 270-1.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 315

Kangayam. It is more likely that the Chola period saw an intensifi¬

cation of migration to the Kongu upland, possibly the result of
military activities here and in Karnataka by the Cholas, and an
adaptation by newcomers of the existing agricultural techniques
which have proved to be among the most adaptive in South India.
The crystalization of these diverse populations of Kongu into
a single, complex local society may have come, as suggested by
Arokiaswami, in the thirteenth century. Migrants of that time
arrived in Kongu carrying new elements of culture from the plains;
there is also evidence to suggest that these most recent migrants
may have been encouraged and assisted by the threatened Chola,
Kulottunga III.154 These later migrants brought more of the
established elements of plains culture, especially Vedic temples
and hrahmadeyas, institutions which were at that very time under
considerable pressure in the coastal plains; in addition they brought
notions about and experience with such cultural and social forms
as temple towns and the division of castes into those of the right
and left.>55
The focus of much of the society and culture of Kongu Vellala
castes was upon four chieftainships which may have risen by the
later Chola period. These four families of chiefs, called pattakkd-
ran, bore titles allegedly conferred at that time, and in two cases
at least early evidence in support of these claims are found. The
four houses of chiefs are: the Palaiakottai pattakkdrar of the
payira clan of Kongu Vellalas; the Kataiyur pattakkdrar of the
poru/antai clan; the Putur pattakkdrar of the sehkannan clan;
and the Sankarantampalaiyam pattakkdrar of the periya clan.
The first element in their titles (e.g. palaiyakkottai) refers to the
village centre of the chieftainship; all are located in the central
part of Kongu. Clan (kulam) designations of these chief s families
appear in the earliest documents in which they find mention,
and the modern functions of the clan organization upon which
these chiefs’ houses are based is given considerable attention by
Brenda Beck in her recent work on Kongu peasant society.156

154 See Arokiaswami’s argument on this in ‘Social Developments under the

Cholas’, T.A.S.S.I., 1956-7, pp. 3-4.
155 Kongu Country, p. 278.
156 Beck, op. cit., pp. 41-2. She refers to these chiefs as ‘titled families’ and as
an ‘aristocracy’ whereas the Tamil Lexicon, v. 4, p. 2419, gives as one meaning ‘title
holders’ meaning by that the possessor of a revenue pat(a in British usage; the Lexicon
316 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Her reports from contemporary informants as well as her references

to vernacular histories of the Kongu Vellala (or Kavundar). com¬
munity on the antiquity of the four families of chiefs are supported
by inscriptional and literary evidence going back to the sixteenth
century. Two inscriptions of the time of Mallikarjuna of Vijaya-
nagara refer to the Payira clan chiefs as kohgaveladaraiyar (chiefs
of the Kongu Vellalas),157 and the eighteenth century Kongu-
mandala-Satakam of the Jaina-Brahman Karmegakkavinar refers
to the kataiyur chiefs of the porulantai clan and the putur chiefs
of the sehkannan-kulam renown for having received the title of
mummudi-Pallavan from a Chola king.158 These several chieftain¬
ships of the dominant cultivating castes of Kongu not only pro¬
vided political focuses, an expression of their political primacy
among cultivating groups in this area, but they linked even these
remote Tamil cultivators to a kingly centre in the Kaveri.
Gangavadi, like Kongu, is a relatively dry tableland girded by
mountains which served to preserve its isolation until Chola times.
However, this territory achieved considerably greater political
prominence than Kongu because, around the fourth century, there
emerged a minor kingly lineage calling itself Ganga. This line of
rulers persisted in southern Karnataka for almost six centuries.
Though the Ganga kings were not unique in claiming a connection
with Aryavarta, their persistent support of and possibly their
personal commitment to Jainism sets them apart from most other
ruling families in South India.15^
Gangavadi was the oldest, largest, and best developed of the
three ancient territories of central and southern Karnataka. The
other two were Nolambavadi and Banavasi. Nolambavadi formed
the north-eastern boundary of Gangavadi, north of the north
Pennar river and extending to the Tungabhadra. It was settled
by sedentary cultivators long after the Ganga country when, around
the eighth century, Tamil warriors called Nolambas associated with
the Pallavas of Tondaimandalam established their control there.

also gives the meaning of headman of Tottiyar and Kongu Vellala castes. The
notion of chief would seem to fall between these meanings.
157 A.R.E., 1920, nos. 235 and 239.
158 kohgumandala-salakam of karmegakkavinar, ed. T.A. Muttusamikkonar,
Madras, 1923, verses 51, 53, 72.
159 On the question of Jainism see S. Srikantha Sastri, Early Gangas of Talakdd,
published by the author, Bangalore, 1952, pp. 44-9.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 317

Banavasi, to the north-west of Gangavadi, was even later to emerge

as an important area of peasant agriculture; it was a small territory
and of lesser political significance.160 Though most of the period
to the eleventh century when Chola power was established in
Gangavadi, Ganga rulers dominated their two near neighbours in
the manner of medieval Indian states, that is, little was done to
diminish the local authority of its subordinate families of chiefs.
The prime orientation of the Ganga chiefs was not to northern
Karnataka, where political dominance was exercised by the Chaluk-
yas and Rashtrakutas and whose subordinates the greatest of the
Ganga chiefs were, but to the south and east. Early in the history
of the family, Ganga chiefs, as allies of the Chalukyas, raided the
Pallava country of Tondaimandalam on its eastern border. At
that time, Ganga power was greatest in the east, on the edge of
Tondaimandalam, where the mountain fortress of Nandidrug,
at 5000 feet, provided a base for predatory operations.
Later, the centre of Ganga power shifted westward to Talakad
on the Kaveri, and in the late eighth century, under the chief Sri
Purusha, the Ganga capital was Manne or Manyapura, some thirty
miles from modem Bangalore.161 From here, later Gangas pressed
upon their southern neighbours in Kongu. Butuga and his son
Marasimha provided the model of kingship for Kongu chiefs who
adopted Ganga symbols of kingship. But, beyond that influence,
later Ganga rulers, soon to be displaced by Chola influence,162
laid the basis for a new line of rulers, the Hoysalas. The latter
came to control Gangavadi in a.d. 1116 and changed its name to
to hoysalaraja.l6i
Derrett’s judgement of the six centuries of Ganga rule is some¬
what harsh. He states that after the impressive reigns of Butuga
and Marasimha,

Ganga affairs . . . sank back into the state of comparative insignificance

which had been normal before Butuga’s time, when the central and

160 B. Lewis Rice, ‘Gangavadi’, Commemorative Essays Presented to Sir Ram-

krishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Poona, 1917, pp. 237-8; J.D.M. Derrett, The Hoysalas:
A Medieval Indian Royal Family, O.U.P., Madras, 1957, pp. 12-13.
161 See S. Srikantha Sastri, Early Gangas of Talakad, Rice, ‘Gangavadi’, p. 239.
162 Derrett, op. cit., p. 14. Parantaka I, Uttama Chola, and Rajaraja I raided
eastern Ganga country in the late tenth century; Rajendra I took Talakad in a.d.
1004.
163 Rice, ‘Gangavadi’, p. 248.
318 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

southern parts of Karnataka country were remarkable for no distinctions

in the fields political, literary, architectural, or religious. Moreover, from
the small number and often illiterate character of the records that survive
it may be judged that the general level of prosperity was very low compared
with the succeeding centuries, and it may be safely assumed that the
historical obscurity that surrounds much of the Gaiiga period is due very
largely to the backward condition of the majority of its subjects.164

In becoming the central domain of the Hoysala state of the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Gangavadi ceased to be a peri¬
pheral zone of the Chola segmentary state. But, in order to be the
Hoysala central domain, Gangavadi had to possess population
and wealth upon which to base such a powerful state. Thus, one
must alter Derrett’s assessment of the Gangas and Gangavadi
prior to Hoysala times to the extent of recognizing that while the
Gangas did not match the Hoysalas in the quality and power of the
state or in literary, architectural, or religious accomplishments,
theirs was a territory which could sustain the excellence of the
Hoysalas. In any case there is no evidence that the Hoysalas did
anything dramatic to enrich the land that they gained from the
Gangas and that sustained them. Derrett makes no mention of
intensive irrigation development under the sponsorship of the
Hoysala state, nor was there even the more modest irrigation
development which can be demonstrated for the Cholas and the
Vijayanagara rulers later.165 The many localized irrigation schemes
developed during the age were the work of locality folk in the
nads under their headmen, the nddgaundas, just as it was elsewhere
in the macro region.166 Indeed, the very lacklustre of the Ganga
rulers who preceded the Cholas and Hoysalas suggests that they
were essentially peasant chiefs who neither sought nor managed to
break their ties with the dominant peasant folk of the territory. That
peasantry still identifies itself with the ancient Ganga designation;
they are called, gahgadikaras who in 1891 comprised forty-four
per cent of the total population of the land-controlling peasantry of
Mysore State (i.e. Vokkaligas).167 Gangadikara is a slight contrac¬
tion of the term gahgavddikara, 'men of the Ganga country'.168

164 Derrett, op. cit., p. 14.

165 See his chapter seven on administration and his analysis of revenue which
indicates no irrigation charges.
166 Dikshit, op. cit., pp. 41, 46, 52.
167 Ananthakrishna Iyer, Mysore Tribes and Castes, v. 1, p. 125.
168 Rice, 'Gangavadi', p. 237.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 319

The Gangadikara peasantry of Gangavadi appears to have been

more significantly linked to the Kongu peasantry to the south
than to peasant peoples in the central and northern parts of medieval
Karnataka. Similarly, the Marasu Vokkaligas of eastern Bangalore
and central and southern Kolar districts appear to have been
linked to Tondaimandalam. Chola inscriptions are heavily dis¬
tributed over the three modern districts of Mysore, Bangalore,
and Kolar, the core of Gangavadi.169 One of these Tamil inscrip¬
tions, that of Mulbagal taluk, Kolar, dated a.d. 1072, relating to
the interaction of Tondaimandalam peasants of the valangai
and those of modern Kolar (then ‘Sri Rajendrachola Eighteen
Countries’) was discussed at length above.170 It may have been
just such ancient connections as those between the peasantry of
Ganga country and of Kongu which persuaded the Hoysala Ballala
II (Vira Ballala) to fish in the troubled waters of Chola country in
a.d. 1218. His son, Narasimha II (Vira Narasimha) established

Hoysala power in the lower Kaveri at Kannanur (near Srirangam,

Tiruchirapalli district). Derrett calls this action an ‘aberration’
because it prevented the establishment of a ‘Karnataka national
empire’ that Derrett believed to be a ‘proper conclusion to the
period of upheaval which had preceded the rise of the Hoysala’.171
Such an assessment of the Hoysala incursion into the lower Kaveri
must be judged a modern historian’s ‘aberration’ which sees
nationalism as a factor, a ‘natural force’, in an age to which it
was wholly inappropriate. It was rather the rich Kaveri delta,
exposed by the weakened and divided Cholas, which offered the
best potential for Hoysala power. The Gangavadi ‘homeland’172
of the Hoysalas, after all, opened not to the northern territories,
bleak and troubled, but to the rich delta of the Kaveri which
inevitably tied southern Karnataka to the Tamil plain.
The Kdrmandala Satakam, possibly of the seventeenth century,
fortifies the presumption of linkage between the peasant peoples
of southern Karnataka and those of Kongu and the Tamil plain.173
The work of a Kongu Vellala, Araikilar, this satakam describes the

170 Supra, chap. 3.

171 Derrett, op. cit., p. 105.
172 Ananthakrishna Iyer, Mysore Tribes and Castes, v. I, p. 106 passim uses this
expression.
173 Madras, 1930, with a commentary by P.A. Muthuthandavaraya Pillay.
320 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

country of the karalar peoples as composed of two parts: rich

plains (polil-nadu) in the east and hills (varai-nadu) in the west.174
Karmandalam, or gahgapadi was bounded by these western hills
and the ocean on the west and ‘Pallavam’ (i.e. Nolambavadi),
‘Kadamba’ (i.e. Banavasi), Tondai, and Kongu.176 The territory
included the Coorg Hills (Kudaku-malai), the Pushpagiri-Subrah-
manyam Hill (of Uppinangadi taluk, South Kanara), the Pennai
(N. Pennar) and Kaveri rivers, and it consisted of thirty-two
nadus in the western hill country, and sixty-four nadus in the plains
(verse 7); the commentator on this satakam suggested that the
ninety-six nadus of Gangavadi account for its being called a ‘96,000’
country.
Verse forty-five of the satakam states that gahgapadi was known
as mummadichola-mandalam as well as mahilasura-nadu. The
latter name is the slightly altered mahisasura-nadu (to become
(‘Mysore-nadu’). Mudikondacho\a-mandalam was the common
name by which the Cholas referred to Gangavadi whereas mum-
madichola-mandalam usually referred to northern Lanka.176
Karalar means ‘ruler of the clouds’ and is thus the same as
karakkatar as in the sub-caste title, Karkatta Vellala.177 The
goddess Chamundi, whose shrine is in modem Mysore City, is
said in the satakam to have provided the Karalar cultivators of this
country with rice seeds for their fields (verse eight), and another
famous town, Tagadur, or Dharmapuri, in modem Salem, north
of the Toppur divide, was also included in the Ganga country
(verse eleven). Verses thirty-one to thirty-three state that the
Karalar are of the Ganga people who include the virattiyar (Jainas)
in the western hill country and srottiyar (worshippers of Siva
and Vishnu) in the eastern part. They are progeny of the powerful
Ganga chiefs, and (verse forty-six) the satakam ridicules the notion
that Rajaraja the Great conquered karmandalam; rather, his rule
was sought because of his famous devotion to the Lord Siva.

174 Pont means forested or park land; varai means mountainous. DED, nos.
3723 and 4315.
175 Because the Nolambas were understood to be a branch of the Pallava family,
Nolambavadi was referred to by that title (Ananthakrishna Iyer, Mysore Tribes
and Castes, v. I, p. 99 n); similarly, Banavasi was also designated by its great warrior
family, the Kadambas (Dikshit op. cit., p. 16 and G. Moraes, The Kadamba Kula;
A History of Ancient and Medieval Karnataka, Bombay, 1931).
176 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 472, 173.
177 Thurston, Castes and Tribes, v. 3, pp. 249-50.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 321

Finally, verse forty-eight states that the Karalar rule the people
of Ganga, Kongu, and Kalinga; the last-mentioned reference
is to the Eastern Gangas of Orissa.
Setting aside the bravura of the satakam genre, the Karmandala
Satakam helps to define the southern Karnataka country as one
linked to the segmentary state of the Cholas. Rajaraja I’s conquest
of southern Karnataka — including Gangavadi, Nolambavadi,
and Taigaivadi (modern Mysore district) — came by the sixth year
of his reign, a.d. 991. The Chola conquerors came through Kongu,
and this was clearly a part of the consolidation of the Chola over¬
lordship in the western peripheral regions. In early tenth century
records from Gangavadi, Ganga chiefs are said to recognize
Rajaraja’s rule.178

IV

The Political Culture of the Chola Segmentary State.

The structure of the Chola segmentary state — its central, inter¬

mediate, and peripheral zones with their differentially segmented
internal divisions — was not explicit in the numerous inscriptional
records nor in the various genre of literature of the age. It is an
inferred structure. Lacking an explicit, relevant, contemporary
theory of the state, it has been necessary to suggest another formula¬
tion to organize the existing political facts of the age. The most
appropriate of alternatives is the theory of the segmentary state
proposed by Southall.
As argued above in the discussion of the structure of the Chola
segmentary state, effective territorial sovereignty of the Cholas
was confined to the rich, populous core of the Kaveri delta. Beyond
this sub-region, Chola sovereignty was an increasingly ritual
hegemony as the peripheral zones of the state were approached.
The core territory of the Cholas included the following six deltaic
territories: pandi-kulasami-valanadu, including Tanjavur; nitta-
vinoda-valanadu; arumolideva-valanddu, also called ten-kaduvay
or the territory south of the Kaduvay River; kshatriyasikhamani-
valanadu, also called vada-kaduvay or the territory north of the
Kaduvay; uyya-k ondar- valanddu; and rajadhiraja-valanadud19

178 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 174-5.

179 Venkayya, ‘Territorial Divisions of Rajaraja-Chola’, S.I.I., v. 3, pt 5, pp.
21-9.
322 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The names of these territories were epithets of Rajaraja I, fixing

upon the entire core region an identity with the ruler which was
as clear in purpose as the great shrine he built at Tanjavur. The
special relationship between the Chola rulers and their central
domain, the Kaveri core, and the role of the Rajarajesvara temple
together distinguish Chola country from the other major segments
of ‘zones’ comprising the state. The two features are symbolically
linked in a variety of ways.
In the origin myth of the Chola family, primary emphasis is
placed upon the Kaveri region and symbolic connections established
among a number of elements which were to remain important
throughout the history of the great Cholas. This myth occurs
in a Sanskrit inscription of a.d. 1070 recording a grant in the
time of Virarajendra Chola to the shrine of the goddess Kanya-
pidariyar at Kanya Kumari.180 After a lengthy iteration of the
solar dynasty with which the Cholas linked themselves (verses
4-27), a series of verses (28-35) relate an episode modelled upon the
Ramayana. Here, an eponymous Chola warrior who roamed the
Gangetic forests in carefree hunt was, like Prince Rama of Ayodhya,
deceived by a demon in the guise of a deer and led southward from
Aryavarta. The warrior slew the deer on the Kaveri and while
there looked for Brahmans upon whom to confer gifts. Finding
none, he settled some Brahmans from Aryavarta who recognized
the Kaveri as a river of even greater sacredness than the Ganga.181
Important in this mythic account are three elements: the putative
Aryan connection of the progenitor of the line, the dedication to
Vedic, or at least Brahmanical rites leading to the introduction of
Aryan Brahmans, and the superior sacredness of the Kaveri.
As the learned editor of the Kanya Kumari inscription, K.V. Sub-
rahmanya Aiyer, notes, the Cholas were not a northern people.
Nor is it any longer possible to accept the idea that the Brahmans
of medieval South India were primarily descendents of early
migrants from the north even though there was a continuous move¬
ment of small groups of North Indian Brahmans into the south
during ancient times.

180 K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, ‘Kanya Kumari Inscription of Virarajendra',

T.A.S., v. 3, pt 1, no.34, pp. 87-158. The grant portion of this long inscription
consists of barely twenty lines of Tamil.
‘S' Ibid., p. 96.
 The Choia State and the Agrarian Order 323

The myth of Gangetic origin is rather to be understood as an

effort to place the Choia kingship upon a basis of legitimacy superior
to that which could be claimed with equal validity by Pandyans and
by warriors ot the Chera country. This was no easy task considering
the continued currency of the titles muvendavelar and mummudi,
held by chiefs recognizing all of the three ancient kingships of the
macro region. In addition, such a claim of Gangetic provenance
was appropriately antecedent to, or supportive of, the royal cult
to Siva which came into existence during the time of Rajaraja.
The notion of territorial sovereignty fortified by religious asso¬
ciations is scarcely unique with the Cholas; similar associations
involving the conception of Aryavarta were made by kings of the
Gangetic plain at the time182 and are a basic element of sacral
kingship of time. In addition, however, the conception derived
from two processes in South Indian medieval Hinduism. These
processes came to be joined during the Choia period and provided
the foundation for the royal Siva cult centred upon the Rajara-
jesvara temple. Both processes may be identified during the Pallava
period, and it is to the credit of Rajaraja’s political acumen that
they were incorporated into the state system which he created.
The first process was the revival, or more accurately, the
establishment of worship of the Vedic Siva as the major form of
high ritual in Tondaimandalam under the sponsorship of the Palla-
vas. Shrines in the central plain which had previously housed Jaina
and Buddhist images were reconsecrated to the mahadeva (Siva)
almost always represented by a linga, called mahesvara, and under
the custodianship of Brahmans. Later Pallava inscriptions and
temple remains in Tondaimandalam verify that this was a non-
puranic, aniconic form of worship.183 The conception of deity
and ritual here is one congenial to a continuing accommodation
to Jaina and Buddhist forms (e.g. the sixty-three Jaina great
souls and Saiva nayanars and perhaps accounts for the ease with
which some of the early Saivite and Vaishnavite saints of the bhakti
movement and their illustrious converts could switch allegiance
from the ‘heretical faiths’ to Vedic deities.184

182 K.M. Munshi’s ‘Foreword’ to The Age of Imperial Kanauj (a.d. 750-1000),
v. 4 of The History and Culture of the Indian People, ed. R.C'. Majumdar, Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1964.
183 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Development of Religion in South India, p. 60.
184 K.V. Raman, The Early History of the Madras Region, Amudha Nilayam
324 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The second religious process was of another kind. This was the
devotional (bhakti) worship of the puranic gods Siva and Vishnu,
primarily a movement in the Kaveri region. Bhakti hymnists in
the Kaveri did not so much contend against the Aryan heresies of
Jainism and Buddhism — though their judgements of these sects
was often harsh; it was more the vigour of devotion to female
tutelary deities that moved them. The major male deities of the
ancient religion of Tamils proved to be easily transformed into
appropriate Vedic, male guises.185 But, certain of the great goddes¬
ses and the many village goddesses (grama devata or uramman)
of ancient worship were more difficult to assimilate. Nambi
Arurar, one of the three early Saivite saints whose works form an
important part of the Devaram, treats the goddess theme with
respect and appreciation but more in aesthetic, than devotional
terms and, in any case, he viewed female divinities quite clearly
subordinate to, dependent upon, and inseparable from Siva.186
In time, as has been shown, goddesses were also assimilated to the
Hinduism of the age, as the consort of one of the puranic gods,
and worthy of separate worship in her kamakottam. But this
did not occur until the thirteenth century as a general feature of
the religion of the macro region.
Crowning these broad developments of the Chola age and
contributing to the sacral significance of the Chola domain in the
Kaveri was the Siva cult of the Chola rulers. Here, the work of
Suresh is germane. In his analysis of the inscriptions and icono¬
graphy of the Rajarajesvara temple at Tanjavur, Suresh has made
a strong presumptive case for the existence of the deliberate 'pro-
pogation of canonized religion in Tamiland’ by the Chola kings.187
While he cautions that more detailed study of this hypothesis is
necessary, the main outlines of this argument are persuasive.
Private Ltd., Madras, 1959, pp. 186-94.
185 Nilakanta Sastri, Development of Religion in South India, p. 21. Also, in the
Tolkctppiyam, a grammatical work of the late Classical period, there was already
an association of Vedic gods with the traditional five landscapes: mullai- Mayon-
Vishnu; Jrur/w/7-Seyon-Siva; marurfaw-Vendam-Indra; neydal-Varuna-.palai-Dmga
(Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., pp. 8-9).
186 M.A Dorai Rangaswamy, The Religion and Philosophy of the Tevdram, 2
vols, University of Madras, Madras, 1958, pp. 210-23, 244.
187 Suresh, ‘Raajaaraajeesvara . . pp. 449. Also, G.W. Spencer, ‘Religious
Networks and Royal Influence in Eleventh Century South India', Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient, v. 12, pt 1 (January 1969), pp. 42-56.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 325

At Tanjapuri, which had never before the time of Vijayalaya

enjoyed the status of a sacred place188 and at which the founder
of the great Chola line constructed a modest temple to the goddess
Nisumbhasudani,189 Rajaraja chose to create what he must have
intended to be the greatest Siva shrine in South India. ‘The temple’,
as Nilakanta Sastri has stated, ‘was altogether a creation of Raja-
raja’s policy’.190 From the architectural point of view, Rajaraja
certainly succeeded; but his success was as great in having created
a symbolic shelter for and the incorporation of the puranic Siva.
In the Brihadisvara temple at Tanjavur were established a full
display of the manifestations of not only the puranic Siva, but
representatives of other Vedic and puranic deities: Surya, Vishnu,
and Brahma.191 The female principle of deity — the preponderat¬
ing one in the continuing popular religion as well as in earlier
forms of high religion192 — was reduced to a single category of
umaparamesvarTs, consort deities of the major representations
of Siva.193 Of the few non-canonical male deities, only one, Aiyan,
is even mentioned in the inscriptions of the temple.194
It is Suresh’s contention that the Cholas instituted a deliberate
policy which he speaks of as ‘aryanization’. He means by this that
an effort was made by Chola rulers, especially Rajaraja I, not to
incorporate the deities — mostly goddesses — worshipped by
Tamils, but to displace these cults. Suresh sees this effort as a
sharp break from the previous religious history of the Tamil country
which he briefly examined.195

188 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 184-5.

189 Balasubrahmanyam, Early Chola Art, p. 43.
190 The Colas, p. 185. It is interesting to notice that if any ancient sacredness
could be assigned to Tanjavur it was in association with Vishnu, not Siva. Accord¬
ing to a purana cited by Jagdisa Ayyar, op. cit., p. 87, the name Tanjavur is said
to be for the demon (rakshasa) ‘Tanjan’ who was overcome by the lord Vishnu
as Nllamegaperumal.
191 Suresh, ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . pp. 438-9. Also see J.M. Somasundaram,
The Great Temple at Tanjore, Madras, 1935.
192 See the discussion of temples in various tenth century reigns of Cholas in
Balasubrahmanyam. op. cit., pp. 43-80, 86-229. Also, see Suresh, 'Raajaraajees¬
vara . . .’, p. 441, where the prominence of such deities as Pidaris, Kadukais as
well as Durga, Jyeshtha and others are mentioned.
193 Suresh, ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . .’, p. 439.

i9“* Ibid., p. 442.

195 See, especially, his section entitled, ‘Temples’, pp. 124 ff and 328-32, as well

as his essay, ‘Raajaraajeevara . . .’ Proceedings of the First International Conference

326 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Evidence of Classical times indicates to Suresh, as to others,

that, notwithstanding the presence of Brahmans and some Vedic
ritual performances, the ancient deities of the Tamils remained
dominant.196 These deities, the most important of whom was
Murugan, the mountain god, overshadowed the Aryan deities
Siva and Vishnu to whom reference is made but the worship of
whom, if it occurred, was subordinate to that of the Tamil gods.
Suresh sees the period from the Classical period to the advent of
the Pallavas, c a.d. 200-500, as one in which Aryan religious forms
— Buddhism, Jainism and Brahmanical cults of Siva and Vishnu
— co-existed with localized Tamil cults. This view has already
been suggested above and is quite standard in South Indian historio¬
graphy. Along with others, Suresh bases this view upon the two
contemporary epics, the Manimekalai and Cilappadikaram, though
he appears to have reservations about the degree of harmony
among faiths depicted in these works. Some religious strife, he
believes, marred relationships among the ‘aryan' faiths, and this
conflict, according to Suresh, may have deepened owing to the
political disorders of the time. It would appear that by the onset
of Pallava rule both Buddhism and Jainism had suffered serious
setbacks, not so much extirpated by as merged with Brahmanism
which triumphed during the Pallava period. What the Pallavas
began after the fifth century a.d. in utilizing state power to establish
Aryan cults under the control of Brahmans, the Cholas continued
and vigorously expanded after the ninth century. Sanskrit learning
was encouraged, and this provided the mythic sources of elaborate
Aryan cults to the detriment of more ancient Tamil religious cults.
Suresh’s findings regarding the influence of the Aryan gods
under the Cholas are impressive. Information on 174 temples
of the Kaveri basin is analysed. Of these, many are shrines of the
major deities of the Vedic pantheon, pre-eminently Siva, but several
are dedicated to Vishnu and, somewhat unusual, four to Brahma.197

of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1966, pp. 437-50.

196 The degree of dominance conceded varies among scholars, however; Aryan
and non-Aryan elements are seen as fused by Nilakanta Sastri (Development of
Religion in South India, pp. 32-4), whereas George Hart sees Tamil elements as
predominant at this time (‘Ancient Tamil Literature; Its Scholarly Past and Future’,
in Burton Stein (ed.), Essays on South India. The University Press of Hawaii,
Honolulu, 1975, pp. 41-64).
197 This analysis is less than perfectly clear since there are no tables nor clear
categories for classification. The Brahma temples include: the brahma-ku((am
 The Chola Stale and the Agrarian Order 327

Siva shrines existed in a variety of forms. Some were devoted to

Siva in his principal agamic manifestations: e.g., Chandrasekara,
Kailasamudaiyar, or Karanisvaram. But most Siva shrines were
simply identified by the suffix -isvaram just as most Vishnu shrines
were identified by the suffix -vinnagaram. Isvaram temples cons¬
tituted the largest single category among the 174 temples examined
by Suresh (49 of 174 temples).598 A substantial number of these,
almost half, were temples named for a Chola king or queen (22
of 49); the remainder of these isvaram temples were named for
Siva directly or for a goddess associated with Siva. The next largest
category of shrines (28 of 174) were named after locality deities
such as Allur nakkan or Mullur nakkan. Nakkan, according to
Suresh, was a way of indicating a Siva deity in the time before the
great Cholas; the term ceased to be important after Rajaraja I.199
Suresh noticed that temples named after places constituted a sizable
portion of the total, 24 of 174 shrines. The term ur, in this usage,
Suresh regards as a way of designating village deities. But since
most nadus were named after villages (urs) and since in some cases
the term nadu is also used, the assumption here is that such deities
were locality, rather than simply village, deities.200
The various ways of naming temples during the Chola period are
significant. Relatively few of the temple inscriptions examined
by Suresh refer to a Vedic deity — some agamic name for Siva
or Vishnu or their consorts. The overwhelmingly large number of
shrines are identified either with Chola royal titles or with place
names, and it is these two categories which provide an important
basis for Suresh’s ’aryanization’ interpretation. In considering the
first category, Suresh, quite properly, attaches special importance
to the prototypic royal shrine, that of Rajarajesvaram at Tanjavur.
This central temple structure bears inscriptions of the great ruler’s
twenty-ninth year (a.d. 1014), but refers to endowments of the
period from a.d. 1009 to 1014 to the main Vedic deities, Brihadis-

at Tanjavur and brahmTsvaram temples at Tanjavur, Perunagar, and Tirukkaluk-

kunram. The first three of these are of the time of Rajaraja I, the fourth is of the
time of Kulottunga I, HCGESI, p. 25.
198 Ibid., pp. 124-30.
i" This is supported by the findings of Karashima and Subbarayalu (op. cit.,
p. 13) where 85 per cent of those bearing the title of nakkan were found in Chola-
mandalam and, of these, around the same proportion occur in inscriptions prior
to Rajaraja I.
200 Suresh, HCGESI, pp. 124-5, 130.
328 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

vara and Chandesvara.201 Most images, however, are those of

Siva as Dakshinamurti, Lingapurana, Atavallar, Rishabavana
and Ardhanari. Consorts of Siva are represented by the general
image, Umaparamesvari. There are a few images representing the
Chola royal family and some of the nayanars (Saivite hymnist-
saints).
What is suggested to Suresh by the Tanjavur temple is the
following:

When a person takes the Raajaraajeesvaram inscriptions. . . into con¬

sideration and analyses the images kept for worship. . .the natural conclu¬
sion he arrives at is that the religion presented ... is purely canonical
and highly aryanized and is the representative picture of the religion
existing in the country at the time.202

Or, again,

Rajarajesvaram marks the stage, when the canonical pantheon was

just nearing completion, when the non-canonical gods, goddesses and
temples found it difficult to survive the new pantheon and when important
ancient religious centres like Arur, Aiyaru, and Venkadu began to survive
as Tiruvarur, Tiruvaiyaru, and Tiruvenkadu after canonizing themselves.
In short, Rajarajesvaram marks the stage of, and is the concrete presenta¬
tion of the canonical religion only, with Siva as its head. Having con¬
solidated his empire, and with [re-] sources and time at his disposal,
Rajaraja I could methodically present the new Cola pantheon, to be
developed by his successors.203

Why Rajaraja I pursued this course is not explored by Suresh

except as he notes that a ‘reason for the success of the Cola pantheon
during and after Rajarajesvaram’, was that canonical temples
like it, \ . . handled the economics of the country. . ,’204 Such
a factor is made much of by Chola historians,205 but none appear
to come as close as Suresh to the supposition that the economic
factor may have been uppermost in the motives of the Chola rulers.
That this great temple and others of the Chola period had important
economic functions is, of course, undeniable; they were large,

201 Texts and translations in v. 2.

202 ‘Raajaraajeesvaram . . op. cit., p. 439.
203 Suresh, HCGESI, p. 299.
204 Ibid., p. 300.
205 E.g., Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 654, or even more extremely, in Nilakanta
Sastri’s essay, The Economy of a South Indian Temple of the Cola Period’, Malaviya
Commemoration Volume, pp. 305-19.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 329

complex institutions required to care for a large staff of temple

servants and pilgrims. But, it is doubtful that these institutions —
which were after all not numerous in Chola country — did more in
economic terms than to manage their own complex operations.
They cannot have been created to serve or displace economic
functions which existed prior to their creation.
Suresh's studies and many of his arguments are about canonical
gods favoured and supported by the Chola rulers and, as'he would
have it, thrust upon those whom they ruled in opposition to those
deities whom the latter had long venerated. He observes, quite
correctly, that what we are permitted to know of religion during
the Chola period comes from documents (inscriptions) from canoni¬
cal temples alone.206 It is primarily through a variety of indirect
references that other forms of religion of Chola times can be seen.
Using these indirect references of the Chola period and the few,
scattered inscriptions which date from the pre-Chola period,
Suresh discusses what he calls, ‘non-canonical’ religions, in terms
similar to Whitehead and others: deities are most often female;
male deities, when they rarely occur, are essentially tutelary deities.
Contrastively, canonical deities are male, Siva or Vishnu or con¬
sorts, and they have no territorial attribute — they are universal.
In the pre-Rajaraja I religion of the Tamils, temple nomenclature
is seen to correspond with these differences. Two terms for shrines
occur in the pre-Chola and early Chola inscriptions: koil and tali.
According to Suresh, the former (from the Tamil root, kd, or
‘king’) is used for shrines of goddesses or for shrines bearing the
name of a village or locality. Tali, from the Sanskrit, ‘sthalT or
sacred place, is almost always attached to toponymic shrines of
either gods or goddesses. The suffix -Tsvaram predominates in
references to temples established in the post-Rajaraja I period
and signify, for Suresh, the full ‘canonization’ of the deity. As
Suresh states it, these terms

tell the history of the temples in a very simple way. -Kooil represents
the earliest stage, -tali the second stage represents the introduction of
Brahmanic elements converted to suit native usage, and -iisvaram the
final stage speaks of the domination of canonized temples.207

Suresh’s inventory and classification of temple inscriptions of

2°6 Suresh, HCGESI. pp. 328 and passim; ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . .’, op. cit., p. 439.
. 207 HCGESI. p. 441.
330 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the Chola period has clarified much about the religious system of
the age. Some of this bears upon the question of territorial seg¬
mentation, for his analysis reveals the widespread vitality of essen¬
tially localized shrines devoted to female deities—pidaris and
kadukah. These were tutelary cults enjoying the devotion and
patronage of people of the locality. We know little of the ritual of
these places, but many of such shrines must have been under the
ritual supervision of Brahmans as well as non-Brahman specialists.
Among the goddesses worshipped at some of these shrines were
such ‘canonized' deities as Durga and Jyeshtha which points to
some participation of Brahmans learned in the puranic-agamic
tradition.
It is Suresh’s view that these localized cults underwent changes
during the early Chola period. Some shrines in the vicinity of
Tanjavur, he believes, were forced to send many of their male and
female staff to serve in the great temple as a result of which these
shrines apparently ceased to function.208 At other shrines, goddes¬
ses which were the object of local cult worship were transformed
into Umaparamesvaris and thus linked to Siva. This ended their
careers as independent, place deities. Suresh sees this incorporation
of tutelaries, rather than their complete neglect, as a necessary
compromise of the canonicalists with the prevalence of female
deity worship; he notes that ultimately the place of goddesses
was maintained through their continued popularity as consorts
of the mahadeva as exemplified in the continued popularity of the
goddess Brihadnayaki, the consort of Brihadisvara, at Tanjavur.209
Thus, the drive to establish canonical forms of religion by Rajaraja I
and his successors was not wholly successful according to Suresh.
Female deities continued to be worshipped, possibly in ancient
ways, despite the changes in their mythic character; goddess shrines
were shortly after to be erected in the precincts of temples devoted
to Siva and Vishnu; ancient male deities of the Tamil pantheon —
Aiyan and Murugan (as Subrahmanyam) were also honoured
by shrines within the walls of the great temple at Tanjavur and
those elsewhere.
But, is it appropriate to consider, as Suresh does, that another

2°8 Suresh, ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . .’, op. cit., p. 443: ‘...most probably these
temples died a death of starvation. . .’
209 ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . .’, op. cit., p. 450.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 331

purpose of Rajaraja 1 for imposing canonical religion was to

expunge ‘native usage’, as he puts it? Here, there is some confusion.
At one point he argues that by Pallava times . . due to some force,
the native and Aryan [Brahmanical] faiths combined and got
inseparably blended, and powerful enough ... to fight the other
two faiths [Jainism and Buddhism].’210
Yet, he appears to see Rajaraja's policies of ‘propagating the
canonical religion’,211 and his ‘pressure of canonization’212 directed
against ‘native usage’. The issue does not therefore appear to be
‘aryan’ or ‘canonical’ religion against non-aryan Tamil or non-
canonical religion, for, as he points out, the religion of Tamil
country was significantly, perhaps completely ‘aryanized’ centuries
before Rajaraja. What appears to have been in process in the
policies of the Chola overlords was the attempted incorporation
of localized cults into a religious order linked to the royal cult of
Siva. This attempt seems to have been quite successful. Therefore,
Chola religious policies are not to be understood as arising from
economic purposes nor from the presumed zeal of Rajaraja and his
successors, to expunge existing forms of ritual affiliation, but from
a political design calculated to encompass independent and localized
cultic affinities within an expanding Chola hegemony. The incor¬
poration of local place and caste tutelary deities was one form of
ritual sovereignty in which the lesser gods of local chiefs and places
honour the god of the king and the god of his realm.
The Tanjavur temple dedicated to Siva as Brihadisvara was
built during the late years of Rajaraja’s reign, and most of the
records inscribed on the sides of the main shrine are his; only
a few belong to the time of Rajendra I and Kulottunga I. Of
Rajaraja’s inscriptions, all are of the twenty-ninth year of his reign
which was possibly the last year of his rule.213 The entire effort —
construction of the temple, recruitment of its staff, provision of
income and ritual implements, and, finally, preparation of the
lengthy and elegant inscriptions — was carried out in a short time,
presumably under great pressure from the now old king. Each

210 HCGESI, p. 331.

211 'Raajaraajeesvara . . op. cit., p. 450.
212 Ibid., p. 443.
213 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 183. Suresh notes that an epigraph collected
in 1953 (370/1953-4) is dated in Rajaraja’s thirty-second year; ('Raajaraajeesvara . .
p. 450 n).
332 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of these factors contribute to the sense of deliberateness, even

urgency, of the undertaking.
The forced development of the temple is evident from yet other
features. The shrine belongs to that small class of temples which
had no pretension to ancient sacredness; it was not mentioned
among the hundreds of places cherished and celebrated by Saiva
hymnists, and the chronicle of the temple (sthala purdna) does
not even bother to invent an ancient sanctity. Like other temples
possessing instant sanctity, the god is revealed in a dream. Accord¬
ing to the Brihadisvara Mahatmya, the chronicle of the temple,
the Brahman guru of Rajaraja related a dream to the king in which
isvara (Siva) appeared and advised that if the king wished to rid
himself of a disease (black leprosy or krishna kustha) he should
build a temple with a great tower to shelter a linga from the Narbada
region called Brihadisvara.214 The design features of the temple
have been extensively noted by art historians and add weight to
the argument. Unlike almost every other South Indian temple,
it was created and executed to a unitary design. Quite apart from
the striking effect produced by this, in contrast to the melange
of structures which clutter most temple precints, this feature
points to the builder’s purpose and determination. Also, this
effort to create a stunning monument — and it was surely this
which inspired the towering 190 foot central shrine surmounted
by a huge granite sphere — was obviously not intended to supply
a deficiency to the Kaveri region. There were already numerous
impressive temples in the immediate vicinity, and at Chidambaram
(Tillai) at the northern edge of the Kaveri core region was perhaps
the premier Siva temple of the macro region.215
A further indication of the manner in which the temple was
pressed to completion by Rajaraja was in the means of recruiting
temple staff. This imperious incorporation of the servants of
other gods of the region was a demonstration of dominance in the
central domain of a ruler without parallel in South Indian history.
Several lengthy inscriptions on the base of the central tower of
the Rajarajesvari shrine inventory the personnel commanded by
Rajaraja to fill the numerous and varied functions of the place.
Three hundred celibate priests from two hundred villages; four
hundred women (presumably singers and dancets, though Nila-

214 Somasundaram, op. cit., p. 40; citing ch. 11 of the purana.

215 Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., p. 65.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 333

kanta Sastri calls them ‘hetaerae’)216 drawn from every social

stratum and from a large number of goddess shrines; musicians,
male hymn singers, artists, accountants, watchmen, and armed
guards: all were commanded to come to the temple from their
named villages in the Kaveri core. Special streets (talicceri) were
designated for their residence around the temple.217 Income for
all of these servants and the various kinds of ritual were elaborately
provided for and recorded in inscriptions.
Wealth came from two sources. First, there was the treasure
that Rajaraja had accumulated from his successful military cam¬
paigns in all parts of the macro region as well as Lanka. These
predatory activities and the prizes produced by them are enumerated
in the temple inscriptions; from this plunder came jewels to bedeck
the images of the temple and gold and silver to be fashioned into
ritual implements and ornaments. The second source of wealth
has the appearance of being tribute gathered by the king from
various territorial associations (niyayam) of the Kaveri core terri¬
tories. These were cash endowments deposited with the manager
of the temple. Loan operations of these funds by the temple
manager yielded a stream of income to support ritual.218 The
source of these cash ‘gifts’, the niyayams, are called ‘regiments’
by Nilakanta Sastri and most other scholars, named for the va(a-
nadu from which they came.219 The impression conveyed in con¬
sidering niyayam as ‘regiments’ of a centralized army, as is usually
done, is that such temple grants were a redeployment of state funds.
However, if the term, niyayam, is taken in its more inclusive mean¬
ing of a group or an association of persons having similar functions,
as other scholars have taken it, then the explicit military identifica¬
tion of the groups is weakened, and the money payments may be
seen as tribute or even extortion commanded by the king from
wealthy locality groups on the Kaveri core.220

216 The Co[as, p. 653.

217 S.t.I., v. 2, no.69, pp. 312 ff. and no.70, pp. 328 ff.
218 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 654.
219 The Colas, p. 454; K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, T.A.S., v. 3, p. 74, and Suresh,
‘Raajaraajeesvara . . .’
22<> Tamil Lexicon, p. 2258, ‘niyayam'-, S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’ and D.C. Sircar, Indian
Epigraphical Glossary (Delhi: 1966), pp. 221-2 agree with the more inclusive de¬
finition. K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, in T.A.S., v. 3, p. 74, in discussing a tenth century
Succindram inscription notes that while the term niyayam may often refer to soldiers,
in the particular record and in most others it has a more inclusive meaning as an
334 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Though considerable urgency appears to have been taken to

complete the Tanjavur temple by it builder, construction was not
completed at the time of Rajaraja’s death. Suresh draws attention
to this.221 He notes that many of the incomplete parts of the
structure had to await the attention of the sixteenth century Naya-
kas of Tanjavur, and he wonders why Rajaraja’s successor Rajendra
did not complete his father’s work. One answer to this question
is that the latter soon began major construction on his palace
and temple at the new capital of Gangaikondacholapuram, but
this only raises another query: why did Rajendra abandon the
site which had served as the Chola capital from the time of Vijaya-
laya and which had been magnificently enriched by the great temple
itself?
One answer to this question has already been proposed, that is,
strategic considerations might have dictated the locational decision.
Greater control over or defence of the Kaveri basin from the nor¬
thern intermediate zones of Tondaimandalam and Naduvil-nadu
could have been important. Alternatively, or perhaps additionally,
it is possible that Rajendra’s creation of a new capital is to be seen
as an alteration of Chola kingship of a magnitude as significant
as that witnessed in the Pallava kingship during the time of Nandi-
varman II. This change, initiated by Rajaraja, was the depiction
of the king as a more complete secular representative of sacred
authority, the head of a royal cult. Such a suggestion is fully
consonant with the medieval Indian conception of kingship as
Hopkins long ago pointed out and as already mentioned above.222
This is the avatara notion metamorphosed to apply to the king as a
divine incarnation and dramatically set forth in the Mahabharata
and Ramayana. Support for the recitation of the epics was as
popular among South Indian kings as among Northern ones.
Moreover, as D.C. Sircar has pointed out, the Chalukyan kings of
Badami appeared to be claiming just such a status in their use of
the title sri-prithivl-vallabha (or sri vallabha or simply vallabha)
along with their personal names, suggesting that they were incarna¬
tions of Vishnu (i.e., husband of sri and prithivf).22i

association. S.I.I., v. 17, no.460 (429/1904) refers to niyayattar as a general associa¬

tion.
221 Suresh, ‘Raajaraajeesvara . . pp. 449-50.
222 ‘The Divinity of Kings’, JAOS, v. 50 (1931), p. 314.
223 Indian Epigraphy, p. 337.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 335

It is this aspect of sacral Hindu kingship which received its

most elaborate development among the kings of South-East Asia.
The Khmer king Jayavarman II of the early ninth century is regarded
as the first to make use of the deva-raja (god-king) concept accord¬
ing to D.G.E. Hall:

[Jayavarman II] took into his service a Brahman, Sivakaivalya, who

became the first priest of the new cult which he established as the official
religion. It was that of the Deva-raja, the God-king, a form of Saivism
which centred on the worship of the linga as the king’s personality trans¬
mitted to him by Siva through the medium of his Brahman chaplain. The
prosperity of the kingdom was considered to be bound up with the royal
linga. Its sanctuary was the summit of a temple mountain . . . which
was the centre of the capital .... the axis of the universe. . . . From his
time onwards for several centuries it was the duty of every Khmer king
to raise his temple mountain for the preservation of the royal linga, which
enshrined his sacred ego. Thus arose the great temples which were the
glory of the Angkor region.224

The god-king conception is one of the most perplexing elements in

the still unclear relationship between ancient India and South-east
Asia. It is the one element of ‘Hinduized' kingship in early South¬
east Asia which cannot be found fully developed in contemporary
India, though some features of the mature institution can be identi¬
fied. While it would be inappropriate to attempt to deal conclusively
with the matter here, it is possible to indicate a line of development in
medieval South India which resulted in something close to the deva-
raja institution of South-east Asia monarchy. This line of argument
stems from the emergence of royal tombs or funerary temples in the
macro region. As to the probable origin of this institution, the
following statement by Balasubrahmanyam appears prudent:

... we do not know whether (the ‘personality or 'devaraja' cults) had an

earlier common origin or was an outflow from India or had an independent
parallel development in the two regions (of South-east Asia and India).
We have to suspend judgement till such time as we get more light on the
question, and, meanwhile, rest satisfied with the knowledge that similar
cults were in existence more or less in the same period in the lands bordering
on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, though the devaraja cult of South¬
east Asia had its own peculiar development, with individualistic features
of its own.225
A major element in the god-king conception of ancient Cambodia,

224 A History of South-East Asia, New York, 1965, p. 93.

' 225 Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., p. 20.
336 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Java, and southern Annam (Champa) was the royal funerary

temple. Coedes used the terms ‘funerary temple’ and 'mausoleum'
for temples in Java, Bali, and Ankor,226 and long before him, a
thirteenth century Chinese, Chan Ta-kuan, spoke of Ankor Wat
as the tomb of the Chinese god of architecture, Lou Pan.227 As
tombs, these South-east Asian structures were believed to have
received the ashes or body of the dead king for whose honour and
in whose name the edifices were known. As temples, they sheltered
a sivalinga, most commonly called Bhadresvara with which the
king was connected.228 Bhadresvara appears to have been the
tutelary god of the kings of Champa229 from at least the fourth
century when the warrior Bhadravarman constructed a wooden
temple in honour of the sivalinga Bhadresvara as ‘the national
shrine of Champa’ according to Briggs.230 Thus commenced
‘the Cham custom of forming the name of the national tutelary
deity by combining the name of the founder or reigning king with
-esvara (=Siva), a custom which does not seem to have taken root
in Cambodia until several centuries later',231 Briggs also follows
Coedes in attributing the first use of kingly suffix varman to this
fourth century Champa king.232
The royal sivalinga tutelary Bhadresvara may have come into
existence as Briggs assumed, that is, as a deification of the king
Bhadra signified in the suffix Jsvara. However, a Bhadresvara
sivalinga existed contemporaneously in India. Religious seals
bearing this linga are seen in the fourth or fifth century a.d.233
There is no suggestion that this Indian sivalinga was connected to
a royal cult, as in Cambodia, nor is there other evidence of such a
connection during the Gupta period or later, until, perhaps, Chola
times. The identification of kings with Siva appears thus to have

226 Cited in Lawrence P. Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire. Philadelphia, 1957,
p. 204.
227 Ibid., p. 203; B.R. Chatterji, Indian Cultural Influence in Cambodia, Calcutta,
1964, pp. 206-14.
228 Chatterji, op. cit., p. 72; other references to Bhadresvara: pp. 37. 99, 147,
172, 215, covering a period from the late ninth to the middle of the fourteenth
centuries.
229 Briggs, op. cit., p. 15: ‘patron saint of the Chains’.
22<> Ibid., p. 25.
23> Ibid., p. 24.
232 Loc. cit..
233 J.N. Banerjea, Development oj Hindu Iconography, Calcutta, 1956, pp. 182-3.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 337

been a South-east Asian phenomenon, but the sivalinga as an

element of South-east Asian kingly tradition may have been trans¬
ferred from India to South-east Asia during the Gupta period.
The sivalinga at Tanjavur, Brihadisvara, is not of the classic
and well-known ones. The name does not appear among the many
listed in the standard iconographic works of T.A. Gopinatha Rao
or Banerjea.234 Moreover, the form of this sivalinga is distinctive.
It is a very large, wide column, and the name brihdd- probably is a
reference to its massiveness.235 Massive lingas exist at relatively
tew South Indian temples, and the Brihadisvara sivalinga is found
at only two temples: Rajaraja’s temple at Tanjavur and Rajendra’s
temple at Gangaikondacholapuram.236
Popularization of public linga worship and thus the appro¬
priateness of the sivalinga as an element of a royal Siva cult in
South India was a relatively late development. It does not appear
much before the sixth century.237 Sankaracharya, the great Siva
teacher, may have contributed to its increased importance pursuant
to the assimilation of popular sex cults into Hindu orthopraxy as
P. Thomas and others have suggested.238 Another probable
factor in the popularization of public linga worship may have
been the prevailing use of columns or upright stones in the ancestor
worship of South India.239 Both of these factors — sex cults and
phallus worship as well as the established use of the stone pillar
in ancestor rites — help in an understanding of the major royal
shrines at Tanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram. Both shrines
were religious centres which emphasized canonical forms of Siva
worship, but they combined with this the powerful elements of
ancestor worship of the massive linga and the focus upon the royal
house as cult centre through the worship of the dead king at his
pallippadai or samadhi shrine. The massive sivalinga incorporated
both developments symbolically.
The Brihadisvara temples at Tanjavur and Gangaikondachola-

234 Elements of Hindu Iconography, Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, New

York, 1968; originally Madras, 1914, v. 2, pt 1; Banerjea, op. cit., pp. 454 ff.
235 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 735. The brihatsamihita
of Varahamihara, a sixth century work on images and lingas, discusses the brihat
form; a translation of a portion of which is found in Banerjea, op. cit., pp. 579-89.
236 Banerjea, op., cit., p. 463; Jagdisa Ayyar, op. cit., pp. 63, 87.
237 See, ‘Dravidians’, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, v. 5, p. 12.
238 P. Thomas, Epics, Myths and Legends of India, 8th ed., Bombay, n.d., p. 69.
239 Banerjea, op. cit., p. 463.
338 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

puram were funerary temples, that is, shrines dedicated to the dead.
Though images of the dead were expressly proscribed in many of
the texts governing ritual practices, the installation of memorial
portrait statues was resorted to by the Chola family prior to Raja-
raja’s time. Balasubrahmanyam noted a Siva temple at Solapuram
(Vellore taluk, North Arcot) of the late ninth century which is
called a ‘Siva temple’ (Tsvara-alayam) as well as a ‘tomb’ (atlta
griham).240 This shrine was apparently erected over some royal
personage. Later, the Chola queen Sembiyan-Mahadeviyar, wife
of Gandaradityadeva and mother of Uttama Chola who preceded
Rajaraja I, installed a portrait statue of her husband at the Koneri-
rajapuram temple which she erected.241 The installation of portrait
images by Rajaraja and his sister in the Tanjavur temple had
precedent therefore, and Rajaraja is known to have established
paUippadais at Melpadi in Tondaimandalam for the Chola Arinjaya,
son of Parantaka I242 and at Tondaiman-Arrur, near Kalahasti
as a memorial to Aditya I.243 But the personal cult characteristics
at Tanjavur were deepened by the inauguration there of recitations
and dramatic presentations based upon Rajaraja’s life. The drama
rdjarajesvara-ndtakam and the eulogistic poem (kavya) rajaraja-
vijayam were performed at times of festivals, according to the
inscriptions of the temple. Unfortunately, no extant versions of
these works have survived so it is impossible to say more about
them.244 Moreover, as George Spencer has pointed out,245 the
frescoes of the Rajarajesvara central shrine — notable art works
in their own right — contain a painting of Siva in the warrior pose
of Tripurantaka. Sivaramamurti commented on this depiction
of the god Siva, as conqueror, and Spencer underscores the sugges¬
tive relationship to the conquering king, Rajaraja.246
The importance of funerary shrines of the tenth century, prior
to the time of Rajaraja I, may have stemmed as much from the need

24° Op. cit., p. 20.

241 A.R.E., 1927, para. 13; Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 142, 152, 452-3.
242 A R E., 1927, para. 14; Arinjisvara temple.
244 T.A.S., v. 3, pt 1, p. Ill; Asityesvara temple. Discussing this shrine in a
recent work on Chola temples, Mathuram Bhootalingam has referred to the funerary
function as a ‘Buddhist practice’, Movement in Stone: A Studv of Some Chola
Temples, Somani Publications, 1969. p. 16.
244 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 663-4.
245 Spencer, ‘Religious Networks and Royal Influence . . .’, p. 50.
246 Sivaramamurti, Royal Conquests and Cultural Migrations, p. 6.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 339

to clarity the line of succession as to honour a dead king. The

period of Gandaraditya and Arinjaya (c. a.d. 956) was one of
considerable political confusion when different kings were men¬
tioned for the same period.247 At times none were mentioned
at all. Thus, there were a series of contemporary inscriptions from
Tondaimandalam, complete in all ways, including Saka dates,
but failing to mention the ruling king. The epigraphist who edited
these records surmised that for at least a decade there was much
uncertainty in the central plain about which of various members
of the Chola family was ruling, or whether any was.248
No ambiguity surrounded Rajaraja's tenure. It would therefore
seem that the purpose of the Tanjavur temple as a funerary shrine,
a place where Chola rulers were given the status of‘divine beings.’249
as \vell as the centre of the royal cult, was related to other efforts
by him to use canonical religious forms to extend the scope of Chola
royal authority within and beyond the Kaveri domain.
Given the obvious and effective power of Rajaraja and his
successors in their Kaveri central domain, it cannot be supposed
that the royal Siva cult was simply for the purpose of securing the
Kaveri basin under Chola control. The royal cult, the prominence
of brahmanical forms, and the network of Brahmanical institutions
in the intermediate and peripheral zones of the Chola state is best
viewed as a means by Chola rulers to affect ritual hegemony over
the numerous locality chieftains of the macro region. Each of
the latter exercised effective and legitimate rule (ksatra) over a
greater or lesser territory at the beginning of Rajaraja’s reign and
most continued to enjoy that power throughout the Chola period.
What Rajaraja and his successors perfected was a conception of
dharmic incorporation which did two things: it strengthened Chola
authority and it provided locality chiefs with stronger ritual or
symbolic bases for their own local rule. Both objectives depended
upon sharing in the brahmanically-centred canonical system
fostered by the Chola rulers and centred in Tanjavur. The particular
means adopted by Rajaraja and his successors to convert older
forms of local legitimacy of chiefs, first seen during Pallava times,
into a consistent and regular system based upon the ritual supremecy

247 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 142-3.

248 A.R.E., 1927, para. 14.
249 Ibid. .
340 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of the Chola rulers were very successful. Each local chief, his
power based upon the internal organization of his locality, came
to acquire a ritual competence related to the ritual supremecy of
the Chola rulers.
The means of articulating the ritual sovereignty emanating from
Chola kings and extending over local chieftains must be examined.
This examination is guided by the propositions advanced by
Professor Southall dealing with administration and adminstrative
staffs which linked parts of the segmentary state to the whole
through the manipulation of ritual elements.
In reviewing the administration of the Chola segmentary state,
it is necessary to recognize the importance of sacred symbols.
Rajaraja I brought two processes of religious change together in a
royal cult with the purpose of providing an enhanced, if not a new,
dynamic element of ideological integration to the political order
of South India. In this, he made astute use of individual as well as
communities of Brahmans who, operating from their unique
settlements, as part of an overarching ideological framework,
knit together far-flung and diverse peoples of the southern peninsula.
Here, rather than in any putative centralized and bureaucratized
state, is the genius of Rajaraja seen and appreciated. In his con¬
tinuous, at times massive, support of canonical deities, Rajaraja
raised Brahmans of the broad territory in which his influence
prevailed to a new peak of esteem and social power. Perhaps not
since the age of the Brahmana texts, when the great srauta sacrifices
dominated high religious ritual, did Brahmans enjoy the patronage
they had under the Cholas. It is true of course that the religion
of the Chola age was no longer based upon the sacrificial rites of
the Later Vedic age, but was now a religion of temple worship
and personal devotion in which the intercession of Brahmans was
weakened. But, in return for this diminished sacral power. Brah¬
mans, at least in South India, attained a degree of secular authority
not previously held.
That secular power was not just a result of royal design and
support. It was based upon the patronage of local chiefs, some of
ancient lineages of chiefs, but most of ordinary peasant stock, long
the source of locality leadership in South Indian society. During
the Pallava age. Brahmans and peasants established close inter¬
dependencies based upon mutual benefits; the Chola period saw
this alliance flower to the full extent of its possibilities. Most
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 341

nadus came to possess at least one brahmadeya where some forms

of sastric learning and the devotional worship of puranic deities
were carried on. The nattars, as the sponsors of these activities,
probably never sought and certainly did not achieve the exalted
status of yajamcina warriors of the Later Vedic age. But these
peasant locality leaders did enjoy prominence, precedence, and a
degree of interaction with Brahmanical learning and ritual
adopting much of this culture as their own in their public and their
domestic behaviour — which separated them from the lower
status groups of local society. With Brahmans, these dominant
peasant groups maintained a tradition of Tamil learning which is
solidly evidenced in the great writers of the age who were Vellalas,
such as Sekkilar, author of the Periyapuranam; with Brahmans,
also, as the Saiva Siddhanta movement of the thirteenth century
made clear, some among these locality peasant groups cultivated
the highest competence in Sanskritic knowledge.
The ideological framework of Chola ritual hegemony is analys-
able in terms of concrete institutions and the essentially administra¬
tive processes revolving around them.
The keystone of the system of ritual hegemony was the royal
Siva cult. Chola kings, or kingly centres, were the most obvious
source of the canonical emphasis upon which was based the culture
of the Chola segmentary state and, to a large extent, the vast
territorial sphere of its influence. Temples dedicated to vedic
gods — primarily Siva — greatly multiplied during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, and these institutions were focal points
in the network of Chola hegemony. Many of these temples
sheltered gods bearing the name of Chola kings, and most bore one
or more of the long, standardized inscriptions of the reigning
Chola king. The Brihadisvara temples of Rajaraja at Tanjavur
and Rajendra at Gangaikondacholapuram were unique in their
size and artistic qualities, fitting symbols of a powerful, sacred
kingship. Moreover, in their canonical character and their pro¬
cedures of worship, they were models for the hundreds of temples
erected in the two centuries of Chola rule. For the many older
temples which were enlarged and renovated, these premier temples
were also models. Consider the impact of just one architectural
element established at the Gangaikondacholapuram temple. There,
an impressive symbol was created to connect the temple with
the sacred Ganga. Rajendra constructed a tank which was
342 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

called, ‘a liquid pillar of victory (jalamayastambha)’ and named

Cholaganga to commemorate his ‘conquest’ of the Ganga. This
tank was created of water brought from the sacred river which had
been carried in pots from the north. These pots of Ganga water
were supposedly stored temporarily at places of rest as they were
carried to Tamil country, and at each such place, a gahgamandapam
or hall for the water, was constructed.250 At the same temple,
images were installed which were quite different from those usually
seen in South India at the time. Brahma and Agni were depicted
as old men, bearded and pot-bellied, as they were iconographically
represented in contemporary northern India and in contrast to the
youthful forms these deities usually took in South India.251 Siva
was depicted in the form of Lakulisa, a form most popular in
Gujarat and Kalinga, but also important at the important Siva
shrine of Tiruvorriyur in northern Tondaimandalam.252
Rajendra seems to have been drawn to the important Siva centre
at Tiruvorriyur. This shrine was celebrated by the nayandr
Appar who visited there in the seventh century,253 and Sankara-
charya is said to have performed a miracle upon the goddess of
Tiruvorriyur similar to that which he performed with the presiding
goddess at Kanchi, Kamakshi. Hearing that the Tiruvorriyur
goddess was fierce and that she demanded animal and human sacri¬
fices, Sankara is said to have converted her to bhakti forms.254
While purged of some unacceptable ritual elements, Tiruvorriyur
continued as a centre of Pasupata Saivism against which there was
much contemporary inveighing.255 This temple was the centre
of an order (sampraddyam) devoted to the Soma Siddhanta or
Pasupata school of Saivism under a line of teachers with the title
of Chaturanana Pundita. One of the gurus of this line, born of a
family of chiefs in Kerala, rose to a high post of advisor to Rajaditya,

250 Sivaramamurti, op. cit., pp. 22-3.

251 The distinctions between northern and southern iconographic forms are
discussed in the brihatsamhita in Banerjea, op. cit . p. 583 and in Gopinatha Rao,
op. cit., v. 2, pt 1, p. 92.
252 Sivaramamurti, op. cit., pp. 23-4, 27, The Raman, Early History of the Madras
Region, p. 195.
253 Raman, The Early History of the Madras Region, p. 13.
254 Ibid., p. 196, where the suggestion is made that the offending goddess was
destroyed, though it is still worshipped.
255 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 648-9.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 343

son ot Parantaka, before becoming a member of the ascetic order.256

Rajendra maintained close relations with this Pasupata nuitha
as evidenced by two inscriptions of a.d. 1012 and 1043257 which
record the celebration of the birthday of the king and refer to
temple construction he sponsored at Tiruvorriyur.258 Later Cholas
also continued this association with the Pasupata teachers as well
as following Rajendra in his grants to Brahmans who recited Vedas
there.259
Close association of the Cholas with distinguished Brahmans
was made a prominent issue in the inscriptions of the time of
Rajendra and Kulottunga 1. In a number of records, Chola kings
are said to have conferred grants upon Brahman supplicants
while dining. According to the Karandai Plates of Rajendra I,
the king was dining in a hall at Chidambaram when he was asked
to make a grant by a high Brahman official.260 In another of
Rajendra’s grants this is also mentioned,261 and Kulottunga I is also
described as dining when he made a gift to Brahmans while in
Kanchi.262 These references to dining are peculiar since inscriptions
are usually free of such mundane factual information. Occasionally,
a king may be reported to have issued orders for a certain grant while
‘in camp’ at some place, but this reference was usually in the context
of praising recent military victories of the king. The appearance
of the king being in a situation of intimacy with religious leaders,
brahmadeya leaders, or some Brahman in his service is contrived.
Considering the importance of food taking as a context for register¬
ing status relations, these references cannot simply be dismissed
as a rare bit of verisimilitude in the inscriptions.
Relations of the Chola rulers with individual savants of high
status and accomplishment such as the Chaturanana Punditas
of Tiruvorriyur and the illustrious brahmarayans in their service
were less important for the propagation of a standard royal ideology

256 Ibid., p. 649, based on an inscription of a.d. 960; Raman, The Early History
of the Madras Region, p. 197.
257 Raman, The Early History of the Madras Region, p. 197, referring to 104/1912
and 126/1912.
258 Ibid., p. 198, citing a twelfth century inscription of Rajadhiraja II.
259 Ibid., p. 228.
260 A.R.E., 1961-2, p. 12; the grant was made on the request of a brahmarayan.
261 Ibid., no.429, dated in the third year of the king and found at Uyyakondan-
Tirumalai, Tiruchirapalli taluk.
2t>2 S.I.I., v. 17, no.207, p. 74.
344 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

than the association of the Cholas with brahmadeyas and other

corporately organized communities of the learned. In this, as in
other things, the Cholas were following the precedent of the Palla-
vas who appeared to have maintained an interest and perhaps
some control over centres of brahmanical learning in Tondai-
mandalam.263 Such Pallava and, later, Chola policies have most
often been understood by historians to be manifestations ol the
appreciation of Indian rulers for brahmanical learning for its
own sake; it is otherwise seen as a means of demonstrating proper
regal (rajadharma) behaviour in accordance with their claim to
being of the solar line of Kshatriyas and thereby entitled to perform
the Vedic Kshatriya ritual of the asvamedha as allegedly done by
Rajadhiraja, Rajaraja I’s grandson.264 However, these attributed
reasons for Chola royal munificence to and association with the
learned Brahmans and non-Brahmans undervalues the importance
of the latter in maintaining the system of ritual hegemony of Chola
kings.
Brahmadeyas were admirably suited to this purpose. Beyond the
multifarious secular functions of these settlements and their
complex internal and external relationships, brahmadeyas were
the major points in the spatial network of Chola ritual hegemony.
In these hundreds of settlements throughout the macro region,
Sanskrit and Sanskrit learning were preserved and transmitted;
here temples dedicated to canonical deities set the style of appro¬
priateness in the worship of devotional Hinduism; here, finally, was
the last asylum for cognoscenti and practitioners of the ancient Vedic
religion which had all but been displaced by temple-centred devo¬
tional religion.265 And, it must be remembered that brahmadeyas
were not exclusively Brahman settlements. The only social group
which was explicitly forbidden residence in a brahmadeva was
the Ilava, those who tapped the coconut and palmyra palms for
a fermentable juice (‘toddy’ in modern South India).266 Apart
from Havas, brahmadeyas were multi-ethnic settlements where
peasants, artisans, and merchants, as well as Brahmans resided,

263 S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, pp. 11-12.

264 Ibid., pp. 10-11.

265 Nilakanta Saslri, Development of Religion in South India, pp. 26-7 and The
Colas, p. 451.
266 See for example, ‘The Tiruvalangadu Copper-Plates of the Sixth year of
Rajendra-Chola I', S.I.I.. v. 5, pt III, p. 437 and Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 578.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 345

judging from the specification of and dues of these groups as

residents of the Brahman settlements. Thus, while enjoying con¬
siderable and conspicuous self-government, the brahmadeya was
not isolated from its rural context. On the contrary, it was in
every way woven into the texture of rural society and ideally suited
to its political function in the system of ritual hegemony managed
by the Chola rulers.
Brahmadeyas of the Chola period had come to supersede the
more ancient centres of learning, ghatikds and sdlais; the functions
of preserving and transmitting higher learning formerly associated
with the relatively few such centres had for the most part come to
be encompassed within, or better, diffused among brahmadeyas
from the tenth century onwards. Even then, however, a few
brahmadeyas continued to be distinctive for their institutions of
higher learning: Ennayiram, Tribhuvani, Tirumukkudal, and
Tiruvaduturai. It is hardly surprising that the pluralistic settle¬
ments governed by Brahman assemblies, mahasabhas, should
have become the premier centres of higher learning during the Chola
period. Apart from a few well-endowed temples, there were few
other places which could have supported great learning. But,
the proliferation of these centres of Brahman specialists of know¬
ledge and ritual give an appearance of design which should be noted.
Attention is again drawn to Rajaraja I as one who recognized the
potential contribution which sastric and ritual scholars could
make to the maintenance of the Chola state.
Very early in Rajaraja’s reign, his third year,267 a military
campaign was launched into southern Kerala from which he
emerged with the first of his long list of conquest titles — mummadi
cola rfevar (the Chola ruling the three kingdoms). He also claimed
another achievement which was repeated by his successors, and
this claim remains one of the oldest historical puzzles of the Chola
period. The claim is contained in the phrase: kandalursalaik-
kalamarutta; it is found in the inscriptions of Rajaraja I, Rajendra
Rajadhiraja I, and Kulottunga E A reconsideration of this ins-
criptional phrase by T.N. Subramaniam suggests the possibility
that the actions of Rajaraja and his successors at Kandalur, may
not have been as important militarily as ideologically.268

267 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 189, note 5.

268 v. 3, pt 2, pp. 1-13.
346 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The phrase has been read in two quite different ways. It has
come to be interpreted by historians as. ‘the destruction of the
ships at the port (or roadstead, in the navigational sense) of
Kandalur in Venddu.269 However, another interpretation of this
phrase given by E. Hultzsch in the first volume of South Indian
Inscriptions (1890) and by T.A. Gopinatha Rao in an early volume
of the Travancore inscriptional collection.270 The latter interpreta¬
tion takes the word, salai, which is in the now conventional inter¬
pretation understood as ‘port’ or ‘roadstead’, in its more common
meaning as a ‘hall’, ‘institution of learning’ (c.f. pat ha said) or
‘charitable institution’.271 This latter meaning is more acceptable
on two grounds. First of all, salai, glossed as ‘roadstead or port
occurs in this phrase only within the corpus of Chola inscriptions;
secondly,the meaning adopted by Huhzsch, Gopinatha Rao, and,
more recently, Subramaniam is more sound linguistically.272
Salai is the tadbhava form of the Sanskrit word said, meaning:
‘mansion’ or ‘building’. It is this gloss of salai found in an important
earlier inscription, one of a.d. 865, describing the establishment of a
facility (salai) for ninety-five learned celibates (sat tars) said in
the inscription to be like the salai at Kandalur.273
The establishment of a salai modelled after the one at Kandalur
was at a place called Parthvasekharapuram near modern Trivand¬
rum city; Kandalur is a part of modern Trivandrum.274 Beneficia¬
ries of this grant were advanced Vedic students, those seeking
proficiency in three branches of Vedic study, and it was stipulated
as a condition of admission to the salai that each scholar have an
adequate foundation in vydkarana, mimamsa, and paurdhitya,275

269 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 169. 189-90 and 222; K.V. Subrahmanya
Aiyer, Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekhan, v. 1, pp. 246, 258; S.I.I., v. 2, pp. 35,
47, 241, 250.
270 v. 1, p. 65, where Hultzsch provides the reading: " [the king] was pleased
to build a jewel-like hall at Kandalur; Gopinatha Rao, T.A.S., v. 1, pp. 2, lOn;
S. Desikavinayakam Pillai, Kerala State Papers, Srs. 2, pp. 100ft'., cited in S.I.T.I..
v. 3, pt 2, p. 2n, and discussed in The Colas, p. 190.
271 Proposed by S.D. Pillai as cited in The Co/as. p. 190, and 5.7.7’./.. v. 3 pt 2,
p. 2n.
272 T.A.S.. v. 1, pp. 2, 10, note 22; Monier-Willians, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary,
p. 1067.
273 'The Huzur Office Plates’, T.A.S., v. 1, pp. 1-14.
274 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 190.
275 T.A.S. v. 1, p. 13; these terms refer to grammar, logic, and domestic ritual.
J.F. Staal has noted that Veda recitations continued to be performed in Trivandrum,
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 347

Other provisions stipulated in the plates make it clear that this

institution was a type of Vedic and Sanskrit school (pathasald)
in which the ninety-five scholars were not only to become proficient
in Vedic studies and logic, but were also to gain competence in
secular subjects. Thus, this institution was very like the ghatika
at Kanchi to which the Brahman king-to-be, Kadamba Mayur-
sarmam, went in the fifth century in order to acquire proficiency
in pravachana, or recitation,276 and, possibly also like the Kanchi
school, the sdlai at Parthivasekharapuram was not simply an
institution of higher Vedic studies, but a school in which secular
training was also important. This is suggested by several references
in the Huzur Office Plates of a.d. 865. Among the requirements
for appointment to the sdlai was, that the sattars possess competence
in learning necessary for the affairs of the three kingdoms (trairdjya
vyavahdra). The secular learning may have included martial
arts as there are references to fines for infractions of members of
the sdlai which included physical assault with or without weapons
or wearing weapons to meetings.277 A final provision in the grant
strengthens the secular character, or at least the less than rigorous
asceticism, of its nominally celibate members is the explicit exclu¬
sion of ‘maid servants’ or ‘concubines' (vellattigal) from their
quarters.278
The Tamil language Huzur Office Plates of a.d. 865 state at the
outset that the new sdlai endowed by the king Sri Karunandadakkan
was established in conformity with the rules (maryada) of Kandalur.
The opening portion of the first plate reads in part as follows.

The fifteenth day of the ninth year of (the reign of) the king Karunanda¬
dakkan (being current) on this day, having acquired gradually from the
Sabha of Minchirai, by granting other lands in exchange for the (plot
of) land known as Ulakkudivilai which belonged to them; letting (loose)
an elephant round the land (for marking its boundary); raising on it a
beautiful temple; setting in the temple (the image of) Vishnubhattaraka
and calling (the village) Parthivasekharapuram, the king Sri Karunan-
dadekkan made (established), in conformity with the rules of Kandalur,
a sdlai for ninety [sic] five sattars.219

at the palace: Nambudiri Veda Recitation (‘s-Gravenhage, 1961), p. 34.

276 George Moraes, The Kadamba Kula, pp. 10, 15; E.C., v. 7, Sk: 176, p. 113
of translations.
277 T.A.S.. v. 1, p. 13.
27» T.A.S., v. 1, p. 13; S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 5.
279 T.A.S., v. 1, p. 10. Note 22 here states that salai ‘means a public institution
348 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The clarity with which this is stated and the obvious meaning of
salai as a learned institution in this record argues against the
continued acceptability of the conventional interpretation about
destruction of ships at Kandalur. One reason for the conventional
interpretation is that the phrases kandalur-salaik-kalamarutta
occurs in Chola inscriptions among conquests claimed by the
kings in the eulogistic introductions of whose inscriptions it is
found.
In his review of the problem presented by the phrase and the
Huzur Office plates of Trivandrum, T.N. Subramaniam offers
an explanation which addresses the matter in a more convincing
way. Considering the Huzur Office plates and other evidence of
the importance of similar institutions of higher learning, Subra¬
maniam concludes that the idiom of conflict and conquest connec¬
ted with Kandalur was appropriate in the records of Rajaraja
and his successors since it referred to a polemical contest between
the king and learned men of the salai resulting in the defeat of the
latter and their submission and subsequent cooperation with the
Cholas.280 This is, of course, a classic kind of encounter in ancient
India in which the defeated accept the view of the victor.281 This
idiom of conflict and conquest figures prominently in the hagio-
graphical sectarian literature of the medieval period in which great
saints and teachers subdue rivals in argument and earn their

of a charitable nature' and gives textual evidence in support; also noted is tadbhava
form of word for the Sanskrit, said.
280 S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 11.
281 King Janaka of Videha is an early example of such a victor. According to
a Satapatha Brabamana tale, Janaka met several Brahmans, including the learned
Yajnavalkya, and asked how each performed the agnihotra rite. Having heard
each of the Brahmans, the king said that he considered Yajnavalkya's account
the best and rewarded the latter with 100 cows, but only after saying that not even
that most learned of Brahmans could tell what became of the two libations of the
ritual. With that, Janaka drove off leaving several of the Brahmans chagrined that
this rajanya had made fools of them and resolving to challange the king to a formal
disputation. Yajnavalkya dissuaded the others from that course with the caution
that if the Brahmans were to win, none would be impressed, for that is what was
to be expected; but, suppose the king were to win! Yajnavalkya then ran to over¬
take the king and to obtain from him the correct answer. After receiving that answer,
the Brahman sage resolved that henceforward he would ask the questions and
listen respectfully to Janaka's answers. Janaka thereafter was a Brahman. The
Satapatha Brdhmana according to the Text of the Madhyandina School, trans.
J. Eggeling, The Sacred Books of the East. ed. M. Muller, v. 44, pt 5, Motilal
Banarsidass, Delhi, 1963, p. 115.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 349

support thereby. This sort of homage victory is what also occurred

in the political sphere as well. Warriors defeated by others, like
the Cholas, were permitted to continue their rule, but on condition
that they recognized the supremacy of the Cholas. There is, thus,
some reason for including Kandalur, which served as a model of
learned institutions, among the conquests of several Chola kings.
But, it is possible to speculate beyond Subramaniam and suggest
that the Cholas, like the Pallavas before them, took a strong instru¬
mental interest in learned institutions such as the one at Kandalur
in southern Kerala. Both dynastic lines sought to make these
institutions useful to the states they were creating. It may indeed
have been considered a ‘conquest’ to win to the services of the state
the skills and prestige of previously independent learned men and
institutions. In what manner the learned served the state can be
little more than suggested in the present state of our knowledge,
but there are two ways which may be proposed. One is in relation
to the organizational forms and functions of brahmadeyas of the
Chola period; the other is in the articulation of ritual hegemony
in inscriptions and other public contexts.
Similarities between the forms followed in the establishment
of the salai at Parthivasekharapuram, according to the Kandalur
rules, and the forms followed in the establishment of brahmadeyas
in the Chola period are striking. The land involved in the new
salai was acquired gradually and through exchange with the
Brahman settlement Minchirai (the modern village of Munjire)282
in a manner followed in later times. The reference to the sabha
of the latter village indicates that the sattar of the new settlement
were different from those of the older village and the grant is
emphatic in assuring the autonomy of the new settlement. In
later times in the Coromandel plain, Brahman-governed settlements
could and did include such specialized institutions of learning,
such as the one at Ennayiram. Also described in the grant was the
circumambulation of the land of the new settlement by an elephant;
the establishment of a new Vishnu temple to the deity Vishnu-
bhattaraka; and the provision of cash and kind income to the
temple and the salai from peasants who worked the lands of each.283
The grant concludes with the statement that the arrangements

282 Some two miles distant from Parthivapuram (T.A.S., v. 1, p. 5).

282 T.A.S., v. 1, p. 10.
350 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

stipulated were made according to the command (ajhapti)284

of the headman (kilavan) of Tenga-nadu, the locality in which the
new settlement was established.285 The headman, one Sattan
Murugan, was called a vennir Vellala, that is Vellala by birth.286
Considering the secular concerns of the salais of Kandalur and
Parthivasekharapuram, and the similarities of these with ghatikas
elsewhere in the Coromandel region, it is fair to conclude they may
have been a model for the kind of learned institution which would
have had an appeal for Rajaraja and his successors.
But, there is more than a formal, organizational similarity
between the salais at Kandalur and Parthivasekhara and the
later brahmanical forms — including the brahmadeya — of the
Chola period. An important further connection has been suggested
between the meykkJrtti, or inscriptional preamble of Chola records
and a particular literary form which appeared to have developed
in the vicinity of Kandalur.
The literary form referred to here is the poetic epilogue (patikam);
these were later additions to one of the early Classical collections
of Tamil poetry, the Patirruppattu. With other poems of the Classi¬
cal period, those of the Patirruppattu were collected in anthology
form in perhaps the ninth century.287 The title of the work means
‘the ten-fold ten', a reference to its ten poems, each consisting of ten
odes to particular kings of the ancient Chera, modern southern
Kerala.288 Courtly themes predominate in the odes; they celebrate
the victories and the careers of heroic kings.289 Long after the Clas¬
sical period, each of these poems acquired an elaborate epilogue;
these have been preserved in manuscript versions of the poems
which also contain commentaries and explanatory notes.290

284 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 133.

285 T.A.S., v. 1, p. 5, notes that there is a village called Tengapattanam near
Parthivasekharapuram.
286 Ibid., p. 13; Tamil Lexicon, p. 3779.
287 Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan, p 25. Perundevanar who is given credit
for the collection of these poems and others is considered by Nilakanta Sastri to
have lived in the thirteenth century or after, not the ninth century ( History of South
India, pp. 111 and 381).
288 J.M. Somasundaram Pillai, A History of Tamil Literature. Annamalainagar,
1967, pp. 170-1.
289 T.E. Ghanamurthy, A Critical Study of the CTvakacintamani, Coimbatore,
1966, pp. 2-3.
290 Somasundaram Pillai, A History of Tamil Literature, p. 170.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 351

These epilogues have been compared to the Chola meykkTrtti

by scholars of Tamil literature. K. Kailaspathy in his recent
Tamil Heroic Poetry has written:

While the precise relationship of the ‘epilogues’ [of the Patirruppattu]

to the inscriptions of the Cola period cannot be determined with any
certainty, it is plausible that they were fairly close to each other in point
of time [i.e., the ninth century]. Observing the remarkable resemblance
between the Meykkirtti of the Cola inscriptions and the ‘epilogues’ . . .
[one noted scholar of the Tamil Classical works]291 suggested with some
reason that Raja Raja I, who was the first to introduce the Meykkirtti
as preferatory material in his inscriptions, might have commenced the
practice after his invasion of the Ceral [Chera] country, where he came to
know of the ‘epilogues’.292

There were, thus, two features connecting that part of ancient

Chera country which the Cholas called Venadu with important
aspects of Chola culture: the salai form as a possible model for the
mature Chola brahmadeya and the colophonic epilogue as a possible
model for the inscriptional meykkTrtti. The connections are sug¬
gestive, rather than conclusive. The brahmadeya institution itself
cannot, of course, be traced to the deep southern portion of the
peninsula, and ghatikas were known elsewhere and particularly
in the central Tamil plain near Kanchi where brahmadeyas also
arose early. Similarly, the eulogistic preamble of the inscriptions
may have developed independently of the epilogues later added
to the Classical Tamil poetry of the Chera country. However,
the coincidence of the assimilation of these two forms and their
detailed similarity with those of Rajaraja’s period and that king’s
invasion of southern Kerala is not easily dismissed. It is difficult
not to see these factors, coming when they did, as vitally related
to other developments which strengthened the brahmanical forms
of the Chola period and the ideological evolution of the Chola
segmentary state.
In support of this contention is the evidence of the increasing
favour shown by the Cholas and those who modelled their public,
political behaviour on the Chola rulers to Brahman learned men
over non-Brahmans. The learned who were supported at the
salais and ghatikas, in the period before Rajaraja may or may not

291 Mentioned was T.V. Sadasiva Pandarattar in his work, ilakkiya aracciyam
kalvettukalum in K. Kailasapathy, Tamil Heroic Poetry. O.U.P., Oxford, 1968,
p. 223n.
292 Kailasapathy, op. cit., p. 223.
352 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

have been Brahmans. It is not clear, however, whether those who

received the greatest favour during the period of the great Cholas
were conspicuously, if not exclusively, Brahmans. That non-
Brahman men with a profound knowledge of Sanskrit continued to
exist we know from the thirteenth century Saiva movement, but it is
difficult to ascertain their sponsorship. It has thus been necessary
to follow the speculation of the epigraphist, K. G. Krishnan, that
the term kanimurruttu in Chola inscriptions, may have referred
to the support of non-Brahman savants by the non-Brahman
nattars. However, most Chola inscriptions are explicit in recording
grants to Brahmans. This is the meaning conveyed in the suffix
chaturvedimahgalam attached to most brahmadeyas and in countless
specific references in inscriptions. The Karandai Plates from what
is now a suburb of Tanjavur are a rather remarkable instance of this
feature. The Brahman recipients listed in these plates of Rajendra I
numbered 1083 in all. They were for the most part Yajurvedins
of the Apasthamba sutra. Of the total, 775 were Brahmans bearing
the names of villages in modern Andhra (of whom 615 were Apas-
thambas); the remainder of the grantees were Tamil Brahmans,
some following the Apasthamba and most of other ritual traditions.
This was a massive infusion of Vedic scholars into the heart of
Chola country.293
Brahmans, brahmadeyas, and great temples were the nodal
points in the Chola ideological system of rajadharma; all were
knit together by tens of thousands of stone and copperplate ins¬
criptions. While unevenly distributed, the network of inscriptions
carried to every part of the large territory of the Chola segmentary
state evidence that their claim to ritual hegemony was recognized
by locality chiefs, even very remote ones.
Most inscriptions must be viewed as a combination of ritual
and control evidence. That is, stone and metal inscriptions were
records which intended to present a particular understanding of
relations among persons and institutions in the contemporary
society as well as to provide a record of changes in the control over
resources among persons and institutions. Inscriptions are rather
easily analysed according to these two functions of ritual and
control.

293 K.G. Krishnan, personal communication, 1968 of draft manuscript on

Karandai Plates.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 353

The Yajnavalkyasmriti states that a charter or order for a gift

{dana sasana), which was the most common category of inscrip¬
tion,294 should include the genealogy and personal eulogy of the
donor as well as a description of the gift and date.295 The great
majority of Chola stone inscriptions faithfully follow this form.
Most provide a genealogical and eulogistical introduction {prasasti
in Sanskrit, meykkirtti in Tamil) a date given as the regnal year of
the king, and a description, usually brief, of the gift. There are
exceptions to this, of course. A stone inscription of Rajaraja at
Tanjavur recording his gift of jewels for the deity devotes some
120 lines of Tamil to the jewels and their ritual uses in a text contain¬
ing about 190 lines.296 By and large, however, stone inscriptions
refer most tersely to the gifts and dwell more upon eulogy for the
donor. There is little question in the case of most dana sasanas
of Chola times that each locality, and possibly each major settle¬
ment, maintained detailed records of the lands and personal services
which had been granted as devadana to support temple worship,
just as it is almost certain that temples maintained records of
endowed lands, money, and animals, such as goats and cows,
whose milk was used in ritual performances. The same would
apply to Brahman settlements. Most gift records contain only
sketchy descriptions of the gifts which occasioned their creation.
Thus, the greatest saliency must be accorded to the ritual content
of stone inscriptions which constitute the largest class of extant
historical records possessed for the Chola period.
Copperplates (tamra sasana) differ from stone inscriptions in
several ways. D.C. Sircar lays primary stress upon copperplate
inscriptions in his discussion of Indian epigraphy even though,
in South India at least, there are only a few hundred of these records
extant while there are several tens of thousands of stone records.297
Long before stone temples existed, Indian kings issued grants
incised on copperplates.298 However, in post-Pallava times, the
number of stone inscriptions which have survived came greatly

294 Op. cit., pp. 400-3 and Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, p. 103.
295 S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 190 and Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, p. 126 ft.
296 S.I.I., v. 2, no.93, pp. 428 ff.
297 Nilakanta Sastri, Sources of Indian History, p. 69.
29» Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, notes that the Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hien reported
that monasteries possessed plates allegedly dating from the time of the Lord Buddha.
Sircar rejects this claim but acknowledges the antiquity of the use of copperplates
(P-74).
354 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to exceed those on copper. The view of some scholars that in every

case a stone record was engraved, there was a copperplate version
given to the grantee is difficult to accept from the sheer quantum
of metal involved. Thus, it must be supposed that stone inscriptions
came to displace copper inscriptions with the emergence of stone
temples.
Still, copperplate inscriptions continued to be produced and
for the South Indian historian these records have had fundamental
importance. The following great plates of the Chola period form
the basis for the firm chronology of the time: Rajaraja I's ‘Larger
Leiden Plates’, 443 lines on twenty-one plates; Rajendra I’s ‘Tiru-
valangadu Plates’, 816 lines on thirty-one plates, and most specta¬
cular, the latter’s ‘Karandai Plates’, 2500 lines on fifty-five large
plates (about sixteen by nine inches and weighing a total of 246
pounds without the seal-ring).299 Most of twenty-two of the
fifty-five plates of the Karandai grant are devoted to a eulogy of
Rajendra I (1041 lines), one of the longest prasastis in existence.
A substantial number of lines in the Karandai plates are given to
the enumeration of the 1080 Brahman grantees of the new village
which consisted of over 20,000 acres contributed by fifty-seven
different villages. The new settlement was named tribhuvana-
mahddevi-chaturvedimahgalam in honour of the mother of the
king.300
Detailed attention to the beneficiaries of the grant is an important
characteristic of copperplate inscriptions. Whereas stone inscrip¬
tions are often perfunctory in the description of the gift and its
beneficiaries, stressing rather the eulogistic introduction, copper¬
plates characteristically emphasize information pertaining to the
gift and its recipients. It is little wonder, therefore, that some
scholars have presumed that stone and metal inscriptions were
complementary in function and assumed that for every one of
the former a copperplate grant was retained by the grantee. Finally,
as copperplates were in the possession of persons who were the

299 Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, pp. 123-4. The plates are published respectively
in: E.I., v. 22, pp. 213 ff; v. 3, pp. 383 ff; and E.I. in press, edited by K.G.
Krishnan, Department of Epigraphy, Government of India. The Karandai Plates
received brief mention by the epigraphist N. Lakshminarayan Rao, ‘Some New
Facts about Chola History', Journal oj Oriental Research. Madras, v. 19 (1950),
pp. 148-57.
300 Based on the typescript generously provided by K.G. Krishna, 1968.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 355

beneficiaries of the grants recorded, these were more susceptible

to alteration than the public stone records; they could also be
forged more easily. For some historical periods, these disadvanta¬
ges diminish the usefulness of metal inscriptions for the historian;
but that is not true of the Chola period.
Copperplate grants provide the best examples of the standard
eulogistic preamble of Chola inscriptions. That is one reason
why the great plates of the Cholas have been important for historical
purposes. However, as T.N. Subramaniam has noted, Chola
inscriptions differ from others:

Dharmasastras prescribe that the names of at least three generations of

the donor, i.e., great grandfather, grandfather, and father of the donor.
This rule is scrupulously observed in the earlier grants generally and the
Sanskrit charters of the Pallavas are the best examples for this. Some¬
times the military exploits and other eulogistic matters regarding them
are also given. In some grants this genealogy is not limited to three
generations, but is given for the entire ruling family from its founder.
The copperplate grants of the Chalukyas, both the Eastern and Western
branches, give the prcisasti of their family in set verses which are added
to with the accession of each new king. But in the Tamil inscriptions
of the Imperial Cholas from the time of Rajaraja I, and also of their
successors, the Pandyas, the prasasti of only the reigning monarch is
given in metrical form. This eulogy known as meykkirtti in Tamil is
more precise and historical, and consequently more reliable than the
exaggerated poetical compositions of the Sanskrit forms. This meyk¬
kirtti is different for each king and would increase in length as the reign
progressed, new victories being added as they are gained. Even grammati¬
cal works on Tamil prosody, known as pdttiyal, define the form of meyk¬
kirtti. The name of the reigning monarch is given at the end of the meyk¬
kirtti,301

Because there are relatively few copperplate inscriptions, only a

few exist which record the same meykkirtti as are found on stone
inscriptions. One of these is the Virarajendra record at Kanya
Kumari, discussed above in relation to the Chola origin myth.
The same meykkirtti is found, verbatim, in the Charala Plates of
the same ruler in Vengi, at the opposite end of the macro region !302
The mobility and completeness of the copperplates suggest that
the meykkirttis recorded on them might have been prepared in a
few places and disseminated to the localities around these places

301 S.I.T.I., v. 3, pt 2, p. 231.

302 Nilakanta Sastri, Sources of Indian History, p. 69 and N. Vmkataramanayya,
The Eastern Calukyas of Vengi, Madras, 1950, p. 221.
356 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

for preparation as preambles of inscriptions on temple structures.

The most likely disseminating points for these inscriptional
preambles with their genealogical, eulogistical, and mythical
content were brahmadeyas though a temple centre like Kanchi
might also serve as in the case of the Sanskrit portion of the 'Larger
Leiden’ plates which were prepared by five artisans at Kanchi303
In these settlements were the literate men — Brahman and non-
Brahman — to superintend the transcription of what may originally
have come to them on more ephemeral material such as cloth and
palm leaf. At such places there were also the skilled artisans to
prepare the metal and incise the letters. And in the precincts of
these settlements were the largest number of temples upon whose
walls inscriptions could be placed and over the priestly custodians
of which the brahmadeya residents would have had influence.
In several of the copperplate grants — notably the ‘Larger Leiden’
plates and the Karandai plates — the procedure for preparing the
plates from other, ephemeral documents is outlined.304 Consider¬
able time was necessary to complete the final record; in the case of
the Karandai plates, the grant was made in October, a.d. 1019,
and the plates were completed in August, a.d. 1021.305
If the surmise that the copperplates served as prototypes for the
meykklrtti portions of stone inscriptions is correct, the role of
scattered communities of literate Brahmans and non-Brahmans
in the technical maintenance of the system of ritual hegemony of
the Chola segmentary state was very important. While the pro¬
cedure of using copperplates as models for the ubiquitous stone
records appears to have been followed by the Chalukyas and the
Pallavas, as Subramaniam has suggested, the standardization of
the meykklrtti form after the time of Rajaraja represents a perfec¬
tion of the procedure and the general administration of ritual
sovereignty under the Cholas.
Administration of ritual hegemony under the Chola segmentary
state was centralized in the ruling house. In the time of Rajaraja I
and Rajendra I, particularly, but also during the time of their
successors into the twelfth century, a deliberate and successful
effort was made to superimpose over much of the southern peninsula

E.I., v. 22, p. 222.

,04 Three documents are referred to: tJttu, tirumugan, and aravolai according to
the Tirumukkudal inscription (Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 468).
305 Krishnan, manuscript cited.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 357

a new, or at least altered, ideological framework. The following

ideological elements were salient: a royal cult of Siva created
in which the shrine of first the Tanjavur capital and later that of
Gangaikondacholapuram enjoyed special prominence and set
the canonical style of temple worship for the entire macro region;
hundreds of brahmadeyas were established throughout the central
and intermediate zones of the segmentary state accompanied by
impressive ceremonials at times jointly participated in by the
Chola ruling house and locally dominant personages; and use was
made of sastric Brahmans and other learned men to sustain a
standardized symbolic system for which copper and stone inscrip¬
tions were the chief instruments.
Numerous inscriptions refer to ritual specialists attached to the
royal household whose titles indicated that they were royal scribes.
Documents prepared by these writers have often been construed
as political directives through which the centralized political
control of the Cholas was effected. This attribution by historians
is hardly feasible since the only examples we have of the work of
these scribal officials are ritual documents, not bureaucratic orders.
It is thus more appropriate to see the work of such scribal specialists
as part of a system of transmission of documents intended to in¬
corporate the hundreds of locally powerful chiefs under the sacred
umbrella of Chola kingship. The submission of the former to
ritual dominance of the Cholas enhanced their own authority over
increasingly pluralistic local societies.
Brahman and non-Brahman savants, scribes, and metal and
stone artisans were all part of the system for maintaining and
spreading the ritual hegemony of Chola rulers. Within the central
domain of the Cholas, in the intermediate zones of Tondaimanda-
lam and even the rebellious Pandya country and the more remote
peripheral zones, the most minor, local chieftains supported and
fostered this system. For, these local personages, along with
Brahmans and other learned men, were major beneficiaries of the
Chola ritual system of hegemony. By establishing brahmadeyas,
centres of sastric learning and by erecting canonical temples,
the learned and the locally dominant brought increased stability
and prestige to their already well-established secular power as
local chiefs. Possessing no impressive credentials for exercising
dharmic rule, being themselves of peasant stock and thus not
easily distinguished from other groups of dominant landed folk,
358 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

or nattar, the measure of legitimacy thus gained was important.

It is necessary to distinguish between two groups of persons
who together constituted the major agents in the system of ritual
hegemony and were major beneficiaries of that system. Brahmans
and other learned persons while sometimes local men, were often
brought to a locality and provided the means to cultivate their
learned pursuits in well-supported settlements. To a life of learning
and ritual activities, they added a somewhat minor function,
administrative specialization. For the most part, their administra¬
tive tasks were limited to participation in public events at brahma-
deyas and temples in which some gift was conferred upon those
like themselves and in which the presence of the reigning Cholas
was invoked to solemnize the gift. Brahman and non-Brahman
learned persons might be involved in the preparation of the dcina
sdsanam, deed of gift, to be incised on stone or metal for the reci¬
pients of the gift. With rare exceptions, ceremonies were arranged
when gifts were conferred by local persons of wealth and status.
Such grants were ostensibly for some future religious merit, but
an immediate benefit of esteem accrued to the donor.306 In all
such transactions, the presence of the Chola house was felt, for
almost every endowment carried a eulogistic reference to the royal
house. It has already been noted, too, that there were regular
recitations of eulogistical poems (kdvya) at the temples at Tanjavur
and elsewhere.307 Finally, there are numerous references to the
elaborate ceremonials conducted in conjunction with grants to
Brahmans and to temples, including an impressive procession, led
by an elephant, marking off the lands granted. Here were contexts
for a public recitation of the appropriate royal eulogy which was
then recorded as the Tamil meykkirtti on the inscription comme¬
morating the grant.
Others whose participation was vita! and whose wealth, directly
or indirectly, made pious, public gifts possible were local men of
power. The basis of their power and much of the legitimacy of
their secular authority was membership in and leadership over
the peasant groups of their localities. In most cases, management
of a peasant locality was demanding and complex, for such local
societies and economies could not be considered as patrimonial

306 According to early and medieval dharmasastras, the king acquired one-sixth
of the spiritual merit of his subjects (Lingat, op. cit., pp. 211-12).
■,07 Tiruppundurutti temple was another place where this was done (Nilakanta
Sastri, The Colas, p. 663).
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 359

properties to be operated by a lineage or ‘brotherhood’ as in some

parts of India. These were complex, pluralistic units of social and
political organization the control of which required impressive
political skills.
To construe such locality leaders as ‘administrators’ serving
the Chola segmentary state can only be true in a very limited sense.
The right of such men to rule derived fundamentally from the inter¬
nal constitution of each segmentary locality and the recognized
dominance enjoyed by those called the nattar. It is of course true
that such localized chieftainships was part of a larger political
system. It is this consistent element which was established under
the Cholas.
There were two ways in which men of standing and power in
their localities served as ‘administrative specialists’. One was in
the context of ceremonies solemnizing arrangements pertaining
to brahmadeyas and other eleemosynary activities. In these, they
participated with Brahmans and presumably for the same purpose:
to witness prestations, to enrich the solemnity of those occasions
in which grants of land and other values were commemorated.
At such times, they are called witness and might simply be identi¬
fied by the title ‘muvendavelar’ with their locality specified. It
frequently occurred that both Brahmans and these locality rulers
would come from quite distant places in order to participate in
ceremonies. In the celebrated Parantaka I inscription at Uttara-
merur, in which the complex voting procedure was stipulated, it
is mentioned that one tattanur muvendavelar was in attendance at
the meeting of the mahasabha which promulgated the rules.308
Tattanur is a village in modern Tiruchirapalli, almost 200 miles
away from Uttaramerur.309 Two years later, in perhaps a.d.
922, after the promulgation of the procedures mentioned above,
further provisions were made in another inscription. This rambai-
nadu in Cholamandalam, almost the same great distance from
Uttaramerur in Tondaimandalam.310 In the ‘Larger Leiden’
plates of Rajaraja I, about forty persons are mentioned as being
involved in the execution of the grant at its various stages from
being an oral order to the engraving of the final arrangements.
Of these forty, five bore the title of muvendavelar and another
-,(l8 Subrahmanya Aiyer, Sketches of the Ancient Dekhan, v. 2, pp. 262-4.
309 Cf. the Melappaluvur inscription of the tenth century. A.R.E., 1924, no.367.
310 Subrahmanya Aiyer, Sketches of the Ancient Dekhan, v. 2, p. 279.
360 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

fifteen persons are identifiable as non-Brahman notables, the

remainder being Brahmans according to their designations.311
Most of the Brahman and non-Brahman participants came from
villages within a fifty mile radius of the newly established settlement
of Anaimangalam (Nagapattanam). The titles of these forty
persons from the various valanadus around kshatriyasikhdmani-
valandu, in which the new village was located, indicate that their
functions were scribal.312 Designations such as olai-eludum, man-
dira-olai-nayakan, and karumamdrayam imply scribal functions.313
The same designations and functions were specified in the Tiruva-
langadu plates of Rajendra I which was almost contemporary with
the ‘Larger Leiden’ grant of Rajaraja I,314 the prasastis of both
being drawn by the same person, Anantanarayana, Rajendra’s
court poet.315 Thus, together with Brahmans, locality leaders
from nearby, and at times from distant places, participated jointly,
and it would appear, in interchangeable roles, in the ceremonies
which conspicuously emphasized protection over royal and other
centres which played a crucial function in the articulation of Chola
ritual sovereignty.
The other, and truer, sense in which local, non-Brahman per¬
sonages performed as ‘administrative specialists’ under the Chola
segmentary state was within their localities. It was here that their
proprietory ksatra was exercised. They were the principal executors
and trustees of grants made for the maintenance of brahmanical
institutions which gave structure to the ritual network of Chola
hegemony and their own sub-regal authority This is again verified
in great Chola plates. In the Tiruvalangadu Plates of Rajendra
I, one Avaneri, ‘of the fourth caste (chaturthdnvaya), pure on both
sides’ is made responsible for carrying out the elaborate provisions
of the grant which included leading the circumambulation of the
new settlement by a female elephant (karini-bhrantana); further,

311 E.I., v. 22, pp. 235-6, ‘List 'A'.

312 Ibid.; these include: Nittavinoda, Uyyakondar, and Arumolideva vatanadus
and the more distant one of kar-nddu in rajendrasimhavalanadu.
313 Ibid.; the editor of this inscription, Subrahmanya Aiyer, translates there
terms as: ‘Superintendent of Royal Writs’, ‘Secretary’, and "various tax registrars'.
314 The ‘Larger Leiden' plates of Rajaraja I being posthumous (E.I., v. 22,
p. 222).
315 Ibid., and ‘The Tiruvalangadu Copper-Plates of the Sixth Year of Rajendra-
Chola I', S.I.I., v. 3, pt III, no.205, pp. 383 ff; and especially the Tamil portion of
the grant, pp. 428 ff.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 361

it is stated that, having received the written order from various

scribal functionaries, \ . . we the (chief) men of the district [nadu]
went out (respectfully), received and placed (it) on (our) heads
and accompanying the female elephant, walked around the ham¬
lets.’316 Or, according to the ‘Larger Leiden' grant:

... we the nattdm (i.e., the assembly of the district), seeing it (i.e., the
order) being brought, respectfully advanced (towards) received and
carried (it) on our heads and accompanying the female elephant, walked
round the hamlets, set up stones and milk bush [as boundary markers]
and drew up and gave the deed of gift.317

These and other grants of the time also include attesting signatures
to the elaborate arrangements described in the grant records.
Most signatories were residents of villages neighbouring upon the
newly established Brahman settlement and contributors to the
lands possessed by the new village. These witnesses are said to have
accompanied the circumambulation procession and to have
assisted in the final drawing of the document. In the ‘Larger
Leiden' plates from the end of Rajaraja I’s reign, there were twenty-
seven such attesting statements and signatures contained in the
final part of the Tamil portion of the plates.318 In later Chola
times, the internal administration, or exercise of ksatra, by these
locality leaders became even more important when, as the periya-
nattar, they spoke of themselves in the dharmic terms of protectors
and managers of temples.

Pyramidal segmentation and Chola political culture.

According to theories of the state in medieval India, whether derived

from puranic or sastric sources, society was prior to polity; social
collectivities defined by kinship (kula), by shared and cooperative
interests (sreni), and by common residence (gana) are considered
competent and responsible for the governance of their affairs, and
the state, or more particularly kingship, was an institution whose
function it was to maintain a social order comprised of such col¬
lectivities.319 Kingly maintenance of the social order was achieved

316 ‘Tiruvalangadu Plates’, S.I.I., v. 3, pt 3. p. 389 and verse 132, p. 426; quota¬
tion, line 143, p. 430.
3>7 E.I., v. 22, p. 259.
318 E.I., v. 22, ‘List B‘, pp. 237-8 and lines 207-330, pp. 263-6; also Tiruvalan¬
gadu Plates’, S.I.I., v. 3, pt 3 pp. 437-9.
319 Kane, op. cit., v. 3, pp. 280-1; Lingat, op. cit., pp. 246-8.
362 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

through the moral operation of royal justice, that is through ad hoc

adjudication of conflicting claims by groups in society, thereby
creating or protecting entitlements of groups through the dharmic
protection of danda.
The pyramidally segmented society of medieval South India
had developed a massing capability well before Chola times;
nodus possessed the attributes of janapadas characterized by cor¬
porate control over a tract of land by agricultural groups sharing
a common ethnic identity, and artisan and trade groups maintained
wide-ranging networks. These were autochthonous structures
of social groupings in both the material and moral senses; they
existed before the Cholas and persisted after them. Territorial
chieftainships and primitive kingships facilitated some of the
horizontal and vertical massing which is referred to in the Classical
poetry of the Tamils. However, this political element was thin by
comparison with the elaborate kingship of the Pallavas and the
Cholas. Kailasapathy’s analysis of themes in the puram poems
discloses a fixation on martial prowess and warrior bravery by
such political personages.320 It is perhaps only after the time
of Nandivarman II, Pallavamalla, that the chief, acting as agent
for massing resources and the incorporative strategy of the Pallava
kings, becomes significant.
Facilitating this massing and incorporative process of these
South Indian kingships were inscriptions. Chola stone and copper¬
plate inscriptions are normative documents. They present a
particular moral conception of society and polity, and are essential
expressions of both. In idiom, inscriptions are puranic and sastric.
Kings ‘capture’ and ‘marry’ distinctly powerful agents in ways that
at once attest their royal might and magnify it. Rajendra I, accord¬
ing to his Tiruvalangadu Plates, took the river Ganga and held it in
the Cholaganga tank constructed at his capital ‘to sanctify his own
country’; the name of his capital itself, Gangaikondacholapuram,
commemorates this puranic conquest.321 Rajaraja, Rajendra, and
other Cholas, again in puranic style, spoke of being married to the
goddesses of fortune, victory, and the earth.322 Sastric ordinances
are heeded in the form followed in inscriptions, and the Cholas
refer to themselves as upholders of the dharma codified by Manu.

320 Kailasapathy, op. cit., pp. 24-6.

321 S.I.I., V. 3, pt 1.
322 Ibid., v. 3, pt 1, no.4, pp. 6-8 and S.I.I., v. 1, no.67, p. 959.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 363

Beyond these expressive features of inscriptions, these documents

have an important sacrificial aspect; they record the processes
and the results of sacred transformations. The process, or set of
linked actions, which resulted in inscriptions of the Chola kings
always involved a massing or pooling of human and material
resources, often on a grand scale. These resources were drawn
from diverse, independent, and at times, locally opposed elements
in Chola society (e.g. from both idahgai and valahgai groups)
for the general welfare of all in that society. Typically, this was a
gift to a god or to Brahmans, and the presentation process was
homologous to, and was very likely considered equivalent to, a
sacrifice (yajha).
The conception of ddna, or gift, as yajha, or sacrifice, appears in
early dharamasdstras. Ddna is seen to convey the same range of
benefits to the donor as the sacrifice does to the yajamana.222’
Manu and others equate the two as the principal aspects of religious
life in the dvapara-yuga and kali-yuga respectively.324 One of the
dharmasdstra elements yoking these conceptions of ddna and
yajha is ista: what is sacrificed; what is given. Another linking
element is pratigraha. This is the idea elaborated by Medhatithi,
a major medieval commentator on Manu, to the effect that
some gifts are distinguished (as pratigraha) in being ‘offered
with a view to some transcendental result, and received with
due mantras' A251
In Chola inscriptions, kings are often, mistakenly, assumed to
have been the actual yajamana agents, or donors. This is quite
incorrect. However, the invocation of royal protection for a gift
transformed that which was given to the status of pratigraha and
the donor to the status of a yajamana. Inscriptions of the early
Chola period of the ninth and tenth centuries even go as far as to
call forth royal protection by the depersonalized titles of rdjakesari
andparakesari\ presumably, this was as sanctifying as the elaborate¬
ly eulogistic royal invocations of Rajaraja and his successors. And,
since the invocation of the reigning king (even abstractly by the
rdjakesari title) conferred upon the ruler some part of the merit

323 Kane, op. cit., v. 2, pt 2, pp. 838-9.

324 Ibid., p. 837.
325 Manusmrti; The Laws of Manu. with the Bha$ya of Medhatithi. trans. by
Ganganatha Jha, University of Calcutta Press, Calcutta, 1922, v. 2, pt 2, Discourse
IV’, p. 304. Also, Kane, op. cit., v. 2, pt 2, p. 842.
364 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

gained by the gift, every such gift increased the protective power
of the king.
In all of this, Chola kings may be seen as having perfected means
of incorporation under their royal aegis which the Pallavas had
begun perhaps a century or more before.326 The means used by
Chola kings were not essentially different from those of the Pallavas,
but they were pressed with greater energy and urgency. Thus,
the Cholas followed the Pallavas in the construction of temples
to house Vedic gods and in the lavish support of Brahmans, but with
an intensity not before seen. Rajaraja’s remote ancestor Aditya I
(a.d. 870-907) is said in the Anbii Plates of Sundara Chola (a.d.
956-73) to have lined the banks of the Kaveri with Siva temples,
and modern research confirms that the claim was a substantial
one.327 During the reign of Uttama Chola (a.d. 969-85) and the
early part of Rajaraja’s reign, quantity may be said to have yielded
to quality as the Rajarajesvara temple in Tanjavur commanded
most of the King’s resources. And, with what remarkable effect!
It was moreover during the time of Rajaraja that the rate at which
brahmadeyas were established attained a peak.
To these means of accentuating the dharmic character of Chola
kingship were added two others. One was the sacralization of the
royal lineage through the construction of funerary tomb-temples,
paUippadai, by Parantaka I at Tondaimanad, by Rajaraja at
Melpadi, and by Rajendra at Ramanathakoyil.328 The other was
the effort by Rajaraja particularly — though by Chola rulers
generally — to appropriate for themselves a special relationship
to the mahadeva Siva as his chief devotees, if not as incarnations.
The Pallavas also introduced the elaborate technical process
of which inscriptions were the material result. As in other aspects
of dharmic kingship, the Cholas perfected this richly ceremonial
and expressive medium. Chola inscriptions do not portray a
unified social and political order so much as they constitute an
element which fashioned or created that order. If one considers

326 See the brief discussion by Balasubrahmanyam, Early Chola Art, ch. 3, ‘Temple-
Building in the Pallava Age’.
327 Discussed by Douglas Barrett, Early Cola Architecture and Sculpture: 866-
1014 A.D., Faber & Faber Ltd., 1974, p. 49.
328 Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, p. 453. Balasubrahmanyam, op. cit., p. 18, notes
an earlier, he believes earliest, example of such sepulchral tomb-temples constructed
by a Ganga chief at Solapuram (Vellore taluk. North Arcot) in a.d. 886.
 The Chola State and the Agrarian Order 365

the 3500 or so published Chola epigraphs,329 a great variety of

discrete and disparate historical features of society can be cata¬
logued. The inscriptional corpus depicts a society from the tenth
to the thirteenth century which is very diverse: hundreds of nadus
of differing internal structure; hundreds of chiefs, great and small;
thousands of gods each of which was the locus of cult affiliations
and practices; hundreds of terms for local taxes and dues; and
other particularistic traits. But, transcending this diversity is
a unified conception of a Chola society and a Chola kingdom,
and that conception is not the technical, bureaucratic one inferred
by most Chola historians. This is a false idiom. It is rather the
idiom of a dharmic universe realized through the sacral kingship
of the Cholas.

.329 This estimate is given by N. Karashima and Y. Subbarayalu, op. cit.

 CHAPTER VIII

Vijayanagara State and Society

Introduction.

The purpose of this final chapter is threefold. One is to examine

the political system of the South Indian macro region during the
Vijayanagara period as a segmentary state. This further elabora¬
tion of the pre-modern. South Indian political system is intended
to provide both theoretical and empirical support for the idea
of the segmentary state described in detail in the previous chapter.
A second purpose is to consider new elements of South Indian
society, especially Tamil society, in the centuries after the ‘imperial
Cholas’. Important among these new elements in the macro
region were the expansion of Telugu and Muslim control over a
substantial portion of the southern peninsula in the early post-
Chola period and the introduction of Europeans from the middle
of the period to its end, when the English East India Company
established its rule in the late eighteenth century. Thirdly, this
chapter intends to provide a cogent background for the considera¬
tion of changes in South Indian society during the nineteenth
century, a concern which inspired this investigation of early South
Indian society by the author many years ago and in which he con¬
tinues to have a lively research interest.
Treating the several centuries after the Chola period in a single
chapter is to condense a rich and varied historical period of South
Indian history. This will appear cavalier to many. In justification,
several related considerations were determinative. The present
monograph is already long by modern publishing standards and
to treat the post-Chola period fully, as fully as it may be thought
to deserve, would require a volume once again as large as the present
one. While it would be absurd to argue that this extended his¬
torical period is undeserving of that fullness of attention which
is eschewed here, it must also be pointed out that the period
cannot be said to have been neglected since the time that Robert
Sewell spoke ot ‘Vijayanagar, A Forgotten Empire!' The work

366
 Vijayanagara State and Society 367

of Sewell himself, of Krishnaswami Ayyangar, Nilakanta Sastri,

Venkataramanayya, Saletore and others have made of Vijayanagara
history one of the better researched fields — qualitatively and
quantitatively speaking — of any in Indian history. Hence, the
urgent need appears less to add yet more pieces of inscriptional
and literary evidence to illuminate the period than to propose
some perhaps new and different conceptions of that period and
its rich evidence with a view to stimulating and perhaps redirecting
further research. Such new, and it is hoped stimulating, con¬
ceptions as are presented below spring from a variety of sources,
including the possibly idiosyncratic interests of the author. How¬
ever, it is supposed that by viewing the Vijayanagara period against
a detailed consideration of the society and culture of the Chola
period in the way that has been done here, a potentially useful
basis for precisely that kind of revisionistic focus which appears
to be called for at this time will be laid.
In quite summary form, the following comparisons and contrasts
between the mature Chola and Vijayanagara societies may be
outlined. To begin with, there was fundamental continuity between,
say, the eleventh and seventeenth centuries with respect to several
important aspects of society and culture within the peninsular
macro region. The political system continued to be one which is
called ‘segmentary’ or ‘pyramidal’. Vijayanagara kingship, like
Chola kingship, was ‘ritual’ in respect to rule over peoples and
territories of the macro region beyond the ‘home’ territories of
each kingship. Corresponding to the ritual centre of kingship
in both cases — and again outside of the riverine core regions of
the two kingships, i.e. the Kaveri of the Cholas and the Tunga-
bhadra of Vijayanagara — locality units of the political system
were not merely self-governing — linked to imperial centres
neither by resource flows nor command — but were reduced
images of the two centres. This remains true even as it is recognized
that the conception, size, and complexity of ‘locality’ may be seen
to have changed considerably over the two periods.
Another related element of continuity between the two periods
of South Indian history is the central place of religious institutions.
More is intended in this observation than that South Indians were
and continue to be religious. Religious institutions, particularly
the brahmanical institutions of the Chola brahmadeyas and the
temples of puranic gods later, were core institutions in every sense.
368 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Not only did these institutions directly fulfill the narrowly construed
religious needs of the most respectable (sdtvik) groups in South
Indian society, but served as models for and models of an appro¬
priate order for even ordinary folk by the Vijayanagara period.
And, as in the earlier period, religious institutions of the latter
period continued to have major economic importance, to be
centres of learning, to be focuses of local pride and identity, as well
as being theatres of every form of artistic expression.
Finally, and notwithstanding the sturdy independence of locality
society and culture, both ages witnessed and reflected the importance
of migration and conquest. The peripatetic ways of many in
South Indian society are not recognized by most historians. In
both periods, however, new peoples were continuously integ¬
rated into established locality societies. Most conspicuously this
involved military conquerors such as Tamil peasant soldiery under
the Cholas in the Karanatak and Andhra extensions of the Tamil
plain or Telugu peasant warrior intrusions into Tamil country,
especially after a.d. 1450; it also involved the movement of Brahman
specialists (e.g. the thousand, learned Apastambhikas from Andhra
to the Kaveri basin recorded in the Karandai Plates to Rajendra
Chola I) or ritual specialists from one to another temple to install
and maintain a particular bhakti ritual form. For the movements
of persons and groups involved in temple ritual, inscriptions
constitute a record of considerable specificity.
Less well-recorded, but nevertheless evident, were movements
of lower groups and their progressive inclusion in the expanding
agrarian and trade systems of the macro region. The continued
process of integration and alliance represented by the dual division
of right and left castes often convey an impression of tension and
conflict attending the movement of persons and groups in spatial
as well as status terms. The appearance of the divisions as conflict
groups is exaggerated, however. Conflict was but one of the causes
for converting the divisions from potential or latent groupings
at any time and place into actual groupings; evidence on the
divisions from the colonial city of Madras also contributed to this
characterization of the divisions as primarily conflict-ridden,
factious groups. During the Vijayanagara period, somewhat less
of the factious quality of the divisions is evident.
Given the degree of continuity outlined above, the notion that
there might have been significant discontinuity may appear difficult
 Vijayanagara State and Society 369

to sustain. Certainly the historiography on the question of historical

discontinuity is mixed and controversial. Scholars whose research
has focused on Karnataka and Andhra during the Vijayanagara
period (e.g. Saletore and Venkataramanayya) have emphasized
continuity and the preservation of ancient usage while those who
have worked on Tamil country (e.g. Nilakanta Sastri and Krishna-
swami Pillai) have drawn attention to basic changes incident upon
the extension of Vijayanagara rule over the Tamil region. But,
whatever the historiographical disposition, all could presumably
agree that the following changes occured and were important.
The martial character of the Vijayanagara state and the seemingly
incessant warfare of the period from the middle of the fourteenth
to the late seventeenth century is implicitly contrasted to the
apparent civil order of Chola times. Here of course, the threat
of Islam to Hindu society is given importance both as explaining
the violence of the age and the adaptations of Hindu society to
that violence. Indeed, the Islamic threat is given a decidedly
modern complexion as the ideological factor which brought the
Vijayanagara state into existence and, on the one hand, explained
that state’s steadfast maintenance of custom, or, on the other hand,
for some scholars, justified departures from custom in order to
defend Hinduism and varnasramadharma. For scholars who give
major attention to this ideological factor, the Vijayanagara state,
in its essence, would be considered very different from the Chola
state, particularly in its ‘feudal’ elements.
While not all scholars of Vijayanagara speak of ‘feudalism’,
all give prominence to a feature of political organization which,
for those who do use the concept, is decisive. That is, the nayankara
system. Whether seen as part of a feudal estate similar in some
essential manner to those of medieval Europe or .simply as a new
political feature of South Indian history, the nayaka of Vijaya¬
nagara times is an important and dicontinuous fact of the age.
Warriors who used the title of nayaka or amaranayaka, or to whom
that title is affixed, cannot be defined easily in terms of particular
office, ethnic identity, privileges and duties. Yet, it can be said
that during the Vijayanagara period there came into existence, or
at least into sharp focus, a level of supralocal chieftainship which
appears to be different from anything which existed before. As
locally powerful personages, these chiefs may not have been different
in any particular from supralocal personages of the past: they were
370 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

first and foremost warriors with armed followings; they joined

with great kings in defensive and predatory warfare; they drew
resources from the territories under their rule and shared little
or none of these resources on a regular basis with those of super¬
ordinate authority; they distributed, or, more correctly, redistribu¬
ted the resources they commanded to a variety of religious and
social purposes. In these activities, there was perhaps not much
new or different. But, in the degree of power of these chieftainships,
in the magnitude of local resources commanded and redistributed,
in their independence from local social and cultural constraints,
their ability to intrude into local society, and in their persistent
independence from and occasional opposition to superordinate
authority, this political category is unprecedented. These nayaka
warriors constitute a level of power and authority not before seen
in South India.
A second, technological, factor of discontinuity may be seen
to explain the nayankara system. Nayaka power rested upon the
substantially increased military capability afforded by firearms,
fortifications, and superior cavalry mounts. The ability to
command these improved military means was limited to the rich
and powerful of whom the Vijayanagara kings were the first. It
was upon these new means of warfare that the spectacular military
success of the Rayas was based, and their experience with and use
of Muslim soldiers from the fifteenth century on made possible
much of this superiority. Telugu followers of the Rayas employed
the same means to establish themselves as the independent nayan¬
kara?. of the age, and gradually these superior military elements
came into the possession of other, non-Telugu, warriors as well.
The latter added to the complexity of the supralocal military
elite designated by the term nayankara.
Dissemination of this assemblage of militarily superior means
not only made nayakas the most powerful local and supralocal
chiefs South India had known, but almost assured conflict between
them and the Raya overlords of the macro region. Such conflict
was an early feature of Vijayanagara rule in South India and is
ultimately responsible for the decline of the state in the early part
of the seventeenth century when civil wars rent the southern
peninsula. Conflict between the Vijayanagara kings and the
powerful nayakas is another element of discontinuity which is
significant. During the late Chola period - the thirteenth century
 Vijaydnagara State and Society 371

similar conflict between kings and powerful chiefs can be seen,

but it was neither as enduring nor as much a part of the system of
political relationships of that time as it was to be from almost the
beginning of the Vijayanagara period. The level of these internal
conflicts heralded the end of the Chola overlordship in South India;
it was a central part of the Vijayanagara overlordship from its onset
in the fourteenth century; and just the fact of having to cope
with it, provides a final element of discontinuity with the Chola
state. This was the significant political role taken by Brahmans
during the Vijayanagara age.
It appears to have been a deliberate policy of the Rayas — cer¬
tainly it was a policy of Krishnaraya who was perhaps the greatest
of all — that Brahmans had been given major political roles. In his
time, and to some extent before. Brahmans were the commandants
of major fortresses and were considered territorial ‘governors’
by contemporaries, South Indian as well as foreign. Apart from
the maintenance of royal forts in all parts of the macro region,
there appears to have been only one governing task for which
Brahmans were responsible; that is, checking the fissiparous designs
of the nayakas. There are few reigns in the dynasties of Vijaya¬
nagara in which it is not possible to identify Brahmans as major
agents of Raya rule, and the central if not sole requirement for these
prestigious persons in their secular, political functions was to
defuse the explosive potentialities inherent in the Vijayanagara
segmentary slate with its powerful, intermediary level ofnayankaras.

Vijayanagara Political System

There are many important questions about Vijayanagara political

and social matters which remain vexingly unclear after more than
a half century of scholarly attention.1 As compared to the Chola
period of South Indian history, a greater number of historians have
contributed to Vijayanagara studies; there is nothing like the
dominance of a single view in the study of this latter period — as
that of Nilakanta Sastri for the Chola period. One consequence
of this greater variety is a richer historiography, but one which is
more difficult to evaluate.

1 S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Ancient India and South Indian History and Culture
II, Oriental Book Agency, Poona, 1941; first essay published in 1920; R. Sewell,
A Forgotten Empire. London, 1924; Rev. Henry Heras, The Aravidu Dynasty of
Vijayanagara, Madras, 1927.
372 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Almost from the outset there has been agreement among Vijaya-
nagara students with respect to certain important interpretations.
These have tended to remain acceptable to more recent scholars.
The first of these durable interpretations pertains to the success
of the Vijayanagara state in limiting the expansion of Deccani
Muslim power. The fourteenth and fifteenth century Vijayanagara
state did stabilize the frontier between the Bahmani sultanate, its
successors, and what was to remain a dominantly Hindu social
and political order south of the Kistna-Tungabhadra. This leads
to what appears to be the second broadly agreed upon view of the
Vijayanagara state: that it created the conditions for a defence
of Hindu culture and institutions. This defensive role is also
seen to have been self-conscious and ideological. Finally, and
again a consequence of the encounter with the powerful Muslim
stales of the Deccan, the Vijayanagara state is seen as an essentially
military state, in Nilakanta Sastri’s words: ‘the nearest approach
to a war-state ever made by a Hindu kingdom’.2
The social and economic implications of these generally agreed
upon views of political history stemming essentially from the
Muslim presence in the peninsula have only been partially explored.
Among the potentially relevant issues which might be queried are
the following. Granted the support which powerful Vijayanagara
personages — from the kings of the several Vijayanagara dynasties
down to minor, local notables — gave to Hindu religious institu¬
tions, what other differences between a general Hindu overlordship
and a Muslim one can be demonstrated, or suggested? That
is, in terms more general than the support of Hindu temples and
Hinduism generally, what difference did it make that this was a
‘Hindu’ state? More fundamental, perhaps, what was the relation¬
ship between the variety of religious institutions and other social,
political, and economic institutions of medieval South India?
Or again, what were the consequences of the ‘warlike’ character
of the Vijayanagara state within a general institutional and ideolo¬
gical context? To those familiar with studies of the period, these
queries will seem to have been answered in the numerous mono¬
graphs and essays dealing with the Vijayanagara state. And so
they have, but usually in terms so general and so simplistically
based upon the overwhelming saliency of Islamic power, that

2 History of South India, p. 295.

 Vijayanagara State and Society 373

great reliance cannot be placed upon these answers. This is especial¬

ly true when note is taken of considerable controversy among
scholars on the most important questions.
Some of the questions upon which there remain deep differences
among scholars have been noticed in the more recently published
research on Vijayanagara. Vasundara Filliozat reminds us of
continuing differences among scholars about the origin of the
first or Sangama dynasty of Vijayanagara.3 Older views about the
origin of the dynasty as tribal peoples, Kurumba or Kadamba,4
have given way to two other main theories. Nilakanta Sastri
and N. Venkataramanayya have taken the position that the founders
of the Vijayanagara state were Telugus; others, including R.
Narasimhachar, B.A. Saletore, H.Heras, and S. Krishnaswami
Ayyangar, have identified the founders as Karnataka warriors.
A recent study of the second, or Saluva dynasty sees its founders
as both, that is, as having originally moved from Karnataka to
Andhra country.5 If Filliozat has decided for himself which of the
theories is best supported by the inscriptional evidence he very
closely examines in his work, his conclusion is not clear. Yet,
the question is of some importance if, as it is usually assumed, the
state structure created by this first dynasty was different from
other state forms which had existed in South India (if in nothing
else, its martial emphasis).
There are, in fact, two major questions about the nature of the
Vijayanagara state which may be considered linked to the probable
origin of the founding dynasty, but possessing intrinsic importance
separate from the question of origins. One of these has been widely
discussed as the question of whether iocal institutions’ continued
to flourish during the Vijayanagara period as they had, especially
in Tamil country, prior to that time. And, if they did not, was this
a deliberate policy of the new rulers of the Vijayanagara state?
According to Saletore, whose principal work centred upon
Karnataka during the Vijayanagara period, the integrity of local
institutions, or as he puts it, ‘purvamariyade (ancient constitutional

3 L’Epigraphie de Vijayanagar du debout ci 1377; Publications de lecole Francais

de’Extreme-Orient, v. 91, Paris, 1973, pp. ix-xv.
4 Sewell, op. cit., p. 33.
5 P. Sree Rama Sarma, ‘Sajuva Dynasty of Vijayanagar’, unpublished Ph.D.
Thesis, Osmania University, Hyderabad, 1972, p. 38.
374 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

usage)’,6 continued under the Vijayanagara rulers much as it had

before. This is not the view of historians who have sought to see
the Vijayanagara state at the height of its territorial influence,
that is, including Tamil country. K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, Nila-
kanta Sastri, and T.V. Mahalingam, and, more recently, A. Krishna-
swami, see great changes in the functioning of various local institu¬
tions (e.g., sabha, ur, nadu) in Tamil country. These changes are
not, however, attributed to deliberate neglect or subversion by the
Vijayanagara rulers, but rather the consequences of new political
forms of the military state. This latter view is vigorously presented
by Krishnaswami who devotes two chapters to 'feudalism' and
'feudatory relations’ in his work on Tamil country during the
Vijayanagara period.7
The issue of 'feudalism’ has arisen with respect to the Vijaya¬
nagara state as it has with few other pre-modern states in India.
With very few exceptions, 'feudalism’ has been used by Indian
historians to cope with the specific features of pre-modern, Indian
political organization, rather than as a presumed genuine variant
of those political forms of Europe or Japan to which the term
can legitimately be applied.8 In connection with the Vijayanagara
state, as perhaps with most other Indian states to which the label
'feudal’ has been affixed, the primary question goes to the effective¬
ness of supralocal governmental functions, that is to the Vijaya¬
nagara state. As with the Cholas, there is no question of whether
there was a state. Rather, the questions are — as with the Cholas
— what kind of state, and particularly what kind of governing
functions it carried out in contradistinction to those executed
at the level of localities, and, moreover, by what means were locali¬
ties linked to the Vijayanagara state. Feudalism, taken most
broadly, appears to answer these questions, and the concept has
been considered by many of the scholars who have written on
Vijayanagara.
D.C. Sircar, who has condemned the use of the term ‘feudalism’
for all other medieval states of India, reservedly considers that the
6 B.A. Saletore, Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagar Empire (A.D. 1346-
A.D. 1646), Madras, 1934, v. 1, p. 342.
7 A. Krishnaswami, The Tamil Country under Vijayanagar, Annamalai University,
Annamalai, 1964. pp. 100-2.
8 R.S. Sharma’s, Indian Feudalism: c. 300-1200 (University of Calcutta, Calcutta,
1965) is the major exception for Sharma here proposes a comprehensive system
of ‘feudal' relationships.
 Vijciycmagara Stale and Society 375

term may appropriately be applied to the Vijayanagara state

because of the central feature of the amaram tenure, usually con¬
strued as a military service tenure.9 N. Venkataramanayya,
whose work on amaram tenure is the most complete, denies the
appropriateness of the concept ‘feudal’ on the basis of the complete
absence of any idea of fealty and homage.10 As utilized by scholars
less careful than these two, the concept of ‘feudalism’ in Vijaya¬
nagara history merely obscures the failure to deal satisfactorily
with the fragmentary and contradictory evidence and interpreta¬
tions of Vijayanagara inscriptions with respect to the state.
What is perhaps most striking about the use of a feudal concep¬
tion in Vijayanagara history is that it appears to stem from the
descriptions of European contemporaries of Krishnaraya and
Achyutaraya of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese Domingo
Paes' and Fernao Nuniz’ reports on the reigns of these two kings
of the third dynasty, in a.d. 1520-2 and a.d. 1535-7 respectively,
provide the basic information on the nayaka system. These Portu¬
guese views have been among the most influential in forming an
understanding of Vijayanagara polity precisely because it is as a
system that the polity is described. Paes’ account is the most
important:

Should any one ask what revenues the king possesses, and what his
treasure is that enables him to pay so many troops, since he has so many
and such great lords in his kingdom, who, the greater part of them, have
themselves revenues, I answer thus: These captains whom he has over
these troops of his are the nobles of his kingdom; they are-lords, and they
hold the city, and the towns and villages of the kingdom; there are captains
amongst them who have a revenue of a million and a million and a half
of pardaos, others a hundred thousand pardaos, others two hundred,
three hundred or five hundred thousand pardaos, and as each one has a
revenue so the king fixes for him the number of troops he must maintain,
in foot, horse, and elephants. These troops are always ready for duty,
whenever they may be called out and wherever they may have to go; and
in this way he has this million of fighting men always ready. Each of
these captains labours to turn out the best troops he can get because he
pays them their salaries; and [in the review of troops by Krishnaraya]
. . . there were the finest young men possible to be seen, for in all this array

9 Landlordism and Tenancy in Ancient and Medieval India as Revealed by Epi-

graphical Records (The Dr Radhakumud Mookerji Endowment Lectures of 1964),
University of Lucknow, Lucknow, 1969.
10 N. Venkata Ramanayya, Studies in the History of the Third Dynasty of Vija-
' yanagara, University of Madras, Madras, 1935, pp. 171-2.
376 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

I did not see a man that would act the coward. Besides maintaining these
troops, each captain has to make his annual payments to the king, and the
king has his own salaried troops to whom he gives pay.11

Nuniz supports Paes’ description by enumerating some of the

great nayakas, their income and military contribution to the king's
armies and their contribution to the central treasury. He states:
'. . . all the land belongs to the King, and from his hand the captains
held it. They make it over to the husbandmen who pay nine-tenths
to their Lord; and they have no land of their own, for the Kingdom
belongs entirely to the King. . . ,’12
Vijayanagara historians, especially those who urge the feudal
concept, have placed great reliance upon these brief descriptions.
Few have evinced much discomfort at the ease with which Euro¬
pean forms of political organization could be transferred to medieval
South Indian society. Venkataramanayya, among the deepest
and best scholars of Vijayanagara history, expresses his reservation
about applying 'feudal' to the system outlined by Paes and Nuniz.
'The nayahkara system’, he writes, ‘has no doubt strong affinities
to feudalism, but it has also many differences.’13 Among the diffe¬
rences are that the political bonding of European feudal relations
based upon fealty and homage were absent as was the practice of
‘sub-infeudation’.14 In fact, Venkataramanayya is content to see
the 'system’, rather vaguely, as one of military tenure under a
central authority: '. . . land was held immediately or mediately
of the emperor on condition of military service.’15 D.C. Sircar,
who has taken the strongest opposition to the use of the concept
'feudalism’ in India, prefers instead to speak of 'landlordism’

11 Sewell, op. cit., pp. 280-1. The pardao was a gold coin of uncertain value:
apparently it was equal to 360 Portuguese re is of the sixteenth century and is reckoned
by Sewell to have had a value, ‘in more recent days' of three-and-a-half-rupees
or seven English shillings (op. cit., pp. 270-1 n).
12 Ibid., p. 379. Unfortunately, neither Portuguese chronicler compares the
situation observed in Vijayanagara with what they knew of Portugal, or perhaps
more particularly, Portuguese colonies. However, the term captainia was a royal
grant to ‘proprietory landlords’ (donatarios) who settled portions of Brazil at their
own expense in return for which they enjoyed administrative, fiscal, and legal con¬
trol over colonists (C.R. Boxer, Salvador de Sa and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola,
University of London, London, 1952, p. 3).
13 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 171.
14 Ibid., p. 172.
is Ibid.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 377

(which raises at least as many problems as the term it replaces).16

In his analysis of Vijayanagara inscriptions, Sircar concedes a
special element — amaram tenure — which contrasts the Vijaya¬
nagara state with all other medieval Indian states. But, correctly,
he dismisses the arguments of those who speak of an ‘Indian
feudalism’.

... the landlordism of ancient and medieval India. . . should not be

confused with feudalism. In India, the king was never the actual owner
of the land under permanent tenants. The majority of the numerous
charters, discovered all over India. . . records grants of land without
stipulating any obligation of the Brahmans and temple authorities to
the donors. Obviously, the priestly class was the most unsuitable for
rendering services of the feudal type. . . . [on the contrary] it is generally
stated in clear terms in the grants that the donees were exempted from
all obligations including the supply of unpaid labour and sometimes
also they were entitled to sell or mortgage the donated property. The
object of the grant is generally stated to have been the religious merit and
fame of the donor and their parents. There are only a few charters re¬
cording grants of land to people of the warrior and other classes, sometimes
for services rendered to the king. But, excluding the amara tenure of late
medieval South India, there is absolutely no mention of obligations having
resemblance with those of the feudal type. . ,17

At another point in his discussion, Sircar attempts to accommodate

amara tenure to his terminology in the following way:

... the amara tenure was similar to the allotment of land to the priest,
barber, washerman, carpenter and others for the services to be received
from them regularly. . . . The Amaranayakas gave their lands to minor
landlords on similar terms of military service just as the subordinate
rulers had various grades of vassal chiefs under them.18

This formulation, homogenizing as it does the privileges of political

and ritual power with the rights of those providing minor, village
service, appears to be based upon the conception of inam tenures
of British India and leaves unclear, and certainly undemonstrated,
the continuities of legal and bureaucratic forms which must be

16 Landlordism and Tenancy in Ancient and Medieval India as Revealed by

Epigraphical Records. The Dr Radha Kumud Mookerji Endowment Lectures,
University of Lucknow, 1964; University of Lucknow, Lucknow, 1969. Sircar's
specific views in this publication are substantially different from his earlier views in
a work also cited here. Land System and Feudalism in Ancient India (1966).
17 Ibid., p. 33; emphasis mine
is Ibid., p. 32.
378 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

shown to have provided the foundations both of medieval and

modern arrangements.
Nevertheless, Sircar’s position, even with its serious faults, is
to be preferred over those of other scholars who, like Sircar, have
relied primarily upon inscriptional evidence and still hold to a
conception of Vijayanagara feudalism. A. Krishnaswami's recent
study, The Tamil Country under Vijayanagar is unreserved in its
view of the nayaka system as feudal.19
Krishnaswami makes use of the term ‘feudalism’ in the titles
of several of .the sections of his monograph,20 and he makes
statements such as: ‘this nayankara system of the feudal arrange¬
ments in the Tamil country seems to have been in existence from
the time of the conquest of the region by Kumara Kampana.’21
He also uses phrases such as ‘feudal revenue’ to refer to various
kinds of payments, to refer to many kinds of subordinates and
‘feudal vassal’.22 Though one of the strengths of this work is the
careful consideration of extant interpretations on many difficult
points, Krishnaswami does not query others’ views on feudalism.
This is especially peculiar in the case of Venkataramanayya upon
whom Krishnaswami relies in many other ways. In fact, there is
much carelessness in Krishnaswami’s usage, sometimes resulting
in distortion of the evidence. This is most tellingly seen in his
quotation of the Paes passage cited above. In the second sentence
of that much quoted paragraph, Krishnaswami inserts the word
‘feudal’ which occurs nowhere in the original chronicles. Thus,
that sentence in Krishnaswami reads: ‘These captains whom the
king has over the feudal troops. . . .’23
At the base of this question of ‘Vijayanagara feudalism' is the
fragmentary evidence of the period; it is even more difficult than
Chola evidence. Therefore, systemic views or given paradigms of
the political system weigh very heavily on how this evidence

19 Annamalai University Historical Series, no.20, Annamalai University,

Annamalainagar, 1964.
20 Ibid., pp. 161, 176, 179.
21 Ibid., p. 181.
22 Ibid., p. 183.

23 Ibid., p. 177, citing the correct pages in Sewell, that is p. 280. Curiously,
Venkataramanayya in Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 170, also misquotes the same
sentence for he deletes the words 'of his’ after the word 'troops' thereby weakening
a point that is consistently pressed by the Portuguese chroniclers, i.e. that all troops
were those of the king.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 379

is ultimately evaluated. The great importance of the Portuguese

descriptions is precisely in providing a view of a systemic whole
to which the disparate inscriptional evidence of the Vijayanagara
period can be related. Apart from inscriptions, the other major
source of evidence comes from the Mackenzie Collection. Many
of the accounts of this eighteenth century collection of local records
deal with the migration of Telugu warriors and their followers
to those parts of Tamil country which had been peripheral zones
of settlement during Chola times. In most accounts, a migrant
warrior takes service under a nayaka chief, clearing forest to es¬
tablish a settlement, and prospering with the military fortunes of
his nayaka patron. Given the construct of feudalism, whether it is
taken without qualification as Krishnaswami does or taken as
possible variant as Sircar and Venkataramanayya appear to take
it, it is not difficult to see these documents confirming ‘feudal’
arrangements. But, try as one might, it is impossible to find firm
evidence for the ‘feudal system’ in Tamil country as seen by Krishna¬
swami.24
The weight of historiographical judgement about South Indian
political history clearly opposes the idea of a Vijayanagara ‘feudal
system’. Most historians of the period, while they may use terms
such as ‘feudatory’ and ‘vassal’, do not seriously consider the
conception. For them, the new elements which come into the
political system from about the fourteenth century — as outlined
in the introduction of this chapter — do not alter the basic political
organization; they treat the Vijayanagara political system as an
elaboration of that system of political relations which had existed
in the southern peninsula from at least the tenth century and dis¬
cussed here as a segmentary polity.
This is most clearly seen in works whose scope extend beyond
dynastic periods. T.V. Mahalingam perceives no basic discontinui¬
ties during the middle period of South Indian history in his South
Indian Polity. But, as already noted,25 Mahalingam, remarkably,
treats the entire post-Classical age in South India as a vast, un¬
differentiated period with evidence of political usages from widely
disparate times and places taken as elaborations upon some single
structure of power relationships. The more critical work of Appa-

24 A summary paragraph of ‘the feudal arrangements in Tamil country’ is found

in Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 180-1.
25 See. Stein, ‘The State and the Agrarian Order ....’, p. 68.
380 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

dorai on economic history assumes essential continuity though,

again as already mentioned, he does not give much attention to
formal political arrangements,26 tending rather to accept Nila-
kanta Sastri’s view of Chola polity and assuming its continuation
during the period of Hoysala and Vijayanagara ascendancy in the
southern peninsula.
Sastri himself in various works, however, places more emphasis
upon the disjunctive character of the Vijayanagara period. This is
evident in several ways. First, there is his perception of the martial
character of the state in Vijayanagara times and the assumption
of a new and dynamic ideological thrust underpinning this martial
state. Then there is his assessment that the formerly robust local
institutions of Tamil country were decisively weakened. Finally
there is his awareness of the more cosmopolitan nature of the
Vijayanagara period as seen in the historical sources of the period,
including Muslim and European reports as well as greater and
more reliable literary sources from within South India.27 Sastri’s
sensitivity to these issues sets him apart from other South Indian
historians. The latter, in general, whether they study the Vijaya¬
nagara period as a whole or of one of the Vijayanagara dynasties,
do not give serious consideration to the question of continuity
or discontinuity with the Chola state; or, like Mahalingam, in his
work on Vijayanagara administration, they take as the prime
reference point, ancient, formalistic, and often didactic sastras
on government.28
Considered as a continuation of the earlier segmentary state,
Vijayanagara polity certainly presents changes in the system which
existed under the Cholas, but the continuity is impressive. In
territorial terms, the scope of the Vijayanagara state during the
first dynasty was as great as it had become under Rajaraja Chola I.
Thus, it was not only a political system of very substantial dimen¬
sion, as the Chola state had been, but it encompassed the major
population concentrations of Tamil-speakers as well as Kannada-

26 Economic Conditions in Southern India, A.D. 1000-1500, v. 2, ch. 6.

27 Especially his discussion in Sources of Indian History with Special Reference
to South India, (Heras Memorial Lectures, 1961), Asia Publishing House, Madras,
1964, chapter 3.
28 Cf. Venkataramanayya, Studies in the History of the Third Dynasty of Vija¬
yanagara and Mahalingam, Administration and Social Life Under Vijuyunagar,
Madras, 1940.
 Vijayanagara Stale and Society 381

and Telugu-speakers much as the Chola state and the later Madras
Presidency did. Also like the Chola state, was the gradual unfolding
of the new ritual sovereignty of the Vijayanagara state during the
fifteenth century; so was the expansion of the Telugu warrior elite
into Tamil country similar to the earlier movement of Tamils into
Andhra and Karnataka.
Within thirty years of the establishment of the dynasty upon the
foundation of the failing Hoysala house under Ballala III, the
early Vijayanagara warriors brilliantly extended their overlordship
to the southern part of the peninsula, ending Muslim rule in Madu¬
rai in a.D. 1371. The dramatic reconquest of Madurai transformed
the Sangama dynasty of Vijayanagara from a powerful, if hazar¬
dously based and remote, kingdom into a worthy successor to the
Chola. In this sense, the youthful founders of Vijayanagara were
able to accomplish what the Hoysalas even under sometimes extra¬
ordinary leadership had failed in. And, it is perhaps ironic that
one reason for the success ot the Sangam warriors was the establish¬
ment in a.d. 1347, almost simultaneously with their own beginnings,
of the Muslim Bahmani state on their northern frontier. While
posing a continuous hazard to the young Vijayanagara state, it
also forced the Vijayanagara rulers to establish a lateral defensive
system westward and eastward across the peninsula from their
principal locus of power on the Tungabhadra. Being constrained
to such a policy, the Vijayanagara rulers avoided one of the salient
weaknesses of their predecessors, the Hoysalas. The latter vacil¬
lated between expansion northward into what came to be called
the ‘Bombay Karnatak’ and southward into the Kaveri basin, and
they succeeded in neither. It may also be added that the expansion
of the first of the Vijayanagara rulers laterally across the peninsula
was made necessary by the success of the first rulers of the Bahmani
sultanate in establishing close collaboration with Hindu warriors
of Andhra country, notably the Kapaya Nayaka of Warangal.29
The expansion of Vijayanagara sovereignty to Tulu country
in the west and Penukonda in the east reflects this pressure from
the north and created a war frontier between the states in the doab
tract of Raichur. Denied expansion to the north, the Vijayanagara
rulers were forced into what was to become the second element of
strength and durability of their state, that is the expansion into
Tamil country.

29 Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 231.

382 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

The movement of the Vijayanagara overlordship southward came

in slow stages, being punctuated by a series of wars with the
Bahmanis from the 1350s to the 1470s.30 In some cases at least,
the victims of Vijayanagara expansion southward were Hindu
chiefs. Thus, the defeat of the Sambuvaraya chiefs of Rajagam-
birarajyam by Kumara Kampana, the son of the Vijayanagara
king Bukka I, around a.d. 1363, was as impressive a victory as his
conquest of the Madurai Sultanate a few years later. Rajagambi-
rarajyam included a substantial part of Tondaimandalam just as
the Sultanate included a substantial part of Pandimandalam.31
But, such conquests were an exceptional manifestation of the
expanding Vijayanagara overlordship. In the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries what more characteristically ‘expanded' was a
successful claim of overlordship, not direct Vijayanagara control.
Great chiefs, like the Zamorin of Calicut,32 and small chiefs, like
the nattar of Ponpattai (in Cholamandalam),33 recognized the
overlordship of Vijayanagara in more appropriate ways: the
former by responding promptly to a command from Devaraya II
for the presence at the royal court of the Persian ambassador
Abdur Razzak (who recorded the event) and the latter by the
acknowledgement of the right of the Vijayanagara prince Kumara
Kampana to present a gift to a temple in his territory.
During the expansion of the Vijayanagara overlordship from the
earliest rulers of the first dynasty through the relatively short-lived
second, or Saluva, dynasty (a.d. 1486-1505), the importance of
dharmic ideology for Vijayanagara rule is revealed: the mission
of the State in preserving Hindu institutions against the depreda¬
tions of Muslims of the Deccan. Venkataramanayya states: "the
history of Vijayanagara may be said to be the history of a fierce
struggle between the Hindus of the Deccan and the Muhammadan
rulers of the Deccan’,34 Nilakanta Sastri similarly states:
. . . the basic nature of the historic role of Vijayanagar . . . was to preserve
South India as the last refuge of the traditional culture of and institutions
of the country,35 . . . that great empire which, by resisting the onslaughts
30 Ibid., pp. 232-45.
31 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 6-21. The territory included portions of modern
Chingleput and North and South Arcot districts. On other such conquests, ibid.,
pp. 18-21,34, and 215-19; also Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, pp. 264-77.
32 Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 260.
33 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 93-4.
34 Third Dynasty of Vijayanagara. p. 145.
35 History of South India, p. 305.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 383

of Islam, championed the case of Hindu civilization and culture in the

South for close to three centuries and thus preserved the ancient tradition
of the country in its polity, its learning and its arts.36

There can be no question that the existence of the highly militarized

power of the Vijayanagara state south of the Kistna-Godavari
had the effect of stemming Muslim expansion. However, the
dharmic posture of the Vijayanagara rulers as protectors of Hindu
culture is, above all, ideologically significant. Vijayanagara king-
ship and the Vijayanagara state were constituted upon, or soon
came to acquire, an ideological principle which distinguishes it
from previous South Indian states. It is this principle which most
decisively identifies the Vijayanagara overlordship, not presumed
differences in the basic structure of the State.
Vijayanagara kingship, like all medieval Hindu kingships,
expressed appropriateness in terms of the maintenance of dharma,
and especially varnasramadharma. This is captured in Vijayanagara
inscriptional prasatis in a very different way from Chola inscrip¬
tions even though the dharmic qualities of their kings were the
same. Both kingships claimed to be in the hands of conquerors
whose military exploits made them digvijayans; these kings were
the greatest of prestators whose gifts to gods and Brahmans assured
the welfare of the world.
Among the things that distinguish the Vijayanagara from the
Chola overlordship is the personal character of the former or their
agents as dharmic actors. Vijayanagara inscriptions of the four¬
teenth century onwards depict the Vijayanagara king, his son,
or preceptorial agent making gifts to temples or to Brahmans,
adjudicating disputes among such personages, or re-establishing
temple worship long interrupted by Muslim depredations or
other disorders. There is in the Vijayanagara records an immediacy
of the royal presence that is largely absent from most Chola ins¬
criptions. In the latter, royal dharma and prestations are realized
through the often impersonal and remote mediation of an unnamed
ajnapati, or ‘executor’37 It is this remoteness and indirection
of the expression of Chola rajdharma — the elaborate set of docu¬
ments and orders that connect a gift to Brahmans or gods with the
Chola kings — that gave to earlier kingship its bureaucratic,

36 Ibid., p. 264.
37 1 am indebted to discussions with Arjun Appadurai and Nicholas Dirks for
clarification of this point. Also see, Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, pp. 143, 374.
384 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

even ‘Byzantine’, tone. Vijayanagara inscriptions, by contrast,

place the king, his kinsmen or guru in the arena of prestation in
a very direct way.
In nothing else is the ritual focus of the Vijayanagara kings so
clear as in the mahdnavami festival, an annual royal ceremony of
the fifteenth and sixteenth century occuring about 15 September
to 15 October. Since Vijayanagara times, the nine day festival,
followed by a tenth and final day — dasara — has been important
in many parts of the macro region. Most famous in Karnataka,
as Dasara, it has been continuously celebrated at least since Raja
Wodeyar sponsored it in late September, a.d. 1610 at Seringapat-
am.38 The same festival, also called nava rdtri, is celebrated by
the nayaka successors of Vijayanagara. The Mahanavami is
described in vivid detail by the Portuguese sojourners of the six¬
teenth century, Paes and Nuniz, and also mentioned by the Italian
Nicolo Conti whose report of a visit to Vijayanagara about a.d. 1420
is the earliest extant and by Abdur Razzak, the Persian ambassador
ordered to Vijayanagara by the king Deva Raya II around 1442.39
The theoretical works of Hocart and Gonda40 prepare the way for
the acceptance of the ritual actions of ancient Indian kings, but it
is scarcely possible to find a better medieval example than the
nine days of the Mahanavami dedicated to protection and regenera¬
tion at the capital city of Vijayanagara.
Puranic sources speak of two important nine day festivals which
mark the turning of the three seasons of the sub-continent: in
March-April, after the harvest of the samba or rabi crop and the

38 C. Hayavadana Rao, History of Mysore, 1399-1799 A.D., Government Press,

Bangalore, 1943, v. 2, p. 68 and Historical Sketches of the South of India in an Attempt
to Trace the History of Mysoor . . . to 1799 .... by Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wilks,
Political Resident at the Court of Mysore, ed. Murray Hammick. Government Branch
Press, Mysore, 1930, v. 1, pp. 61-3. The Mahdnavami begins on the ninth day of
the increasing moon of the seventh lunar month, asvina (Tamil month, purajtdci).
See the forthcoming essay (Princeton University Press), on this festival by the present
author in a volume of studies on the Gupta age edited by Bardwel! L. Smith, 1979.
3y Sewell, Forgotten Empire, Paes' chronicle, pp. 253-64 and Nuniz' chronicle,
pp. 357-60. Conti’s and Razzak’s accounts are found in R.H. Major, India in the
Fifteenth Century; a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India, Hakluyt Society,
London, no.22, 1857.
40 A.M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1970 (originally published in Cairo, 1936) and J. Gonda, Ancient Indian Kingship
from the Religious Point of View. E.J, Brill, Leiden, 1966.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 385

onset of the hot season, and in September-October, after the harvest

of the kdr or kharif crop and the onset of the cold season. The
first of these is associated with the god Rama and the second with
the goddess Devi, or Durga. Elements of both these festivals, as
described in puranic works, can be seen to exist in the Mahanavami
of medieval Vijayanagara, and the Rama motif may have been
as important as the Devi motif though it is the later (i.e. September-
October) nine days that was celebrated at Vijayanagara.
The most elaborate description of the festival was that of Paes,
from whose account the following features may be stressed.
Throughout the nine days, festivities are centred in the 'citadel' area
of Vijayanagara, before the palace and on two, large, permanent
structures: one of which is called 'The House of Victory’ by Paes
('Throne Platform’ by Longhurst, the archaeologist of Vijayanagara.
and the mahanavami dibha according to the modern residents of
Hampi) and the other 'The King’s Audience Hall'. The ruins of
both are massive granite slab platforms showing structural signs
of having borne large wooden superstructures as described in the
medieval chronicles. These were constructed by Krishnadevaraya
around a.d. 1513 following his Orissan campaign and victory over
the Gajapatis.
Around and within these buildings were enacted the events of
the festival.41 Here the king observed the many processions,
displays, and games and here he accepted the homage and the
gifts of throngs of notables as he sat upon his bejewelled throne.
The king sometimes shared this throne, or sat at its foot, while
it was occupied by a richly decorated processional murti of a god;
at other times he was alone. The god is not identified. Within the
'House of Victory’ was a special, enclosed, and, again, richly
decorated chamber in which the image was sheltered when it was
not on display before the public participants in the festival. At
several points in the proceedings, the King, sometimes with Brah¬
mans and sometimes alone, retired to this enclosed chamber of
the deity for worship. Both the Audience Hall and the Throne
Platform bear bas-relief sculpture along their granite sides depicting
many of the events described by Paes and Nuniz.
In front of the two structures which were the centre of the festival
activities were constructed a number of pavilions which contributed
41 A.H. Longhurst, Hampi Ruins Described and Illustrated, Government Press,
Madras, 1917, pp. 57-70.
386 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

to the aura of wealth and sumptuousness of the festival as a whole.

They were elaborately decorated, in among other ways, with ‘de¬
vices’, apparently heraldic symbols, of the grandee occupants for
whom the pavilions were temporary housing during the festival.
Nuniz reported that there were nine major pavilions (he called them
‘castles’) for the most illustrious of the notables and that each
military commander also had to erect one in the broad space
before the palace.42 Razzak, as ambassador from Persia, was
ensconced in one of these.43
Access to the guarded, central arena of festival activity was gained
by passage through several gates enclosing wells of the temple
precincts; Paes’ description of this suggests passage through a
series of gateways as the medieval pilgrim moved toward the
sanctorum in the great temples of South India 44 Once gained, the
spacious open area before the palace, the Audience Hall, and the
house of Victory was ringed about with the pavilions referred to
and with shaded seating from which the great — soldiers, sectarian
leaders and others — viewed the proceedings immediately before
the House of Victory on whose higher levels the King sat.
What was viewed was a combination of a great durbar with
its offerings of homage and wealth to the King and the return
gifts from the King — exchanges of honours; the sacrificial recon¬
secration of the King’s arms — his soldiers, horses, elephants —
in which hundreds or thousands of animals were slaughtered;
darshana and puja of the King’s tutelary — the goddess — as well
as his closest agnatic and affinal kinsmen; and a variety of athletic
contests, dancing and singing processions involving the King’s
caparisoned women and temple dancers from throughout the
realm, and fireworks displays. The focus of these diverse and
magnificent entertainments was always the King as glorious and
conquering warrior, as the possessor of vast riches lavishly dis¬
played by him and his women (queens and their maids of honour)
and distributed to his followers. The King was fructifier and agent
of prosperity of the world. Most succinctly assessed, the Maha-
navami appears as a combination of the asvamedha (the greatest
of all royal sacrifices, with its celebration and consecration of

42 Sewell, Forgotten Empire, p. 357.

43 Major, op. cit., ‘Narrative of the Voyage of Abd-er Razzak, Ambassador
from Shah Rukh, A.H. 845, A.D. 1442’, p. 36.
44 Sewell, op. cit., pp. 253-4.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 387

kingly military prowess as symbolized in the horse of the king)

and the description of Rama’s return to Ayodhya in Canto 130
of the final book of Valmiki’s Ramayana.
Comparing the Mahanavami of Vijayanagara with the archaic
horse sacrifice may seem superficial or strained, for the Vijayanagara
period knows of no such royal sacrifices; none are even alluded
to as during the Chola period. Certain common features of the
archaic asvamedha and the medieval Mahanavami may indeed be
superficial. Both are ten day rituals and at least one of the great
asvamedhas was celebrated on a mahanavami (the March-April
or Chaitra one) by Yudhisthira, hero of the Mahabharata,45 Yet,
the anointing of royal arms by priests 46 and by royal women along
with animal sacrifices are prominent features of the Vijayanagara
festival; these elements figure conspicuously in the two most detail¬
ed accounts of it. Paes wrote of the King's women:

They come in regular order one before the other, in all perhaps sixty
women fair and strong, from sixteen to twenty years of age. Who is he
that could tell of the costliness and value of what each of these women
carried on her person? So great is the weight of the bracelets and jewels
carried by them that many of them cannot support them, and women
accompanying them assisting them by supporting their arms. In this
manner and in this array they proceed three times around the [King’s]
horses, and at the end retire into the palace.47

Compare this with the Satapatha Brahmana:

It is the wives that anoint (the horse), for they — to wit (many) wives —
are a form of prosperity. . . ,48 the wives walk round (the horse) . . .
thrice they walk round. . . .49

An even more strikingly parallel feature of the Mahanavami is

the symbolic significance of the King’s horse in the consecration
of his kingship. Paes describes a troop of richly caparisoned horses

4-s The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, trans. by P.C. Roy, Oriental

Publishing Co., Calcutta n.d., v. 12, ‘Aswamedha Parva’, sec. 84, p. 161 and passim.
46 Priests offer prayers for and sprinkle water upon the King’s horses and ele¬
phants: Nuniz in Sewell, op. cit., p. 358.
47 Sewell, op. cit., p. 263.
48 j Eggeling (Trans.), The Satapatha-Brahmana According to the Text of the
Madhyandina School in Sacred Books of the East. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1900,
v. 44, pt 5, p. 313. On the sprinkling anointment of the sacrificial horse, see pp.
278-9.
49 Ibid., pp. 322-3.
388 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

brought before the King at one point in the Mahanavami, and

leading this troop was one bearing 'two state umbrellas of the
king and grander decorations than the others’.50 Of this one,
Paes writes:

You must know that this horse that is conducted with all this state is a
horse that the king keeps, on which they are sworn and received as kings,
and on it must be sworn all those that shall come after them; and in case
such a horse dies they put another in its place.51

This suggested comparison with the archaic, Vedic asvamedha

is more than anachronistic; it is also flawed in being an apparent
violation of Vedic prohibitions as well. The bright half of the lunar
month of asvina (Tamil month ofpurattaci) when the Mahanavami
festival occurs is said to be inauspicious for Vedic learning and by
extension for other Vedic activities as well. These activities are
enjoined as anadhyaya according to the dharamasastra of Apara-
ka.52 Brahmans do figure in the Mahanavami festival as ritual
performers along with the King in relation to the King’s tutelary;
they also are recipients of royal gifts. But, Brahmans do not
dominate the ritual arena, which is very much the King's and in
one description of the festival, that of Conti around a.d. 1420,
Brahmans appear to have been publicly reviled.53
The association of Sri Rama with the Mahanavami is somewhat
more direct. The same mood of celebration by a people of their
king found in the final verses of the Valmiki Ramayana suffuses
the vivid descriptions of the festival of Vijayanagara. And, there
is the further shared conception of regal deliverance from threaten¬
ing evil. Saletore captures this quality in his statement on the
festival.

Religious in atmosphere, it is essentially political in its significance.

For it commemorates the anniversary of Rama’s marching against
Ravana, and in its twofold aspect of the worship of Durga and of the
ayudhas or arms, culminating in the Vijaya-dasami [victorious tenth day],
was particularly suited to Vijayanagara times when fatal issues loomed
ominously in the political horizon.54

50 Sewell, op. cit., p. 262.

51 Loc. cit..
52 Kane, History of Dharamsastra, v. 2, pt 1, p. 395.
53 ‘The Travels of Nicolo Conti in the East in the Early Part of the Fifteenth
Century’, in Major, op. cit., p. 28 and Sewell, op. cit., p. 83.
54 Saletore. Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire, v. 2, p. 372.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 389

The god Rama appears important in yet another way. One of

the major temples ot the capital city under the Tuluva dynasty of
Vijayanagara, and especially in Krishnadevaraya’s time was that
dedicated to Ramachandra, the hero of the Ramayana and the
seventh avatar of Vishnu. A separate shrine within that temple
was dedicated to the Devi consort of Rama. This temple was also
called the Hazara Rama temple, and it was the only shrine within
the palace precincts and thus quite proximate to the varied activities
of the festival. The unidentified image in the accounts of the
Mahanavami may have been the consort goddess of Sri Rama if
the proximity of the Rama temple is taken as important and if the
judgement of Longhurst, the archaeologist of Hampi, or Vijaya¬
nagara, is correct that the Rama shrine was the private place of
worship of the Tuluva kings.55
Though all historians of Vijayanagara have mentioned the
Mahanavami festival, often quoting long excerpts from the accounts
of Paes and Nuniz, the festival has not received analysis as a single,
unified ritual event. Culled from the detailed reports have been
odd facts (e.g. ‘the rents’ of the nayakas are paid at this time and the
King ‘owns’ all the land) and descriptions of the King, his high
officials, and queens. However, this festival, like others, is perceived
as a unified system of action and meaning, and should be interpreted
in that light.
Two aspects of the mahanavami tlrtha immediately seize atten¬
tion: its overwhelmingly royal character and its symbolically
incorporative character. These aspects confirm conceptions of

55 Longhurst, op. cit., p. 71. There is some uncertainty about the personal reli¬
gious preferences of Krishnadevaraya. He appears to have been a Vaishnava bhakta
as were others of his dynasty, the preceding Saluva and succeeding Aravidu dynasties,
and there is his special relationship with the great Madhva scholar Vyasatirtha.
The latter was the King’s guru as well as the head of a school in Vijayanagara which
had been supported by the Saluvas as well. (See M. Rama Rao, Krishnadeva Raya,
National Book Trust, New Delhi, National Biography Series, 1971, pp. 39-40).
This relationship may have been more personal than sectarian, and might not,
therefore, presume a preference by the King for the god Krishna, the deity of the
Madhva sect, over the god Rama. It is interesting to note that the large Krishna
temple in Vijayanagara was built by Krishnadevaraya about the same time as the
Rama temple and the Throne Platform (‘House of Victory’ ). This Krishna temple
is about 1.5 miles from the palace area, and according to Longhurst (op. cit., p. 96),
sheltered an image taken from the Gajapati fortress of Udayagiri around a.d. 1513.
This Krishna image is thus more a trophy of the King than his tutelary.
390 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

ritual kingship assumed in the concept of the segmentary state

suggested some forty years ago by Hocart and since then largely
ignored by Indological scholars.56 Hocart’s conception of the
king as ritual performer and the primary agency for the prosperity
and welfare of the realm, and his attention to the symbolically
integrative character of the temple and the city are extraordinarily
well-realized in the Mahanavami festival. Kingly ritual power
is expressed in numerous ways: in the manifestation of wealth
displayed and elaborately redistributed at many points of the
nine day festival; in the various consecratory actions involving
the King’s arms as the means of his royal fame and protection;
and also in the King’s frequent and often solitary worship of
(and ultimately identity with) the deity who presides with him over
the festival, and in whose name and for whose propitiation the
festival occurs. Certain signs of the Devi (Durga) worship are
clear in this festival, and they deserve notice. According to the
Devi Bhagavatam Purana, females in procession before the goddess
form an essential element of the Nava-ratri or Mahanavami
festival.57 It is also well to recall that since the Mahanavami is
considered a time of danger, the protective power of the Devi
and also the King are enhanced.
Incorporative elements to which Hocart drew attention in his
work included the subordination of all gods and all chiefs to the
king. This incorporation is signified by various means in the Maha¬
navami festival. The palace site of the festival is reached through
two large gates over which towers are constructed.58 These massive
gateways were apparently destroyed by the Muslim invaders of the
city in the sixteenth century; gates in other parts of the Hampi
ruins, at some distance from the ‘citadel’ of Krishnadevaraya’s
time,59 confirm Paes’ description of these structures which resemble
the gopuram leading to the sanctorums of Hindu temples of the
time. King and god are at least homologized, if they are not

56 Hocart, Kings and Councillors. He is not mentioned by Gonda, Ancient Indian

Kingship from the Religious Point of View. Dumont’s Homo Hierarchies, is a recent
exception to the general neglect of Hocart.
57 See B. Ramakrishna Rao, ‘The Dasara Celebrations in Mysore’, QJMS. v. 11
(July, 1921), pp. 302-3 and The Sri Mad Devi Bhagavatam in Sacred Books of the
Hindus, v. 26. Trans. Swami Vijnanananda (H.P. Chatterji), Panani Office, Alla¬
habad, ‘On Navaratra’, pt 1, ch. 26, pp. 225-9.
58 Sewell, op. cit., pp. 253-4.
59 Several are shown in Longhurst, op. cit., pp. 47-9.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 391

equated. The pavilions erected in the spacious, interior courtyard

before the Throne Platform to house the notables of the realm are
called ‘castles’, or dwellings of great men placed within the pre¬
cincts of the palace and thus under the protection of the great king.
Gods of the King’s realm are also incorporated in his city.
Included here are permanent resident deities like the Gajapati
Krishna of Udayagiri and Vitthala (Vithoba) from distant Maha¬
rashtra.60 It also appears that deities from elsewhere in the realm
are brought to the capital during the festival and presented to the
King for his adoration.61 And, servants of gods throughout the
King’s realm come to do obeisance. This included priests, but
most conspicuously it was the temple women (whom the Portuguese
called ‘courtesans’) of shrines everywhere. These temple dancers
and musicians performed before the King just as they did before
the god to whom they were dedicated.62
Following Hocart’s perceptive discussion, it is possible to point
to the crucial place of the city — this city of victory — in the
total moral order over which the Vijayanagara kings exercised sway.
The city, Hocart wrote, ‘never stands for anything specific; it
is never less than the whole world, and its parts are the parts of the
world. . . ,’63 And, persistently linked to the city and its establish¬
ment is the goddess Durga. As Bhuvanesvari, ‘mistress of the
world’,64 the goddess was by tradition65 propitiated by Vidya-
ranya, or Madhvacharya, who is supposed to have been the pre¬
ceptor of the founders of the city in a.d. 1336. This connection of
the great goddess and the city of the Rayas was first presented by
William Taylor in his 1835 translation of several Tamil chronicles

60 Krishnadevaraya built a temple for Vitthala which is considered one of the

most beautiful in South India. However, this god was worshipped in Vijayanagara
before that time (Further Sources of Vijayanagara History, v. 3, p. 47 and n.).
61 Sewell, op. cit., p. 264.
62 Ibid., p. 253 and Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, pp. 404-5.
This is another parallel with the asvamedha sacrifice over whose ten days of the
consecration of the horse, different gods are presented: Satapatha Brdhmana,
pt 5, pp. xxxi, 361-70.
63 Hocart, op. cit., p. 250.
64 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 760.

65 The association of Madhvacharya with the Sangama founders of Vijayanagara

in a.d. 1336 has been a contentious one; according to the official biography of the
sarhpradaya, Madhva died in a.d. 1317 (B.N.K. Sharma, Sri Madhva’s Teachings
in His Own Words, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1970, pp. 4-9).
392 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of later medieval times,66 and though the idea continues to be

accepted by most Vijayanagara scholars, none have exploited fully
the symbolic power of the relationships of goddess propitiation,
the Rayas and the city. While scholars have failed in this, the
successor states of the Vijayanagara in South India, notably the
Wodeyars of Mysore and the Nayaka kings of Madurai did not;
they maintained this royal festival in their capitals in full richness.67
The imitation by successors of the Rayas in South India (and
possibly also the Maratha king Sivaji) of the ruler as an active
ritual ‘principal’ (to use Hocart’s term) was the result, in part at
least, of the perceived threat to Hindu institutions from Muslim
powers of peninsular India. Just as the expansion of the Bahmani
sultanate and its successors in the Deccan acquired a special
saliency in the ideological presentation of the Vijayanagara state
as symbols of danger to the dharma which Hindu kings were bound
to protect and nourish, Muslims of a later day continued to have a
special meaning, however dubious their actual threat may have been.
Actually, those who bore the brunt of Vijayanagara military
power were most often Hindu rulers, not Muslims. And, ironically
perhaps, the most strategically placed military units of the Vijaya¬
nagara military formations were composed of Muslims, as is
generally conceded.68 This factor is often elicited to explain the
ultimate defeat of Vijayanagara arms in the sixteenth century;69
it nevertheless remains clear that Muslim contingents were res¬
ponsible for at least part of the great early successes of the Vijaya¬
nagara rulers against Hindu houses which they toppled. The
Vijayanagara state was however not in fact dedicated to different
principles of rule as might be supposed from the confrontation of
Hindu and Muslim forces in the Deccan, whatever the importance
of its dharmic ideology. To suppose otherwise is to transfer to

66 Oriental Historical Manuscripts, in the Tamil Language: Translated with

Annotations, by William Taylor, 2v., C.J. Taylor, Madras, 1835, v. 2, pp. 102-3.
67 Noted by Taylor, op. cit., p. 103; Abbe Dubois, op. cit., pp. 569-71; Rice,
Mysore: A Gazetteer, v. 1, p. 378 and a description of its celebration at Seringa-
patam in September 1783, according to the report of a captured English soldier.
68 Based upon evidence such as the a.d. 1430 inscription of the time of Devaraya
referring to 10,000 turushka (Muslim) horsemen in his service (E.C., v. 3, ‘Introduc¬
tion’, p. 23).
6rThe battle which fatally weakened the Vijayanagara kingdom at Rakshasi-
Tangdi (Talikota) is supposed to have been decided by the desertion of two Muslim
commanders of Rama Raya’s army (Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 238).
 Vijayanagara State and Society 393

an earlier time the communal politics of the twentieth century. It

was essentially a continuation of the segmentary state of the Cholas
in terms of its basic political character.
And, like the rule of the Cholas, Vijayanagara power was often
quite remote after an initial intrusion of its forces into territories
ruled by Hindu chiefs. Many parts of the deep southern peninsula
continued to be ruled by members of the same families whom the
Vijayanagara armies had conquered. This is particularly true
of the Pandyan territory through most of the fifteenth century.
In most other parts of Tamil country, the ancient territorial ter¬
minology remained, and Telugu Nayakas and Brahmans placed
in positions of supralocal agents for Vijayanagara authority.
Hence, to overstate the ideological element and to speak of a
newly constituted basis of state power and legitimacy in the Vijaya¬
nagara period would be to distort the historical evidence which we
possess of the period. Pre-Vijayanagara forms proved by and large
to be both adequate and durable.
Another feature of Vijayanagara rule which also invites com¬
parison with the impressive Chola kingship was the diversity of
the peoples under each. In a technical sense, it is the rule over
many and different peoples which has justified the use of ‘empire’
or ‘imperial’ in connection with the Chola and Vijayanagara
states. For the Tamil Cholas based in the rich Kaveri basin, the
earliest regions to be included in their expanding sovereignty were
the two secondary central zones of the Tamil plain: Pandimandalam
and Tondaimandalam. But soon after, Chola sovereignty was
established over places of dominantly non-Tamil population with
ancient cultural traditions of their own.70 Chola influence was
extended northward to Vengi and north-westward to Garigavadi
well before it was fully established in the Tamil peripheral zone
of Kongu (modern Coimbatore and Salem).
Similarly, the first Vijayanagara dynasty, shortly after the
establishment of their sovereignty over the northern portion of
what was to become the empire, moved to establish themselves in
Tamil country. The process was repeated in the second dynasty

7,1 According to one of the earliest extant works on Kannada rhetoric, the
Kavirajamarga of Nripatunga, c. a.d. 850, the area in which Kannada was spoken
extended from the upper Kaveri to the Godavari (Nilakanta Sastri, A History of
South India, pp. 375-6). Telugu inscriptions date from fifth century and Kannada
inscriptions from the sixth (ibid., p. 387 and Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, pp. 48-9).
394 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

as well. Whether the Vijayanagara rulers are to be regarded as

essentially Kannadigas or Telugus, or whether they are to be
regarded as both from the very beginning — a position taken
recently by P. Sree Rama Sarma —71 the territorial scope of their
power included the entire southern peninsula.
Thus both kingships were firmly based in one part of the southern
peninsula from which they drew the major resources for sustaining
their military supremacy, namely their soldiery; but both also
achieved overlordship in other, well-populated and wealthy parts
of the macro region. Overlordship in these latter places appears
to have resulted from three different kinds of processes. One was
the result of adventurous pillaging expeditions of small groups of
Telugu warriors or by large ‘invasions’, as Krishnaswami has
labelled them, of Vijayanagara forces under royal commanders.
The second process was the transformation of local chiefs into
nayakas, thus constituting the cement of the new overlordship
and at the same time, the means of strengthening the control of
local chiefs. The result of these two processes in both the Chola
and Vijayanagara cases were similar. The third means of extending
the Vijayanagara overlordship over the southern peninsula is
different from anything seen in Chola times; this was the incorpora¬
tion of the support and the followings of sectarian groupings in
all parts of the southern peninsula. With respect to this, of course,
the dharmic ideology of the Rayas was all-important.
Raids and invasions into territories remote from their prime
bases led to permanent settlement in both cases. In the Chola
period this occurred when parts of the modem district of Kolar,
in Karnataka, were brought under the control of Tamils of Tondai-
mandalam as seen in the famous Mulbagal inscription of a.d. 1072
discussed above. A variation on this expansion process in the
Vijayanagara period is seen during the fifteenth century. Then,
Telugu warriors, without frontally challenging the Tamil chiefs
of many areas of older settlement, established themselves in more
remote parts of the Tamil plain abutting on the plain at the foothills
of the Eastern Ghats. The results of this latter form of expansion
are recorded in modern census volumes showing a zone of Telugu
speakers running from north to south and splitting some of the
modern Tamil Nadu districts into a dominantly Tamil-speaking

71 As noticed above, this question of origins has most recently raised again by
Filliozat; the discussion by Sree Rama Sarma: op. cit., p. 37.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 395

eastern side and Telugu-speaking western side.72 In these sparsely

populated interstices, Telugu migrants of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries not only found scope for political control, but they found
black soils with which they were familiar and for which they
possessed the means of exploiting in ways superior to the older
Tamil residents of these areas.73 It was the relatively high propor¬
tion of Telugu warriors and settlers in these peripheral parts of the
Tamil plain that explains the placement of the two subordinate
‘capitals’ of Vijayanagara in Tondaimandalam: Padividu and
Tiruvadi. The striking pattern of this Telugu expansion was
noted by early British administrators as well as by epigraphists.74
But the unique record, of this process is contained in the accounts
of the records collected by Colin MacKenzie in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Telugu-speaking Reddis displaced
Tamil-speaking local leaders as dominant cultivating groups, and
this displacement brought with it changes in the language of temple
inscriptions from Tamil to Telugu, as at the great Vaishnava
temple of Tirupati.75 This movement of Telugu warriors into
Tamil country was itself part of a larger pattern of movements.
During the late fifteenth century, Reddis were seen to be moving
into the western parts of Andhra from their home territories to the
east as recorded in a Kurnool inscription of Saluva Narasimha’s
time.76 And it may be speculated that this migration of small
groups of Telugu warriors was not solely the result of the attractions
of new areas of pillage and settlement, but pressure during the
preceding century from Orissan warriors, like themselves, who
were pressing southward into the Vengi region. An inscription
of a.d. 1396-7, from Palnad taluk in western Guntur district
records a conflict between Oriya speaking Vaishnavas and Telugus
in which the former, called badugulavaru (much as in Tamil country
Telugus were referred to vadugans or northern people), were

72 K. Srinavasaraghavan, 'A Geographical Study of the Vellore Basin', Indian

Geographical Journal. Madras, v. 11, no.3 (October, 1936), p. 230. Based upon
observations in the 1901 Census, India Census Commissioner, Census of India.
1901. Report, p. 289.
73 Madras, The Central Agricultural Committee, ‘Some Suggestions for Madras
Ryots By Special Correspondent of the "Madras Mail’”, Bulletin No.3, Madras,
1906, p. 2; India Office Library. P V 2148.
74 See the observation of the epigraphist Venkayya in A.R.E.. 1904, para. 14.
7> A.R.E.. 1904, para. 14.
76 A.R.E., 1960-1, copperplate number 4 of 1960-1.
396 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

accorded full participation in the Vaishnava sectarian activity of

pallinddu.11
Whether by the movement of small groups of Telugu warriors
or by invasions of Telugu armies, these fourteenth and fifteenth
century conquests did not result in an easy or firm control over
Tamil country by the Vijayanagara overlordship. Tamil country
had virtually to be reconquered in the late fifteenth century by
Saluva Narasimha and his son, Narasa Nayaka, to seize back the
formerly conquered territories in Tondaimandalam as well as
Chola and Papdya countries from local chiefs.78 Invasions of
these territories subsequently by the Orissan king Kapilesvara
Gajapati and his son, Kumara Hamvira in a.d. 1463-4 did nothing
to strengthen the Vijayanagara hold on Tamil country.79 Later,
the great Krishnaraya had apparently80 to send another Telugu
army into Tamil country to refurbish, yet again, the Vijayanagara
overlordship. This resulted in what Krishnaswami claims to have
been a ‘momentous change’, namely the replacement of a system of
governors (mahamandalesvaras) by four military commanders,
nayakas, presumably to act under the king’s orders with the assis¬
tance of dependent warriors called palaiyagars,,81 The residue
— and perhaps the only result — of these successive invasions
of Vijayanagara warriors into Tamil country was the creation
of a stratum of super chiefs who were either Telugus themselves
or Tamils allied to Telugus. It is these personages who constituted
the segmentary leadership in Tamil country during the Vijayanagara
period.
Looked upon as segmentary states, one of the most crucial
differences between the Chola and Vijayanagara states is the so-
called ‘nayaka system’. The notion of a ‘nayaka system' can
scarcely be considered indigenous; it is a conception derived from
the first ‘outsiders’ whose attempts to understand the Vijayanagara
polity we have, the sixteenth century Portuguese Nuniz and Paes.
As already observed, there is little either in the Vijayanagara

77 A R E., 1910, para. 49 regarding 556 of 1909.

78 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 106-15.
™ Ibid., p. 112.
80 ‘Apparently' because the sole source of this ‘invasion’ is a document from the
Mackenzie Collection, the ‘Karnataka Rajakkal Savistara Charitam' cited ibid
pp. 193-4.
81 Ibid., pp. 193-5.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 397

inscriptions or literary evidence to support the ordered political

relationships described by these chroniclers. Thus, the nayaka
system as a system, may be as alien to the facts of Vijayanagara
political relations as the conception of feudalism which derives
in considerable part from notions of a nayaka system. Those
military personages referred to in many Vijayanagara inscriptions
by the title ‘nayaka' are extremely important, however, for they
came to comprise the major connecting elements in the Vijaya¬
nagara segmentary state. The emergence of the new stratum of
supralocal warriors became a possibility with the raids and, later,
the invasions of Telugus into various parts of the macro region
from the middle of the fourteenth century; the stratum became
a reality when these powerful outsiders forged links to the diverse
locality populations they ruled while retaining certain ties to the
Telugu Rayas in Vijayanagara on the Tungabhadra.
Nayakas of the Vijayanagara period are seen by most scholars
as warriors possessing an office conferred by the central Vijaya¬
nagara government. The term, amaranayankara, signifies an office
(-kara) possessed by a military officer or chief (nayaka) in command
(,amara) of a body of troops.82 The office of nayaka carried with it,
according to the conventional scholarly understanding of the
system, prebendal rights over land usually designated as amaram
tenure (or amaramakani or amaramahale), and it is supposed that,
perhaps, three-fourths of the villages of Tamil country were under
this form of tenure.83 The proportion of land under this tenurial
form for Vijayanagara as a whole is generally regarded to be about
the same.84 Two hundred nayakas, were presumed to have existed
in the empire of the middle sixteenth century based upon the state¬
ment of Fernao Nuniz for the years 1535-7.85 However, Nuniz
names only eleven of the most important of these officials and
specifies the territory and revenue for which they were responsible
as well as the number and composition of the troops which they
were to maintain.86

82 Krishnaswami, op. cit., 179-80. D.C. Sircar (Indian Epigraphical Glossary

Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1966) defines nayaka as a royal officer or ruling chief
(p. 214).
82 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 180.
84 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 180.
85 Sewell, op. cit., p. 389.
• 86 ibid., pp. 384 ff.
398 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

In an exhaustive search of inscriptional records of the Vijaya-

nagara period to about a.d. 1530, Krishnaswami was able to find
references to a larger number of nayakas in Tamil country. Bet¬
ween a.d. 1371 and 1422, he finds six nayakas mentioned; between
a.d. 1440 and 1459, he finds six more; between a.d. 1465 and
1491, nine nayakas are found; between a.d. 1491 and 1508, another
ten are found; and during Krishnaraya’s time, a.d. 1509 to 1530,
a total of twenty-seven are mentioned in inscriptions.87 These
Tamil records88 pertain to typical local, or segmentary leadership
activities including gifts to temples, repair and construction of
tanks, reclamation of waste, and the collection of dues from temples.
In none of these records, nor in any other Vijayanagara inscriptions,
are there references to payments by nayakas to the emperor or
his officials; except for the account of Nuniz (Paes does not refer
to these arrangements), there is no corroboration of what have
been regarded as the ‘feudal obligations’ of nayakas.
The political history of the Vijayanagara state is essentially the
history of great Telugu nayakas, their formidable military capabili¬
ties, their patrimonial power, and their relations to religious leaders
in a new level of authority everywhere in the southern peninsula.
Each of these aspects of Vijayanagara politics — except perhaps
the last — have been explored at least partially in the extant
historical literature without attempting to account for their exis¬
tence or their interconnections. These factors are addressed below
without, it must be urged, claiming that the answers offered are
final.
However assiduous the effort by Vijayanagara historians to
elaborate the structure of politics of the time, the core of their
discussions has pivoted on the great nayakas of the kingdom. All
evidence turns upon their exploits and their conflicts, whether
one considers the three genre of literary sources — Hindu, Muslim,
and European — or the inscriptions of the several centuries of the

87 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 181-6.

88 All the inscriptions noted by Krishnaswami were in Tamil. It is in fact rare
for Vijayanagara records in Tamil country, until the time of the Nayaka Kingdoms
of Tanjavur and Madurai, to be in other languages. The Nayaka kingdoms did
occasionally inscribe stones in Telugu and Sanskrit as noted by Sircar, Indian
Epigraphy, pp. 47-8. Another of the rare exceptions is that noted in the A.R.E.,
1905, referring to number 38 of 1905, an undated inscription in Kannada mention¬
ing one Lingappa, son of Chikka Koneri Nayaka, at PadaTvidu in Tondaimandalam
(modern Tindivanam taluk. South Arcot).
 Vijayanagara State and Society 399

Vijayanagara state, or whether one relies, as Venkataramanayya

does, upon the local accounts collected by Colin Mackenzie.
There have been few efforts to go beyond, or behind, these great
political figures, to discover the structural framework within which
they operated. Ever and again, it is to the powerful personages
ot the empire on whom attention is riveted: the kings themselves,
of course, their close warrior kinsmen and other Telugu nayakas
upon whose military abilities all rested, and upon Brahman agents
and commanders who, along with the peasant-caste nayakas,
played the most crucial political parts in the affairs of state. That
this attention from historians is warranted is simple to demonstrate
in any of the four Vijayanagara dynasties. Consider the period of
Achyutaraya’s succession, a time when the empire was at its greatest
strength following the reign of Krishnaraya.
Then, warrior kinsmen were sources of significant support to
Achyuta. When his brother, the great Krishnaraya died, Achyuta’s
position was secured against the powerful Aliya Ramaraya, a
brother-in-law of the late king, by two of Achyuta’s own brothers-
in-law: Pedda and Chinna Salakaraju. The Salakaraju brothers
continued to serve Achyuta as among his most successful and
reliable generals as did another brother-in-law, Cevappa Nayaka.89
And, after the death of Achyutaraya, in a.d. 1542, one of the Sala-
karajus murdered the late king’s nephew and successor, Venkata I.90
Throughout the third dynasty, the record of minor rebellions in
complicity with one or several great nayakas is a dismaying chapter
which is usually euphemistically discussed under the heading of
‘police arrangements’.91 In Tamil country, intrigues among war¬
riors linked to the royal house by agnatic or affinal bonds was less
important than in the northern parts of the empire, but they were not
absent. By the late sixteenth century the political arena of these
Telugu political giants was the entire peninsula. The Brahman
commander and minister Saluva Narasimha Nayaka, or Sellappa,
who, with the Salakaraju brothers, assured the Vijayanagara throne
to Achyuta in a.d. 1529, was rewarded with control of Tanjore, the
richest territory in the empire. Sellappa revolted against Achyuta
in a.d. 1531 in alliance with other nayakas of the south. The reasons
for this revolt appear to have been the differences with Aliya
1(9 Venkataramanayya, Studies in Third Dynasty, pp. 6, 13, 454.
90 Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India, p. 299.
91 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, pp. 262-5.
400 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Ramaraya; Sellappa had thwarted Ramaraya’s ambitions to the

throne at the death of Krishnaraya and was now being made to
pay for that by the still powerful Ramaraya.92
In explaining the dominating character of the powerful Telugu
warriors to whom the title nayaka was affixed, two factors appear
most important. One was the sheer success of arms of these
warriors; the other is the significant role played by Tamil country
and the acceptance of Telugu rule by its chiefs during the Vijaya-
nagara period.
Reasons for the military success of Vijayanagara warriors against
their Hindu and Muslim rivals are hardly considered in the existing
literature on the Vijayanagara state. This is peculiar since all have
differentiated the Vijayanagara state from others on the basis of
its martial character and achievements. An unchanging dharmic
ideology is presumed to account for the successes of the several
dynasties; yet, as is clear from the records of Vijayanagara, the
major victims of Vijayanagara military power were not Muslims
but Hindus, and a major factor in this success were Muslim soliders
in Vijayanagara armies. Clearly, other kinds of explanations are
necessary.
One that would appear to deserve serious consideration is that
the success of Vijayanagara armies was a direct consequence of
their experience with and imitation of Muslim armies, their tactics
and weapons. The founding brothers of the first dynasty had
served in Muslim armies, and it was against Muslim soldiers that
there was intermittent conflict for two centuries. Nor is the military
importance of the Portuguese, with whom the Vijayanagara rulers
maintained friendly relations, to be ignored.
A second explanation, already briefly mentioned above as
differentiating the process of extending the overlordship of the
Chola and Vijayanagara kings, involved relationships between the
latter and their Telugu agents with the leaders of Vaishnava secta¬
rian orders (sampraddyas). As this relationship was dependent
upon the military capabilities of Telugu warriors, it is to this
matter that attention is first given.
Two military factors appear significant: one was the improve¬
ment in cavalry warfare and the other, the use of artillery. Horse
warfare is among the oldest elements of Indo-Aryan culture and

92 Ibid., pp. 26-33 and Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 200-5.

 Vijayanagara State and Society 401

a well-recognized part of armies in both the Sanskrit and Tamil

traditions.93 However, the mounted warrior appears to come into
his own in South India in the armies of Vijayanagara. It has been
suggested that the Vijayanagara kings were as famed as ‘lords of
the horse’ (asvapati) as the imperial Gangas of Orissa were famed
as ‘lords of the elephant’ (gajapati).94 This suggestion is supported
by the Mahanavami festival already discussed.
At first glance, the importance of horses is puzzling since the
Vijayanagara rulers were completely dependent upon the importa¬
tion of war-horses of quality. Considerable notice has been taken
of this trade in horses from Ormuz and other western Asian trade
centres by foreign commentators since the time of Marco Polo.95
According to the Portuguese visitors to Vijayanagara, and Nuniz
was there as a horse trader96 Krishnaraya purchased 13,000
Arabian (Ormuz) horses and country-bred horses each year. The
king kept the best of these for himself.97 Saluva Narasimha, before
Krishnaraya, is reported to have paid a substantial sum for imported
horses whether dead or alive.98 The establishment of Muslim
powers in the Deccan and the long-standing hostility between them
and the Vijayanagara state must have eliminated or curtailed the
availability of horses bred in northern India or imported from
Central Asia.99 With country-bred horses of poor quality in South
India (in apparent contrast to those of Maratha country so skil¬
fully used by Sivaji and his successors somewhat later) the Vijaya¬
nagara state sought and apparently attained a monopoly of horses
fit for military use.
It must also have been true that military horses were a significant
political currency and source of political control by the Vijaya¬
nagara rulers. The supply of strong horses would have extended
the range of effective political control of subordinates, local warriors
of the time. There would thus be strong inducements on the part

93 Mahalingam, South Indian Polity, p. 250; this includes chariot and cavalry
warfare.
94 Sircar, Indian Epigraphy, p. 339 n.; also his ‘Suryavamsi Gajapatis of Orissa ,
Indian Historical Quarterly, v. 33 (September 1957), p. 275.
95 The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. by Ronald Latham, Penguin Books, Har-
mondsworth, 1958, p. 237.
9« Sewell, op. cit., p. 235; his ventures were not remunerative, it is noted.
97 According to Nuniz, ibid., pp. 381-2.
98 According to Nuniz, ibid., p. 307.
99 This trade is noted in Marco Polo, op. cit., p. 151.
402 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

of local notables to assure themselves of a supply of horses and,

especially, a source which remained accessible from one year to
another. Horse breeding and care were notoriously poor according
to foreign commentators.100
Of course, warriors with strong mounts constituted both a source
of strength and danger to the Rayas of Vijayanagara. The more
mobile and powerful subordinate chiefs were, the more effective
the army which could be brought to the field against the formidable
armies of Muslim and Hindu enemies. However, the same cavalry
capability could be and was used against the Vijayanagara kings
as the rebellions of Telugu nayakas instruct. This latter hazard
could be reduced in several ways. One was for the rulers to mono¬
polize access to superior military horses by paying a high price to
those importing and trading in horses, even dead horses. Another
means was to establish greater control over the coastal markets to
which horses came; this was apparently attempted by Krishnaraya
and later under the forceful Ramaraya.101 Finally, mobile strength
could be checked in its long-term effects by strongly fortified garri¬
sons of reliable soldiers of the sort to which reference is repeatedly
made in the poem, the Amuktamalyada, attributed to Krishnaraya.
But there is another military factor which is almost totally
ignored by Vijayanagara historians; that is the use of artillery by
the Vijayanagara armies. The earliest experience of artillery by
Vijayanagara armies occurred in a late fourteenth century battle
between Bukka I and the Bahmani Sultan Muhammad.102 But,
unlike the perfection of cavalry techniques which must have been
learned from Deccani Muslims, it is probable that the use of
artillery was more a consequence of later contact with the Portu¬
guese.103 Doubts have been raised about the proficiency in the
use of artillery by Hindus, as compared to their Muslim opponents,
but this deficiency was off-set by the use of Muslim and Portuguese
soldiers by the Rayas. We have the story, well-worn by its demons-

100 Mahalingam, South Indian Polity, p. 254. This was true notwithstanding the

attention in sastric literature to care of horses (see V R Ramachandra Dikshitar,

War in Ancient India, Macmillan & Co., Ltd, Madras 1944), pp. 174-9
101 These expeditions and their results are still the subject of scholarly controversy
(see Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 212-16, 233-5).
102 Mahalingam, South Indian Polity, pp. 262-3; the date of this battle is a.d.
1368.
103 This observation was made by Ramachandra Dikshitar, op. cit., pp. 105-6.
 Vijayanagara Stale and Society 403

tration of the religious tolerance of the Vijayanagara rulers, of

Devaraya II keeping a Koran beside his throne so that his Muslim
soldiers could swear allegiance properly.104 Muslim soldiers served
in Vijayanagara armies from at least the early fifteenth century,
and from Paes and Nuniz a century later, there are descriptions of
the use of artillery as well as muskets and other weapons involving
gunpowder. The Portuguese accounts of the battle of Raichur in
a.d. 1520, record that the Muslim commander Salabat Khan used
artillery and his 500 Portuguese mercenaries also used guns. Against
these, Krishnaraya’s soldiers included musketeers, but there is no
reference to artillery. However, among the spoils of the Raya’s
victory were 400 heavy cannons and numerous smaller guns.105
There is little question therefore of the development of the use of
artillery and other firearms by Hindu soldiers during this time;
they augmented the firepower of Muslim and Portuguese auxiliaries
in Vijayanagara armies.
Changes in the form of warfare in South India must have contri¬
buted to the persistent success of the Vijayanagara rulers against
their Hindu rivals. Increasingly effective cavalry and artillery
also explain the strategy of royal fortresses manned by special
troops and commanded by dependable officers. Dozens of impor¬
tant fortresses are mentioned in Vijayanagara inscriptions and in
the major literary sources of the sixteenth century.106 In inscrip¬
tions, the Sanskrit term durga, ‘fort’, also acquired the additional
meaning of the territory under the influence of a fortress, and the
title which is taken by Vijayanagara historians to mean ‘provincial
governor' literally means ‘the officer (or chief) over a fort’: durga
dannaikd07 This designation emphasizes the importance of forti-

104 Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, pp. 259-60.

105 Sewell, op.cit., pp. 327, 342-3. Saletore, op. cit., v. 1, p. 417, cites an anonym¬
ous work entitled, Bakhair of Rama Raya which purports to be a detailed description
of the Vijayanagara army at the time of the Battle of Rahshasa-Tangadi It refers
to artillery pieces, casks of gunpowder, and gunners. The report is unbelievable
owing to the numbers cited: 2343 ‘great guns’, 99 million casks of powder and 9
trillion bullocks. An earlier discussion of the Bakhair by S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar
makes no reference to these numbers (Ancient India and South Indian History and
Culture, pp. 172-88; also Further Sources of Vijayanagara History, v. 3, p. 207).
106 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, pp. 170-1 with special

reference to the Rayavacaka of the 16th C.

i°7 Dannaik is a corrupt form of dandanayaka (Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary,
p. 83).
404 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

fied places as well as the fact that the great officials of the Vijaya-
nagara state were not civil, but military officials. This last point
is somewhat surprising when it is noted that most of the durga
dannaiks were Brahmans according to inscriptions. These referen¬
ces thus corroborate the literary evidence of a policy of Krishnaraya
to place reliance on fortresses and to entrust them to Brahmans.
The didactic poem, the Amuktamalyada, attributed to Krishnaraya,
gives an almost equivalent importance to forts as to Brahmans;
in fact these two subjects are treated together. Repeatedly, the
(royal?) poet instructs that fortresses are to be strong, well-manned,
and under the control of Brahmans.108
It is difficult to resist the temptation of comparing the fortresses
of the Vijayanagara kings with the only other massive structures
of the age under Brahman custodianship, Hindu temples. This is
occasionally noted in the historical literature as in the case of the
hill temple of Simhachalam (Vishakhapatnam district) in modern
Andhra-Pradesh.109 During the eighteenth century warfare among
English, French, and Muslim forces in what was then called ‘the
Carnatic’, temples were frequently used by all combatants. Orme
reported on the suitability of temples for this purpose: ‘all, pago¬
das on the coast of Coromandel are built on the same general
plan. . . a large area which is commonly square, is enclosed by a
wall 15 or 20 feet high. . . .’110, and he referred to numerous temples
used as fortifications.111 It would be surprising if during the Vijaya¬
nagara period, when the construction of great walled temples
reached full development, they were not used or were not seen as
potentially useful for military purposes by their builders, who
were for the most part locality magnates.
Superior military capability based upon cavalry and artillery
as well as strategically placed fortified places under the control
of reliable troops and Brahmans, especially Telugu Brahmans:
these were the principal components of Vijayanagara authority

108 A. Rangasvami Sarasvati, 'Political Maxims of the Emperor-Poet, Krishna-

devaraya’, Journal of Indian History, v. 4 (January 1926), verse 207, p. 65; verse
255, pp. 72-3; verse 270, p. 74.
109 K. Sundaram, The Simhachalam Temple Simhachalam [Temple] Devasthanam,
Simhachalam, 1969, pp. 135-6.
110 Robert Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation
in Indostan from the Year MDCCXLV, London, 1803, v. 1, p. 117.
111 Ibid., pp. 113, 127, 147, 171, and passim.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 405

in the southern peninsula. Another element which is taken by

scholars to be part of the foundation of Vijayanagara authority
was the nayaka system, that is, the functions and relationships
among the several hundred Telugu warriors in control of substantial
territories distributed over the entire South Indian macro region
and presumably responsive to directives of the Vijayanagara
rulers. Is this a correct understanding of the role of the nayakas!
As already noticed, the extant historiography on the nayaka
system is at least confusing, even contradictory. The exact or even
approximate number of such personages and their territorial
jurisdictions are unknown; these questions have never been compre¬
hensively investigated, Nayakas are described by the Portuguese
chroniclers of the sixteenth century, Paes and Nuniz, as agents of
the centralized control of the Rayas. The evidence of Vijayanagara
inscriptions and the later Mackenzie manuscripts present a different
picture; one of territorial magnates pursuing political ends which,
at times at least, collided with the aims of the Rayas as these may
(indeed must) be inferred. Between these two opposed conceptions
there are other views of the nayaka system, such as Krishnaswami’s
recent presentation of the system as ‘feudalism’. In the work of
Nilakanta Sastri, several views of nayakas may be discerned. His
1946 publication. Further Sources of Vijayanagara History, con¬
trasts the Vijayanagara nayakas before and after the battle of
Rakshasi-Tangadi in a.d. 1565, in the following words: The
nayakas, who were absolutely dependent upon the royal will. . .
[until 1565] acquired a status of semi-independence.’112 Later,
in his History of South India, Sastri implies a somewhat less strongly
centralized system before a.d. 1565. In his very brief discussion
of Vijayanagara political, administrative, and military organization,
he states that in addition to a large standing army supported, in
part, from:

. . . crown lands, annual tributes from feudatories and provincial gover¬

nors. . . military fiefs studded the whole length and the breadth of the
empire, each under a nayak or military leader authorized to collect
revenue and administer a specified area provided he maintained an
agreed number of elephants, horses, and troops ever ready to join the
imperial forces in war.113

02 Further Sources of Vijayanagara History, v. 3, p. 299.

113 The 1955 edition pp. 295-6; 1958 edition, subsequent editions, pp. 296-7.
 406 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

In a yet more recent work, published almost ten years after that
cited immediately above, the conception of nayakas as officials
under direct central supervision is drastically altered. Here,
Sastri writes:

Vijayanagar became the focus of resurgent Hindu culture and offered a

more successful resistence to Islam in this part of the country than any¬
where else. So it was a long military vigil. As there was no room for
weak or incompetent rulers on the throne, there were revolutions resulting
in a change of dynasty and renewal of strength. The empire is best looked
upon as a military confederacy of many chieftains cooperating under the
leadership of the biggest among them.114

Here is a virtual denial of anything approximating the centralized

political system of which Sastri spoke in his 1946 work, except,
possibly, when an unusual warrior — a Krishnadevaraya — occu¬
pied the throne. Here, too, in this 1964 statement of Sastri, the
threat of Muslim domination is given continued saliency as a
reason for the politico-military changes of the Vijayanagara period.
However, Sastri’s most recent formulation of the essential char¬
acter of the ‘empire ... as a military confederation of many chief¬
tains. . . .’ is an extreme position. It is a position which goes too
far in what may be seen as an effort to correct the early conception
of a centralized polity; it fails to distinguish the differential concerns
and capabilities of intrusive Telugu warriors from those of other
military chieftains, and it therefore fails to appreciate the way in
which the great Telugu warriors dominate the political scene.
The Vijayanagara period is the age of Telugu military power and
glory. Most of those possessing substantial military capability
were Telugus, and they comprise a new intermediary level of
authority in what continued to be a segmentary state in South
India.
As to the title, nayaka, it occurs in Karnataka at least three
centuries before the establishment of the Vijayanagara state, and
it is found in Andhra country at least two centuries before the
Vijayanagara state. Derrett refers to the term in inscriptions of the
late eleventh century and substitutes the English ‘captain’ implying
a military office.115 However, Derrett mentions other evidence,

114 Sources of Indian History, 1964, p. 79. Emphasis added to the original.
115 The Hoysaias. p. 25 with reference to Chalukya inscriptions of a.d. 1062 and
1068 and on p. 188 where he speaks of nayakas, as the lowest commanders of foot
or cavalry.
 Vijayanagara Slate ami Society 407

notably an inscription of the middle twelfth century refers to a

nayaka of Holalkere (in modern Chitaldrug district, Karnataka)
‘who recognized no overlord’, suggesting not a military office,
but a personage of local power.115 Telugu literary works and
inscriptions from Andhra of about the same time also mention
nayakas in the same ambiguous fashion. Kakatiya records of the
middle and late twelfth centuries refer to nayaka of specific localities
as dependants to great families of local dominance.117 There are
even uri-nayakulu and grama nayakulu, that is ‘village nayakas’,
mentioned in Andhra.118 Later inscriptions of the Kakatiya
rulers Rudramadevi (a.d. 1259-95), the queen Rudramba (c.
a.d. 1273), Ambadeva, and Prataparudra (a.d. 1295-1332) are
interpreted in such a manner as to place nayakas into a formal
military organization. Thus, there is the ambiguous tradition of
the ‘seventy-five nayakas’ who died defending the Kakatiya queen
Rudramba’s claim to the throne against Ambadeva, and equally
vague references to a nayankara system.119
The term ‘nayaka’ is, in fact, a very ancient Sanskrit one denoting
a person of prominence and leadership, particularly military
leadership.120 During the medieval period, in South India, nayaka
refers to the bhakti relationship between god (nayaka) and devotee
(nayika). It is a term upon which too much has been permitted
to be borne by modern historians concerned with the analysis
of the political system. When we may point to usage as diverse
as that cited by Derrett and others for warriors of specific local
dominance to that of a Gajapati inscription of the fifteenth century

Ibid., p. 71.
117 Warfare among local magnates in Palnadu (Guntur district) of the late twelfth
century, according to the Palnativirula Charita, was waged by nayaka warriors
identified with specific places (e.g. Malyala, Komaravelli); Venkataramanayya
and Somasekhara Sarma, ‘Kakatiyas of Warangal’, in Yazdani, op. cit., v. 2, pp.
593, 596.
iiR Inscriptions of the late twelfth century, Narasimha Rao, op. cit., p. 121.
ny Yazdani, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 622, 630-1,634. The following example casts funda¬
mental doubt upon the existence of something called the ‘nayankara system' at
this time. In the time of Prataparudra, the writers speak of the king 'remodelling the
nayankara system, which appears to have come into vogue during the reigns of his
predecessors, with a well-equipped army of 900,000 archers [!] besides cavalry and
elephants’, p. 644.
120 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 536, cites usage in the

Mahabharata.
408 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

in which the King, Kapilesvara, is called a nayaka,121 it is necessary

to question the meaning generally ascribed by historians of Vijaya-
nagara: ‘one who holds land from the Vijayanagar kings on condi¬
tion of offering military service’.122 The more prudent reading of
the term nayaka is the generalized designation of a powerful
warrior who was at times associated with the military enterprises
of kings, but who at all times was a territorial magnate in his own
right.
To the extent that it is possible to speak of a nayaka system,
this notion has to do with the existence of a new level of intermediary
authority in South India. The powerful combination of a technically
superior royal army, and strategically placed fortifications under
Brahman commanders constitute one part of the Vijayanagara
political system. The other part consisted of Telugu nayakas who,
with astonishing ease, established and maintained their authority
over most of the southern peninsula, especially Tamil country.
Nayaka authority in Tamil country certainly hastened or perhaps
even completed the demise of those local institutions which together
provided each locality segment of the Chola state with basic
coherence: the local body of nattars acting corporately through
their territorial assembly, the nadu, or, latterly, combined with other
locality bodies in the greater nadu, the periyanadir, brahmadeyas
acting as the ritual and ideological cores of each locality. That
these several institutions had already begun to lose their important
place in Tamil country as early as the twelfth century in some cases
seems clear. Their decline cannot be attributed to the Vijayanagara
state, but must be seen as the result of changes in Tamil society
and amongst the Tamils themselves as discussed in chapter six.
Still, the scope for the politically integrative function of ritual
authority of the segmentary state remained. Neither a Tamil state
nor a Karnataka state emerged to challenge the Vijayanagara state,
to attract the recognition of indigenous locality chiefs, or to rein¬
force the claims of the latter to their ancient locality control. That
recognition was instead extended to the Telugu nayakas whose
original presence in the macro region outside Andhra country
was as military agents of the Vijayanagara kings. These Telugu

121 E.I., v. 33 (1959-60), D.C. Sircar, Two Grants of Raghudeva’, verse 10, p. 4.
122 Cited in Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary, p. 214, based on the usage of
Mahalingam, Administrative and Social Life in Vijayanagara.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 409

warriors were not, however, to remain simply agents of the Vijaya¬

nagara kings; they could not because there was no political frame¬
work through which an agency of this sort was capable of being
sustained. Telugu nayakas quickly became locality figures in
their own right, encouraging the settlement of other Telugus to
strengthen their control over local Tamil and Karnataka chiefs
as well as to buttress their relations with the distant but still inti¬
midating power of the Rayas. With respect to the Rayas, Telugu
nayakas continued to express their agency position (karttd).
Thus ensconced, they became a new intermediary level of authority
within a changed, but nonetheless recognizable, segmentary state.
The Vijayanagara state was left intact and operated through
the sub-stratum of indigenous chieftainships, as Venkataramanayya
observed. The earliest invasion of Tamil country under Kumara
Kampana resulted first in the defeat of, then the restoration to
authority of Pandyan chiefs in the far south.123. This pattern
persisted throughout the Tamil country. As long as the Tamil
chiefs did not seek to establish kingships which could compete
with that of Vijayanagara as the legitimate source of ritual sovereign¬
ty, it was an arrangement which satisfied the requirements of the
Rayas. Where this was attempted or threatened, as in the case of
the Bana chieftain Bhuvane Raviran Samarakolahalan in the
1460s or, later in the century, the Pandyan Jatavarman Kulasekara
Parakrama, this was treated as rebellion by the Telugu nayakas
of Tamil country with the support of the Rayas.124
In a similar way, the Rayas treated as rebellion and dealt harshly
with the claims of the great Telugu nayakas to the independent
status of king. The latter assiduously maintained their cultural
and linguistic distinctiveness in Tamil country and elsewhere they
also continued, on the whole, to claim to be royal agents. Thus,
they stood forth as effective representatives of Vijayanagara suprem¬
acy in the macro region, and everywhere constituted a powerful
intermediary level of rule. As long as these nayakas issued inscrip¬
tions as the agents and in the name of the Rayas and as long as
they joined with the Rayas in the latters’ conflicts with Muslim
and Hindu kings, these Telugu warriors contributed essential
strength to the Vijayanagara segmentary state. This they, and

123 Heras, Aravidu Dynasty, pp. 107-8.

■ 124 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 118-28, 157-60.
410 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Tamil chiefs who also adopted the title of nayaka, could do as

the territorial magnates they were. And, what is of great im¬
portance, this intermediary role was not a usurpation, an illegiti¬
mate appropriation of authority. Neither Telugu nor Tamil
chiefs were completely, nor even primarily, agents or officials of
the Vijayanagara state. Or if, as in the case of the four commanders
whom Krishnaraya sent ‘to pacify . . . the Nayakas in the Tamil
country’ as Krishnaswami puts it,125 such powerful men might
begin as agents or officials of the Rayas, but they very soon were
transformed into centres of power independent of the Rayas and
were ultimately transformed into fully competing ‘Nayaka king¬
doms’. Such transformations to full independence from the
Rayas and, further, armed opposition were usurpations, however,
and these constituted a fundamental threat to the Vijayanagara
segmentary state.
It was to cope with this basic instability of relationships between
the Vijayanagara rulers and the new intermediary level of Telugu
warriors that the significant place in the political system of Telugu
Brahmans must be seen. Brahmans of the Vijayanagara period,
particularly Telugu Brahmans, had become political men as never
before. In contrast to the Brahman notables of the Chola period
who were residents of brahmadeyas and custodians of canonical
learning, the great Brahmans of the Vijayanagara period were men
of the court and administration. It is true that the ghatikas of the
Chola period and earlier were places where Brahmans instructed
others, including other Brahmans in secular, even military, know¬
ledge and that, coincident with these activities, made contributions
to the Chola segmentary state in ways already discussed. It is
further true that in personages like the brahmadhiraja are found
Brahmans with administrative careers and considerable political
influence. But, the contrast between the two periods with respect
to the role of Brahmans is nevertheless striking.
Referring to Andhra during the Vijayanagara period, Venkatara-
mayya states:

The majority of the educated Brahmans sought to enter the government

service which offered them bright careers. They were especially trained to
become accountants and administrators. The imperial secretariat was
almost entirely manned by men of this class. In the Telugu country,

125 Ibid., pp. 193-4.

 Vijayanagara State and Society 411

they separated from the other Brahmans, and formed a subcaste known
as the Niyogis. There is reason to believe that Brahmans of this class were
not very orthodox in the observance of their religious rites. They became
ministers, commanders of armies, and governors of provinces. Every
Brahman mother wished that her son should become a durgadhipati
or governor of a fort.126

The Brahman Vidyaranya and his kinsmen were ministers of the

founders of the Vijayanagara state. They provided not simply
political guidance,127 but a perhaps vital element of legitimacy to
the Sangama brothers who were, according to the traditions of the
dynasty, won back to Hinduism after having become Muslims.128
But, in keeping with the martial character of the Vijayanagara
state, it was as military commanders that Brahmans were most
conspicuous. Until the end of Achyutaraya’s reign, Brahmans were
among the great military leaders. Gopanaraya and Somanan-
danatha commanded Vijayanagara forces in the conquest of
Tamil country during the first dynasty,129 and Brahman advisors
and commanders of Krishnaraya’s time were very prominent:
Saluva Timma, Saluva Govindaraja, Rayasam (or Ayyaparasa),
Kondamarasu, Ramabhatlayya, Sellappa, Saluvayira, Narasimha,
Karanika Mangarasayya, and Bacharasayya.130 These and other
Brahmans were of the Telugu Brahman sub-caste called Niyogi.
As Venkataramanayya pointed out, this was a group which, despite
its prestigious secular activities — or perhaps because of these
activities — may have been forced to constitute an endogamous
group because they could not maintain the high standards of
orthodoxy of Telugu Brahmans of an earlier time.131
Most of the durga dannaiks were Brahmans at least until the
reign of Achyutaraya and possibly after that time. Their tasks
were to build and hold fortresses in various parts of the empire,
and the resources for this central element of Vijayanagara rule
were realized by income from villages appropriated for the purpose
>26 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, pp. 354-6.
127 Vidyaranya was not simply the purohita of Bukka I, but a minister to whom
is attributed the Parasvara Madhaviya a text on legal administration (ibid., p. 268).
128 Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India, p. 227.
129 Rangasvami Sarasvati, op. cit., p. 85.
130 Ibid., Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 356, and Krishna-
swami, op. cit., p. 53, and passim.
131 One thinks here of the Karandai Plates of Rajendra Chola and the large number
of Telugu Apastamba Brahmans who were brought into the Kaveri Basin.
412 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

by Vijayanagara military forces. Villages whose income was so

committed were distinguished by the term, bhandaravada, a term
taken to differentiate what are called ‘crown villages’, from villages
whose income was under the control of local military persons,
or amaram villages. The preference for Brahmans as custodians
of forts in the Amuktamalyada was based upon two factors: Brah¬
mans would serve faithfully, meaning, perhaps, that they had no
rule aspirations of their own, and they would serve efficiently,
meaning they would be in competition with 'kshatriya and sudra
officers’. Levity, or poetic licence may be attributed to the verse
in the Amuktamalyada which refers to this striving of Brahmans
for military accomplishment ‘lest they [Brahmans] should be laugh¬
ed at by kshatriya and sudra officers’.132 However, in a completely
serious way, competition between Brahmans serving the Rayas
and non-Brahman warriors may be seen as having been essential.
Comparison with the Chola state is again instructive. During the
Chola period, Brahmans became politically important as an
important ideological element of the segmentary state. Brahmans
then provided the means of replicating in every locality the dharmic
credentials of rule for which the Cholas themselves created the
model in the Kaveri Basin. Legitimacy for the nattar and other
local chiefs depended partly on the exchange nexus between them¬
selves and Brahmans and those brahmanical institutions found
in brahmadeyas: essentially the exchange of material resources
from the former for royal honours from the latter. The ability
of Brahmans to confer such honours derived from their recognized
ritual supremacy and from their non-competitiveness with establish¬
ed secular rulers.
To sustain this exchange during Chola times, some of the most
valuable productive resources under the control of the nattar
— well-developed, irrigated land in the fertile plains — were
placed under the management of Brahman sabhas, permanently
and conspicuously alienated from local, peasant control. Such
grants to self-regulating Brahman settlements did not diminish
the locality control of the nattar; on the contrary, these grants

132 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 154; citing verse 217.
The verse in full is given in Further Sources of Vijayanagara History, v. 3, p. 154.
A king who confers nobility on a Brahman prospers; for the Brahman stands at
the post of duty even at considerable risk, either to avoid the ridicule of the Ksatriya
and Sudra officers, or in emulation of the other Brahman officers of the king’s
service.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 413

enhanced their power by validating the claim of the king-like

appropriateness of nattar control.
The same attributes of Brahmans which commended their
ideological role in Chola times facilitated their political roles in
Vijayanagara times, but with a difference. By the fifteenth century,
gift-giving (dana) to Brahmans for their exclusive enjoyment was
no longer a necessary nor perhaps even an appropriate form of
dharmic activity. Gifts now went to temple deities for the protection
of all, or gifts were given to sectarian leaders (acdryas, mathadipatis)
for the guidance of all. Brahmans as temple servants and as secta¬
rian leaders were beneficiaries of this dharmic largesse to be sure,
but the conception of the Brahman had surely changed. It was
not to individual Brahmans or to groups of Brahmans for the
preservation of their learning as before (in the form of ekabhogam
or brahmadeya grants), but to Brahmans as integral elements of
the political system of the age as well as of the temple-sectarian
nexus of bhakti Hinduism that support was given. Arising from
the first were new political roles for Brahmans. These roles were
based, as before, upon the dignity and prestige which their birth
and learning continued to confer and upon their capacity to act
as reliable political agents. One such important, new political role
was collaboration with the Rayas (and in time with other great
political personages) in controlling the new stratum of warrior
intermediaries between the kings and locality chiefs. A prime way
that this collaboration was realized was in the placing of strategically
located fortresses under Brahman commanders. These Brahman
notables were considered the agents (danndyakas) ot the Rayas
in the territory under the influence of the fortress. The Brahman-
commanded fortress therefore represented both the military supre¬
macy of the Rayas in a direct physical way and the ritual sovereignty
of the Rayas as an ordinary garrison could not. Arising from the
religious nexus were other new politically significant roles which
are considered below in the discussion of religion and sect during
the Vijayanagara period.
Bhanddrvada, or ‘crown’ villages appear to have been the special
source of income to defray the costs of building and maintaining
strategic fortifications under Brahman commanders and at the
command of the Rayas. In this sense, the bhandaravada village
replaced the brahmadeya of Chola times and symbolizes, in resource
terms, the changing political role of Brahmans during the Vijaya-
414 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

nagara period. It was a political role for which Brahmans of the

time were uniquely endowed, and it was the most certain way of
controlling the new stratum of warriors of that time.
It is important to stress that this warrior stratum was essentially
the creation of the Vijayanagara rulers whose incursions into
territories outside the northern heartland of the kingdom were
responsible for establishing the warrior intermediaries. Incursions
of Vijayanagara armies began with the first Vijayanagara kings
and continued through Krishnaraya’s reign when, according to
accounts in the Mackenzie manuscripts, the commanders of the
Vijayanagara army which invaded Tamil country, became the
nuclei of the Nayaka kingdoms of the next century. 133 From the
outset, in fact, these Telugu warriors themselves or their descen¬
dants, became potential focuses of power opposing that of the
Rayas.
Up to, and including the time of Krishnaraya and Achyutaraya,
this use of Brahmans to check the opposition of Telugu soldiery
was successful. After the defeat at Talikota (or Rakshasi-Tangadi,
two villages closer to the actual battleground against Deccani
Muslims) in early 1565, this system broke down in the heartland of
the Vijayanagara state. It continued to operate in Tamil country
for another century, however, at least until the end of the 'civil war’
among the great Telugu nayakas in Tamil country in the first quarter
of the seventeenth century.
While it is not possible to be certain that all or most of the Brah¬
mans involved in imperial politics — as fortress commanders or
in other military and administrative roles — were Telugus, there
is little question that the principal non-Brahman military leaders
and many, if not most, of their followers were men of Andhra
country. It was precisely this movement of Telugu warriors into
Tamil country and their constituting there a new intermediary
level of authority which gives the Vijayanagara segmentary state
one of its distinctive characteristics. This intermediary level of
warriors, strangers in many parts of the empire, may not be seen
as 'brokers’, to use a fashionable term in contemporary Indian
social science analysis. That is, they do not face in two directions
linking local and supralocal levels of society and are thus not
valued and rewarded by both levels.

133 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 194.

 Vijayanagara State and Society 415

Nayaka warriors were essentially conquerors who superimposed

their supralocality control over indigenous chiefs and expropriated
a portion of the wealth of the area for their support. They may have
established their locality control as part of an ‘invasion’ such as
that recounted in the Mackenzie manuscripts for the period of
Krishnaraya, but they remained as supralocal rulers in their own
right and with a continued identity as outsiders.
The ease with which this control was established over Tamil
localities and the stability of this control virtually until the middle
of the eighteenth century in most places is as noteworthy as the
failure of these Telugu warriors to maintain stable relationships
with the great Rayas. It is another striking characteristic of the
Vijayanagara state that such serious resistence for which there are
records do not speak of that of Tamil chiefs or the Tamil population
against the new supralocality elite of Telugu warriors, but of the
Telugu warriors against their overlords in the north. Places over
which the Telugu nayakas established their control remained what
they had been in the Chola state: segmentary parts of a whole.
Most of the time until the end of the last Vijayanagara dynasty,
these localities recognized the Vijayanagara overlordship in
inscriptions. Many of these segments included numerous localities
of an earlier time, especially in the ancient settled territories of
Tanjavur and Madurai; other Vijayanagara segmentary territories,
such as Ginjee in Tamil country, were new nuclei attracting new
settlement from other places; and these three territories, plus
Ikkeri in Karnataka, became the core tracts of the new generation
of segmentary states in South India which followed the fall of the
Vijayanagara state in the seventeenth century.

Land System

Elaborate systems of land tenure emerged in most of South India

during the mature period of the Vijayanagara state, that is by the
late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The principles of these
systems and the bases upon which they operated were fundamentally
different from those of the Chola age.
Chola tenurial arrangements continued, even in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, to be based upon what might be called
‘ethnic territoriality’. That is, land was held or, more precisely,
income from it was realized by various individuals and groups
416 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

according to shared ethnicity within an autonomous locality.

This locality, or nadu, was essentially that tract claimed, settled,
and cultivated by a peasant people possessing a common ethnic
identity, including a shared putative ancestry and, often, history
of migration, a shared local loyalty, and a shared culture. These
were the nattar, the people of the nadu. Somewhat separate form
nattar, but still a part of the core ethnic collectivity, were traders
in agricultural goods, the nagdrattdr, with a large measure of control
over trade settlements within the locality.134 Similarly, rights
to landed income and substantial control over their settlements
were granted to others, notably Brahmans, by this ethnically defined
core population of a locality. Others who were permitted residential
privileges and a place in the local economy, but no rights to landed
income in most cases, were those who possessed skills and produced
goods which, while valued, were regarded as of an order lower than,
or at least different from agriculture. These non-agricultural,
artisan-traders appear to have been excluded from full membership
in nadu society and were accordingly disadvantaged until the
late eleventh'century when references to idangai military forces
suggest an improvement in their fortunes. Others who were
excluded from1 ethnic membership and from any rights, apart
from affiliational protection of other locality groups, were untouch¬
able labourers.
The Vijayanagara period affords the first view of a different
land system, one approximating that of the early nineteenth cen¬
tury. Individuals and, to a greater extent, members of small,
localized corporate groups were the primary holders of income
rights in the land during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In contrast to the well-defined corporate groups by whom land
income was regularly commanded during the Chola period, those
of the later period were fragments of the earlier nattar groupings
and others in new forms of affiliation and operating within the
much narrower confines of largely autonomous villages.
Three elements of the land system of the Vijayanagara period
serve to differentiate it from that of the Chola period. First, the
basic unit of agrarian organization was but a part of what had
'•*) • .. .. pyc'mt '‘Fiua&J
134 Attention is directed to a recent doctoral thesis by Kenneth R Hall. "The
Nagaram as a Marketing Center in Early Medieval South India", unpublished Ph.D
thesis. Dept, of History, University of Michigan. 1975.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 417

previously constituted the nadu. This reduced unit may be called a

‘village’ in the sense in which that term was used during the British
period .to designate a major agricultural settlement consisting of
one or more residential sites, all of the fields of which were worked
under the direction, if not exclusively with the labour, of those
residents. A major share of income rights from the land, except
in the case of some temple villages, perhaps, were similarly restricted
to persons of the settlement. The older nadu, of which such village
settlements had been part in Chola times, continued to be a kinship
and marriage territory of importance for its agricultural peoples;
for them it was also continued as a cult territory. But, land manage¬
ment, that is the unit in which land, labour, and capital were
combined, had diminished from the nadu to the village. Secondly,
those who managed agrarian activities were well-differentiated,
individual ‘big-men’,135 not the anonymous nattar of Chola
times. Such powerful, local men were recruited from the dominant
agricultural peoples of the immediate locality and often therefore
were of the ancient nattar. However, by the fifteenth century
everywhere in the macro region, there were few localities which
had not been penetrated by ‘outsiders’ as the dominant agricul¬
turists in some or many of its villages. ‘Outsiders’ in Tamil country-
might include such diverse groups as Telugu Reddis in villages of
the Palar basin, in Tondaimandalam or the previously shunned
and feared Kallars in the villages of the Kaveri basin. In these
cases, the important men of villages (‘pedda ryots' and ‘mirasidars’
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) might no longer be
Choliyar Vellalas or Tondaimandala Vellalas, but Reddis and
Kallars. But, whether they were of the ancient nattar or outsiders,
these important men of the village exercised local control of a new
and different sort from that of the Chola nattar. This is seen in the
third major change of the Vijayanagara period, that is the rural
entrepreneurship of village big men.
Together, these changes reflected a land system of far greater
complexity than that of the Chola period, a system in which new
structural features are clear (the new unit of land management,

135 The notion of 'big man’ is meant to distinguish power derived from wealth
and achievement, not based upon office or birth, but ability; it is explored fully
by Marshall Sahlins in ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-man, Chief; Political Types
in Melanesia and Polynesia', Comparative Studies in Society and History, v. 5 (1963),
pp. 285-303.
418 Peasant State and Soeiety in Medieval South India

the village; the new leadership of powerful village big men; and
the new activity of entrepreneurship which enriched the new leaders)
and in which these structural elements were combined in such a
way as to free land from the exclusive control of ancient ethnic
groupings and to free villages from supralocal, territorial (nadu
and periyanadu) control.
These changes marked the end of the ethnic territoriality of the
Chola period and resulted from a process whose dynamics can
first be located in the more advanced parts of the Tamil country,
the central zones of the Chola segmentary state, during the twelfth
century. In that time and in those places occurred the most im¬
pressive development of temple-centred urbanization, trade, and
the emergence of more complex forms of localized society requiring
increasingly adept leadership. Complicating this process during
and after the fourteenth century was the intrusion into all parts
of the macro region — but especially in the less advanced, in¬
termediate and peripheral zones of the older segmentary state —
of Telugu warriors who, in time, came to comprise part of a new
intermediary leadership. With this new leadership came new
groups of cultivators, labourers, and mercantile groups. The new
political and economic migrants into Tamil country of the four¬
teenth century were attracted by its increasing wealth, and the
interests of these migrant peoples were best served by encouraging
the demise of ethnic territoriality in which they must forever be
outsiders. The success of these warriors and their followers in
establishing stable relationships with local Tamil and Karnatak
chiefs and peasant peoples during the fifteenth century, is the
most persuasive evidence that the earlier forms of ethnic organi¬
zation had all but disappeared. Representatives of the ancient
nattar of Tamil country had undergone substantial changes in
their fortunes. Some few had risen to positions of chieftainship
and instituted largely endogamous lineages of chiefs (as seen in
the pattakkarar of the Kongu Vellalas136) within older nattar
communities. Most other ancient, dominant landed groups in
Tamil country and others like the okkulu of Karnataka were
content or compelled to reduce the scope of their control over

136 Noticed in a record of the time of Malikarjuna, A R E. 1920, no.235 and in

one dated a.d. 1622 (A R E. 1920, no.239) and recently noted in the ethnographic
analysis by Brenda E.F. Beck, Peasant Society in Konku, University of British
Columbia Press, Vancouver, 1972, pp. 40 ff.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 419

agrarian resources to quite atomized villages. It was left to the

congenial, supralocal authority of the new leadership of the Vijaya¬
nagara segmentary state to safeguard and even to advance essential
forms of supralocal cooperation, including military protection,
the maintenance of sacred places, and the adjudication of con¬
flicts which could not be resolved within village society. These
changes in agrarian organization are found reflected in the more
complex variety of land tenure found during the Vijayanagara
period as compared to any previous time.
Tenurial forms during the Chola period were quite simple.
Ordinary land tenure was called, velldn vagai (literally, 'cultivators’
share’) by which can only have been meant the shares of income
commanded by the dominant peasant group of a locality. Thus,
Subbarayalu states: 'the Nattar were none other than the repre¬
sentatives of the Vellanvagai villages',137 This tenure accounted
for ‘the general class of villages’ according to Appadorai138 and
'the normal type of tax-paying village’ according to K.A. Nilakanta
Sastri.139 In addition, there were special tenures pertaining almost
exclusively to eleemosynary grants of village income and, for
brahmadeyas, a high degree of autonomous governance. Chola
copperplates and stone inscriptions which record grants to Brah¬
mans of income from cultivated fields along with considerable
control over the government of their settlements, it has been
argued here, represent special arrangements, the very uniqueness
of which required the detailed specificity found in such documents.
Apart from these arrangements for groups of Brahmans, some
income from land, as well as from trade and other sources, was
granted to canonical temples as devadana. This was a relatively
minor feature of the pre-fourteenth century, and support of non-
canonical temples or to non-Brahman ritual specialists, which was
continuous, is almost never referred to in inscriptions. Some in¬
come from cultivated lands was deployed to support military
garrisons in the Chola country, but rarely elsewhere. In over¬
whelming part during the Chola period cultivable land and the
income generated from it was under the control of the nattar
to use and distribute as they saw fit. Nor is there evidence of
tenurial changes until the Vijayanagara period.

137 Subbarayalu, op. cit., pp. 34 ff.

178 Appadorai. op. cit., v. 1, p. 154.
139 The Colas, p. 571.
420 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

It is usual for Vijayanagara historians to speak of three major

tenurial categories. These are: amara, hhanddravdda, and mdnya.
In fact, these categories pertain to only one aspect of land tenure
during the Vijayanagara period, namely, a classification of the
disposition of the major portion of the proceeds of agricultural
production on a village basis. Accordingly, the fewest villages
were bhanddravdtda or ‘crown’ villages, some portion of whose
income went to support Vijayanagara fortresses in various parts
of the empire; a larger number of villages contributed to the
support of Brahmans, temples, mathas as mdnya villages; and the
greatest number of villages — estimated to comprise three-quar¬
ters of all villages — yielded a portion of their income to those
with local dominance. The latter were designated as amaranayakas,
hence the tenurial category amaram.140
There are two difficulties with this classification. The first is
the contention that the Vijayanagara ruler was owner of the soil
and thus that the holders of mdnya and amara rights were ‘lessees’
of conditional tenements. It is supposed that holders of these
rights were required, as a condition of holding the right, to perform
certain specified services (e.g., ritual or military); these holders
were also supposedly subject to unspecified restrictions regarding
heritability, transfer, or sale. Such a position is simply untenable
in the light of inscriptional evidence of all sorts of transactions
involving land and in the light of much of the best scholarly in¬
terpretation of this evidence. The second difficulty in this classi¬
fication of land tenure into 'crown villages’, ‘military service
villages’, and ‘beneficial villages’ is that there is no way of deter¬
mining how many villages can be classified under any of these
tenure classes. The idea that seventy-five per cent of all villages
were military service villages is in no sense an estimate; it is. in
fact, an assertion, unfortified by contemporary evidence, that all
villages not designated ‘crown villages’ or alienated for religious
purposes — and there is no way to estimate those numbers —
were under presumed ‘feudal’ tenure.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, it is important to
recognize that this classification system is based upon something

140 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 180: ’Nearly three fourths of the land in Tamil
country was held by military chiefs on this tenure'. The term amaram is taken to
refer to military service tenure from the Sanskrit-derived Tamil word amara (San¬
skrit: samara. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 1170).
 Vijayanagara State and Society 421

real. That is the saliency of the village unit in references to land-

holding during the Vijayanagara period. One again notes the
contrast with Chola arrangements in which lands from a great
many villages were contributed to form a new brahmadeya settle¬
ment. In the founding of the Anaimangalam brahmadeya re¬
corded in the ‘Larger Leiden Plates’ of Rajendra Chola I, twenty-six
villages gave portions of their lands to the new settlement; the
Karandai Plates of the same ruler refer to fifty-seven contributing
villages.141 In the Tamil portion of the latter plates, these fifty-
seven villages are said to have been removed from the status of
vellan vagai and the rights (kdniy-udaiydr: literally ‘right to posses¬
sion of cultivable land’)142 of the cultivators (kadi) cancelled.
Arrangements of the Vijayanagara period are very different; not
only are there no longer records of the establishment of settlements
like the great brahmadeyas of the Chola period, but there were
few transactions which refer to lands outside a single village. At
this time, the village has become the effective unit for land arrange¬
ments. And, such arrangements include more than the ultimate
disposal of income transfers beyond the village proper; they
pertain to that nexus of resource shares which a village had come
to be.
Vijayanagara inscriptions are concerned with new and public
claims upon shares of village income. To be stressed here is that
the ‘rights in land’ always refer to shares of income, not ‘dominion
in land’, and that in many cases such shares have always existed
but were not before given the public and formal status achieved
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Another point of note is
that the unit in which these income shares are mentioned is in¬
variably that of a named village.
Vijayanagara records delineate categories of income shares based
on the rights of the diverse groupings of which a village consisted.'
The Tamil term amaramcikani is understood as an ‘estate’ by
most Vijayanagara writers143 or, in Nilakanta Sastri’s usage, a
‘fief.144 The particle, makani in fact, denotes a fraction, one-

141 The ‘Larger Leiden Plates’ are discussed in E.I., v. 22 and on this matter,
pp. 237-8. The ‘Karandai Plates’ are discussed in a typescript provided by the
Government epigraphist, K.G. Krishnan.
142 S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary', pp. xxiii, lxxxi.
143 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 179; Krishnaswami,
op. cit., p. 180; S.I.T.I.. ‘Glossary’, p. v (amaramagani).
144 A History of South India (1958 ed.), p. 297.
422 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

sixteenth,145 and is best understood as a conventionalized share

of agricultural income or production paid by those in control of
agrarian production to those with local political authority (i.e.,
amara).
Amaram tenure of the Vijayanagara period was military tenure
as most historians insist. It was the control over land and its
products possessed by those with military capability. In this
limited sense. Sircar’s .contention that amaram tenure is among
the few exceptions to the total absence in early India of anything
like ’feudal tenure’ may be accepted.146 This alone can scarcely
justify feudal usage, and the rejection by Sircar of the concept
of feudalism has been supported in this discussion. But, the
analysis of amaram tenure here cannot be made to fit the category
of ‘land-lord’ which Sircar insists is superior to the concept of
‘feudalism’ in early India. A major reason for this is that the
concept of ‘landlord’ has not been defined by Sircar, not has the
encompassing legal and political structure in which these ‘land¬
lords’ were supposed to have functioned ever been clarified.147
Neither ‘feudalism’ nor ‘landlordism’ seize the essential character

145 Tamil Lexicon, v. 5, p. 3143; the one-sixteenth fraction is the sum of the fraction
ma, one-twentieth, and kani, one-eightieth; also, op. cit., v. 2, p. 859. Also, the
reference to ‘ma: ka.ni' in S. Agesthialingam and S.V. Shanmugam, The Language
of Tamil Inscriptions 1250-1350 A.D., Annamalai University, Annamalainagar,
1970, p. 191.
146 D.C. Sircar, Land System and Feudalism, p. 57.
147 Sircar's 'land' appeared to be created by the establishment of a 'free-holding'
as a result of ‘relegating the Icing’s rights over the village to the donee (by a royal
charter)’, ibid., p. 20. The term Tree-hold' is old since such alienations according
to Sircar were sometimes completely free of taxes and obligations, were sometimes
partly free of these, and were, at times, not exempted at all from obligations to the
king. Furthermore, the enumeration of twenty-one 'free-hold' rights on p. 21 con¬
sist of permutations of the conventional a?ta-bhogam (eight kinds of benefits or
enjoyments of possession) which are not proof of a 'landlord' tenement or right.
Finally, p. 14 contains a confusing discussion of the role of the king which is crucial
in Sircar’s conception. In this discussion, the king is regarded as the ultimate owner
of land and, he continues, ‘The royal charters . . . say that the free-holding was
created by the king at the request of a subordinate whose name was mentioned
in the (epigraphical) document only when he was of sufficient importance. When
he (the subordinate) became more powerful, he would himself issue charters with
the king's permission, and, when still more powerful, his charters would not even
mention the name of the overlord. The next stage would of course be represented
by his [the subordinate’s] charters issued as an independent monarch. Thus, a land¬
lord became a king.’ !
 Vijayanagara State and Society 423

of amaranayakas as highly local and quite independent warrior

chiefs. It is simply not the case that amaranayakas were officials
of the Vijayanagara government. There were to be sure great
military commanders — nayakas who were also the most im¬
portant political movers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;
but they were few. They were also Telugu commanders of Vijay¬
anagara armies whose power derived from their military offices.
Secondarily, the power of these Telugu grandees derived from
territorial bases in Tamil country; these territories were the founda¬
tion for the new generation of segmentary states after the decline
of the Vijayanagara state in the late sixteenth century. But the
nayaka title was also used by locality chiefs along with older,
local and vernacular forms of address.
Amaram tenure consisted essentially of the power to distribute
or redistribute the proceedings of agrarian production and to set
and collect those charges in kind or in cash to be paid to personages
with local authority. These are powers enumerated by the most
able student of modern South Indian land tenure, Sundararaja
Iyengar; to these powers, he notes, the term amarakam is attached
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.148 The term amara
does indeed refer to war and some amaranayakas were great
military commanders. But, the term amaram, more broadly,
denotes the rights and powers of local magnates.
Another important and publicly acknowledged category of
income shares is that paid to ‘village servants’ upon whom much
attention was lavished in early British records. According to the
scholarly literature dealing with the medieval situation, those
who performed services for the agricultural population of a village
or a locality were called by the term dyagdr in many parts of the
macro region. This term means ‘those possessing income’ (ay am
in Tamil).149 According to the established historiography, ayagdrs,
the body of village servants, displaced village assemblies of the
Chola period (,sabha and ur) as the local management institutions.
Thus, we have Krishnaswami’s statement that: ‘. . . the introduc¬
tion of the Nayankara Ayagar systems in the provincial and
local spheres by the Vijayanagar rulers brought about the decline
and disappearance of the local institutions in the Tamil country’.150

148 Op. cit., p. 83.

149 S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. x.
150 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 103.
424 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Village servants, or ayagars, consisted of a number of func¬

tionaries of whom three are considered by Krishnaswami151 and
others not to have existed formerly. These included the headman
(e.g. maniyam reddi, or gauda), accountant (e.g. karnam, senabho-
va), and watchman (e.g. talaiydri). To holders of each of these
offices, a portion of village income was allocated in the form of
rights in particular plots of village land. These plots were not
liable for regular tax payments, hence they were regarded as
mdnya, or tax free152 though holders of such rights might be subject
to a fixed quit-rent payment.153 The same form of payment went
to other ‘village servants' who possessed no governance or manage¬
ment functions within a village, but did provide services essential
to the village community. Among these might be providers of
ritual services, such as washerman and priest. For the most part
however, village servants were providers of goods and services
of a more ordinary sort. Among the latter would be the leather-
worker whose products included the leather bag used in lift ir¬
rigation devices (mhote or kapila), potter, blacksmith, carpenter,
waterman (riiranikkar) who controlled and maintained irrigation
channels, bankers and money-lenders. In the nineteenth century,
these rights to income shares by ‘village servants’ were the subject
of intensive debate and some clarification in connection with
mircisi and indm rights. During the Vijayanagara period such
Persian words were not known or used; instead the Dravidian
or Sanskrit terms umbali, kodage, srotriya are found. The meanings
appear to be the same. They refer to rights of income from agri¬
cultural production which were exempt from the customary dues
on agricultural income in lieu of direct payments for services.
In those rare cases in which there were direct payments for services,
payments in kind were usually designated, danyaddya,154 those
in money, suvarnadaya or kctsu kadamai455
What is distinctive about the ayagar system is not that the
complement of skills and services existed in villages of the Vijaya¬
nagara period, but that special allotments of income shares from
151 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 104; Venkataramanayya, Studies, pp. 160-8.
152 Tamil Lexicon, v. 5, p. 3044.
152 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 163.
154 5.I T.I., 'Glossary', p. xii.
155 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, p. 199 and S.I.T.I.,
'Glossary', p. xxvi.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 425

land and specified cash payments were for the first time generally
provided to those holding these ‘offices’. Village ‘administrative’
offices existed in villages of the Chola period as we know from some
of the most elegant records of that time.156 Similarly, there were
carpenters, smiths, persons responsible for the regulation and
maintenance of irrigation channels and village tanks providing
services vital to the Chola agricultural economy just as there were
priests and washermen required for ritual purity. However,
livelihood shares of village income for these services are first
mentioned in Vijayanagara records. It can only be assumed that
payments for such services in pre-Vijayanagara times were provided
informally by the nattar patrons of the village and locality to these
specialist clients. Whether the transformation of such payments
from informal, essentially, patron-client ones, to public provision
of specified income shares resulted from the demand of village
servants, whose bargaining position may have improved with the
decline in power of the nadu, or the convenience of village patrons
cannot be judged. The implications of either origin of the change
are interesting, but the shift to this more formal, tenurial mode of
payment underscores the transformation from the anonymous,
organic agrarian relationships of the Chola period to the more
stratified and complex relationships later.
Finally, there continued during the Vijayanagara period, as
earlier, to be payments from agricultural communities to those
who provided the highest order of ritual services. The form of
such payments is again some share of village income in which the
recipients may have been liable to a small, fixed cess (later called
jodi) but which could also have been exempt from all dues. These
continued to be called manya rights by and large and were held by
Brahmans as individuals or as members of corporate bodies specified
in terms like brahmadeya, devaddya, and mathapura,157
A distinctive category of Vijayanagara land tenures related
to what might be called ‘rural developmental entrepreneurship’.
In Tamil country and Andhra, these tenures were called dasavanda
rights; in Karnataka, they were called kattu-kodage rights. These
were special, private rights to a share of the new productivity

156 The 'Larger Leiden Plates’ of Rajendra I list such offices. See E.I., v. 22,
no.34, pp. 233, 237-8.
1?7 Venkataramanayya, Studies in the Third Dynasty, pp. 180-4. The general
term umbali was also used for payments to Brahmans.
426 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

created by an investment in irrigation improvement in existing

agricultural villages.
Amaranayakas were among the most active rural entrepreneurs.
Perhaps these powerful men were seeking the maximum, protected
return to their descendants on resources they commanded in many
parts of the macro region; a kind of insurance against the vagaries
of political fortune. In agrarian tracts where productivity could be
increased by a relatively modest new construction of, or improve¬
ment in, irrigation facilities, there was scope for agrarian entre-
prenuership or, as it might be termed, developmental activity.
Such activity seems to have occurred less in the regions of reliable
irrigation potential such as in the deltaic tracts of the Kistna-
Godavari or Kaveri, where irrigation construction and maintenance
were well-established locality or village functions with cesses and
personnel provided from quite early times.158 In tracts with little
or no potential for this scale of water management, such as the
dry upland tracts of Rayalaseema or Pudukkottai, there is also
little evidence of this kind of activity; here, irrigation development
had to await the large-scale works of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. It was rather in those places where hydrographic and
topographic features were such as to provide the basis for consider¬
able productivity and settlement, but provided still greater scope
for development through investment in small-scale irrigation
works that this feature of the Vijayanagara period is most evident.
'Developmental investment’ was undertaken by individuals of
means and local prominence in return for which they secured income
rights to a portion of the enhanced productivity as personal,
heritable, and transferable property. This is the meaning of the
tenurial forms called kattu-kodage in Karnataka and dasabhan-
dam or dasavanda in Tamil country. Under these arrangements,
it was usually stipulated that a share of increased product from the
construction of a tank or channel was to go to the cultivators of
the village in which the construction was carried out and a smaller
share was to be granted to the person who financed or otherwise
executed the construction. 159 The share to the latter appears often

158 Chola terms such as cen-nTr-vetyi, refer to labour obligations for the purpose
ol dredging irrigation channels, and nlr-vllai, to a water cess, are among the most
frequently occurring terms found in the Kaveri basin according to Karashima and
Sitaraman, op. cit., p. 91.
Mahalingam, Economic Life in Vijavanagar, p. 52. Karnataka inscriptions
 Vijayanagara State and Society 427

to have been about one-quarter. An inscription from Pelleru

village, Atmakur taluk, Nellore, dated a.d. 1622, involves a village
held on amaram tenure under the following specified arrangement:

... the terms for providing channels for the people this year are: the
produce raised on dry fields should be divided into four shares, of which
three should go to the ryot and one to the estate every year. The grain
raised under the tanks should be divided into three shares, of which two
should go to the ryot and one to the estate every year. In this manner
whoever is the ruler should cause to be done.160

An earlier record from Mulbagal taluk, Kolar district, Karnataka,

a part of the Gangavadi territory, provides elaborate description
of the dasavanda right. In a.d. 1496, a person constructed a tank
in a temple (devadana) village under an arrangement with the
head priest of the Narasimha temple. It was stipulated that the
builder of the tank would be entitled to three-tenths of the produce
from the rice land watered by the tank and, in addition to this, the
builder was granted income shares in dry cultivation of ragi.
From these shares, it was provided that the builder of the tank
would be responsible for repairing and maintaining it under the
penalty of being liable to a special payment to the temple should
he fail to do so. It was moreover provided that if additional irriga¬
tion facilities were created in the village by this person, the same
arrangement would apply, and that any groves of coconut or areca
or any permanent gardens were planted, tank water could be
utilized as on the rice lands. As a final provision, it was stated
that irrigation water for the plots charged with meeting the dasa¬
vanda shares could only come after temple lands had been
watered.161
Some large temples which held income shares in villages as

referring to kattu kodage grants may be found, among other places, in E.C., v. 10.
Inscriptions in the Kolar District, Kolar taluk, no.207, a.d. 1661; no.219. a.d. 1663;
no.220. a.d. 1628; no.227, a.d. 1655 (?); Mulbagal taluk: no.131, a.d. 1407: no.132,
a.d. 1494. An example of dasavanda in Andhra is the Telugu inscription from
Kondamarripalli, Kalahasti taluk, Chittoor, dated a.d. 1592 in Inscriptions of
Andhradesa, ed. M. Rama Rao, v. 2, pt 1, Sri Venkateswara University Press, Tiru-
pati, 1969, no.891, Chittoor District.
160 Butterworth and Venugopal Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, v. 1, p. 264. Also
noted, IMP, v. 2, p. 1055. ‘Estate' appears to be the translation of amaramakani.
161 E.C., v. 10, Mulbagal, no.172. The next record, no.173, dated a.d. 1503 per¬
tains to the same person and temple providing for the share-cropping of the temple
lands which the former undertook on approximately half-shares.
428 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

devaddna maintained irrigation works departments for the precise

purpose of utilizing money endowments for productive irrigation
works. During the Vijayanagara period all temples received money
gifts and some received large amounts. Donors of money were
often designated as recipients of a share of the food offerings made
to the god (prasadam) as a part of the bhakti temple ritual of the
age. Entitlement to a share of prasadam, apart from being an
important temple honour (mariyddai),162 was materially valuable.
Prasadam was sold, as it is to this day, by those who were entitled
to receive it, to pilgrims to be carried back to their homes by the
latter and shared with others in the same manner, and with the
same auspicious effect, as Ganga water was and still is. The donor’s
share at the temple of Venkatesvara, the premier temple of the
later Vijayanagara period at Tirupati, was one-fourth of the food¬
stuffs resulting from a particular investment in a new irrigation
facility in a temple village. A typical Tirupati inscription with
this provision may be cited. The Tamil record is dated 1 October,
A.D. 1536.163

Hail, Prosperity! This is the silasasanam executed by the Sthanattar

(trustees) of Tirumalai temple in favour of Koneri, son of Sellan residing
at Palaverkadu village in the Saka year 1458 while Sriman Maharaja-
dhiraja Rajaparamesvara Sri Vlrapratapa Sri Vlra Achyutaraya Maha-
raya was ruling the kingdom, to wit.
Since you have paid the sum of 3,200 nar-panam into the temple trea¬
sury for the purpose of propitiating Sri Venkatesa with 2 tirupponakam
[food offerings] daily as your ubhaiyam [donation] — we shall utilize
this sum of 3,200 panam for the improvement of the tanks and channels
in the temple villages and with the income obtained thereby, shall be
supplied from the temple-store for the preparation of 2 veUai-tiruppona-
kam, 2 marakkal of rice, measured with the Tirumalai temple measure,
1 ulakku of ghee, 1 ulakku of green gram. salt, pepper, vegetables and
curds.
You are hereby authorized to receive the quarter share of the offered
prasadam due to the donor. The remaining prasadam shall be reserved
for distribution during early adaippu.

162 The work in progress of Carol Breckenridge on the matter of temple honour
is very important here; the author is indebted to her and to Arjun Appadurai on
the point. See their joint paper. The South Indian Temple: Redistribution, Honors
and Authority’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (New series: December, 1976).
Ifi3 Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanam Epigraphical Series/hereafter: T.T.D.I., v. 4,
Inscriptions of Achyutaraya's Time (from 1530 A.D. to 1542 A.D.), Tirumalai-
Tirupati Devasthanam Press, Madurai, 1936, no.75, pp. 144-45.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 429

This arrangement shall continue to be in force throughout the success¬

ion of your heirs, till the moon and the sun shine.
In this manner this deed is drawn up by the temple-accountant, Tiru-
ninga-udaiyan with the consent of the Srivaishnavas. May these the
Srivaishnavas protect!

While this is a typical record of the late fifteenth and early

sixteenth century temple complex of the hill shrine at Tirumalai
and the shrines at the base of the hill at Tirupati, this temple complex
was not typical. It was perhaps the greatest temple in South India.
Indeed, before it reached the peak of its fame in the sixteenth cen¬
tury, 153 festival days were celebrated there, accounting for its
enormous attraction to pilgrims.164 Still, other large temples
maintained a system of productive investment of endowment
funds in temple lands; and there were at the time few more secure
ways for temples to meet the responsibilities they incurred in accept¬
ing funds for perpetual ritual services and there were equally few
ways in which those persons of wealth, capable of making such
endowments, could assure to themselves the prestige of temple
honours and a reliable return on some portion of their wealth
then could be realized through such things as the sale ofprasddam.165
Grants of income from land to temples by these and other donors
had the further advantage of placing some portion of their land
under temple protection, yet another form of insurance.
Inscriptions from the shrines at Tirupati and Tirumalai afford
an unparalleled opportunity to take a measure of the complex
variety of persons who commanded land and money.166 About one
thousand stone inscriptions ranging from the ninth to the seven¬
teenth centuries have been published by the Devasthanam of that
temple. Most of these date from the period a.d. 1450 to a.d. 1550,
a time when this sacred complex enjoyed substantial patronage

164T.K.T. Viraraghavacharya, History of Tirupati (The Tiruvengadam Temple),

Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanams, Tirupati, 1954, v. 2, pp. 565-6.
165 For a more elaborate description of these matters see: B. Stein, ‘The Economic
Function of a Medieval South Indian Temple’, Journal of Asian Studies, v. 19
(February, 1960), pp. 163-76 and B Stein, ‘The State, the Temple and Agricultural
Development; A Study in Medieval South India’, The Economic Weekly Annual,
Bombay, February 1961, pp. 179-87.
166 This discussion is based upon the author’s unpublished doctoral thesis, en¬

titled, ‘The Tirupati Temple: An Economic Study of a Medieval South Indian

Temple’, University of Chicago, December, 1958. Published portions of this research
may be found in Stein. ‘The Economic Function of a Medieval South Indian Temple'.
430 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

from the rulers and officials of the Vijayanagara state. Between

a.d. 1456 and 1570, over one hundred villages and large sums of
money were granted to these shrines by some three hundred donors.
Concentrating upon the major part of the sixteenth century, the
analysis of these Tirupati records provides important information
on as well as raising questions about donorship and its increasingly
diverse sources. These records are, therefore, essential evidence
on social and economic complexity during the great days of the
Vijayanagara state. Excluding the gifts to the temple from Vijaya¬
nagara royal families, the following breakdown of donors and
endowments of temple villages during the sixteenth century by
Vijayanagara regnal periods167 and tenurial type and number of
villages granted can be seen.

Table VIII-1

Village Endowments to the Tirupati Temple and Types

of Tenure by Donor Groups, 1509-683

Donor Group Type of Tenure 1509-30 1530-42 1542-68 Total

A. State donors. Crown and Service

tenure.b 12 10 40i/2 62i/2
B. Temple Eleemosynary
Functionaries Tenure 5 191/2 18 ‘/2 43
C. Local Resi- Some service,
dents and some peasant
Merchants. proprietor tenure. ]/2 6 3 91/2
Total \1% 35i/2 62 115

a Based on 312 Tirupati inscriptions. Miscellaneous land grants are not included,
b Differentiation of villages which might have been under bhcmdarvada tenure
from those under amaram tenure is not possible from the data. Theoretically,
grantors of both types would have required the assent of superordinate authorities
for such alienations, though there is no evidence that such assent was sought or
actually necessary.

For this same period, using the same broad classification of donors,
money endowments entrusted to the stdnattdr of the various shrines
at Tirupati and Tirumalai were as follows:

167 The period a.d. 1509-30, Krishnadevaraya, a.d. 1530-42, AchJ/utadevaraya;

a.d. 1542-68, Sadasivaraya.
 Vijayanagava State and Society 431

Table VIII-2

Monetary Endowments to the Tirupati Temple, 1509-68

1509-30 1530-42 1542--68

Value % of Value % of Value % of

Donors (panam) Total (panam) Total (panam) Total

A. STATE DONORS 33.0 65.0 20.5

Viceroy 30,675 6.5
Chief Minister 1,200 1.0
Commander-in-Chief 15,000 3.0
Generals 18.980 12.0 145,200 30.5 4,260 2.5
Royal Officers 19,990 13.0 11,010 2.0 1,580 1.0
Subordinate and
Tributary Officers 11,320 7.0 106,820 23.0 32,840 17.0

B. TEMPLE FUNC-
TIONARIES 26.0 24.0 23.5
Temple Priests 28,215 18.0 66,963 15.0 22,482 12.0
Musicians, poets
dancers 2,500 1.5 30,480 6.0 6,340 4.0
Scholars 2,520 1.5 4,185 1.0 5,747 3.0
Temple Accountants 7,446 5.0 8,270 2.0 7,802 4.5

C. LOCAL RESIDENTS
AND MERCHANTS 41.0 11.0 56.0
Citizens and Mer-
chants of Tirupati 25,625 23.0 41,695 9.0 54,405 28.0
Private Devotees 27,560 18.0 10,293 2.0 54,150 28.0

Totals 145,356 100.0 470,591 100.0 189.606 100.0

100.0 100.0 100.0

The pattern of donorship displayed in these two tables may appear

unexceptionable in all but one respect, that is the conspicuous
place of donors identified as temple priests and other devout
persons who resided around the precincts of the Tirupati/Tirumalai
temples. The fact that a variety of important political personages
— some closely linked to the Rayas as officials and many other
men of seemingly independent prominence and power — con¬
tributed substantially to the land and monetary resources of the
shrines is, of course, unsurprising. These were, after all, precisely
432 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the persons with control over the distribution of village income

and changes in that distribution as well as those with the dharmic
responsibility to use their resources in this way. Somewhat more
interesting is the donative contribution of local residents and
merchants of the locality of Tirupati. The money endowments
of these people during the troubled reign of Sadasivaraya, a.d.
1542-68, constituted over one half of all of the money given in
that quarter century.
However, as noted above, it is the substantial level of money
and village endowments by religious leaders that must be considered
as most interesting. Almost forty per cent of all of the villages
granted to the temple and about twenty-five per cent of money
endowments came from those with religious titles and, as may be
judged from the inscriptions of the temple, important ritual func¬
tions. This is a paradox which is scarcely dissolved by the observa¬
tion that many, probably even most, villages were originally granted
to these religious personages by the category of donors labelled
'state donors’, for it is not certain what is to be understood by this
complication in gifting. What were the advantages of or the needs
for the political donor (a chief or military official), or the priestly
or otherwise religiously marked donor (temple priest or mathddi-
pati), or the temple managers, possessing a village or some money,
to pass through the middle group of high ritual functionaries or
heads of mathas on the way from the original donor to the temple?
This question will be reconsidered below, in the section on
'temple and sect’; it will be sufficient here merely to assert that the
various kinds of religious leaders associated with this temple,
and perhaps with all large and important temples, are not to be
seen simply as 'temple functionaries’, 'employees', as it were, of
the temple. Rather, the various categories of religious personages
— such as jiyars or matha heads, acharyapurushas or learned and
often itinerant propagandists of Vaishnavism; ekaki Sri Vaishnavas
or celebate priests; and even temple accountants — may be seen
as important religious personalities in their own right. Such
persons would have followers in the countryside and in towns
who provided their leaders with the resources necessary to have
an important presence at such temples.168 These religious leaders

168 I again express my gratitude to two scholars whose work on this matter has
persuaded me: Carol Breckenridge and Arjun Appadurai. Their work will be
considered more fully below.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 433

may thus be viewed as personages whose religious roles conferred

command over substantial and redistributable resources; consider¬
ing the evidence of the sixteenth century Tirupati, they were not
very different from the great political notables of the time. Such
sectarian and temple leaders may be viewed as conduits for resour¬
ces marshalled from quite diverse social sources and ultimately
used in great temples to protect and augment sectarian interests
in ways that other entrepreneurial agents did; this deployment
of resources in temples also brought honours for the constituencies
served by these leaders. Thus, taking the categories of donors
as shown in Table VIII-2 and adding to that diverse set of resource
holders and redistributors those who anonymously provided
villages and money to their sectarian leaders for the support of the
latter and the redeployment of these resources as temple gifts —
considering all of these appropriate holders and conveyors of
wealth — the fabric of Vijayanagara society can be seen to have
become far more complex than what we are permitted to see during
the Chola period.
Most, but not all, of the evidence which exists on the entrepre¬
neurial and redistributive activities outlined above were related
to temples. This is the nature of the evidence in almost all parts
of the macro region. Karnataka offers something of an exception
to the general bias toward temple records. Numerous kattu
kodage rights are recorded on slabs of stone which could be placed
anywhere whereas Tamil inscriptions, almost inevitably, are
inscribed on the basements and walls of temple structures.169 In
whatever way these rights of the Vijayanagara period came to be
preserved, however, the purpose was to protect the entrepreneurial
beneficiary as well as to confer public recognition upon that activity
and the more generalized redistributive system of which it was part.
These entrepreneurial and redistributional processes must be
fitted to extensive spatial networks in which centres, such as the
sacred complex at Tirupati, played a vital role. Notwithstanding
these complex systems of resource movements, agrarian manage¬
ment remained in the hands of locally based men. Like the nattars
of the Chola period, the chiefs and nayakas of the Vijayanagara
period were men of the locality, except, rarely, when they can be
identified as among the great Telugu nayaka commanders of

169 E C., v. 10, Kolar, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiii.

434 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Vijayanagara armies. The title, ‘nayaka’ appears to have been

freely adopted and widely used by local magnates with no apparent
connection with Vijayanagara armies. This title signified an altered
form of local leadership which emphasized the greater scope for
individual achievement than can be observed in the evidence of the
Chola state and time. During the Chola period, and especially in
the more advanced, populous agrarian tracts, there is a pervasive
anonymity of leadership; it is the nattars acting as a corporate
body — the nadu — at times with the assent of those local powerful
persons with the muvendaveldr title. In the Vijayanagara period,
it is as powerful individuals that we encounter local leadership.
The basis of local authority remained the same: the dominant
local peasantry. Military prowess and economic power were the
sources of local rural leadership in both periods, but the nayakas
of the Vijayanagara period managed more complex social and eco¬
nomic universes. While this change in leadership can be noted in
parts of the Tamil country as early as the twelfth century, it is a
common feature of the Vijayanagara period. Greater power and
prestige attached to this later form of leadership reflecting the
greater demands upon individual leaders as corporate organization
of the earlier Chola age broke down. The scope for and rewards
to individual capability in the Vijayanagara period is sharply
contrastive with the Chola age.
Two essential points emerge from this recital of Vijayanagara
tenurial rights. First, land rights do not pertain to dominion in
land, but to 'property’ in share of income. Secondly, land continued
to be managed by the dominant agricultural groups of a locality.
The Vijayangara land system, whether it is discussed in terms of
amaranayakas or otherwise, is precisely about these two points:
so are the major systems of village organization described in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British records.
It is appropriate to consider this latter, relatively full body of docu¬
mentation as a means of clarifying Vijayanagara arrangements.
The earliest direct experience of the English East India Company
servants with land management in South India came in what was
called, 'the Jaghire’, the rural hinterland of Fort St. George, destined
to become the city of Madras. This territory of 231 villages, 330
square miles, and a land revenue valued at Rs 250,000 (two and
one-hall lakhs) was acquired as a jagir from the Nawab of Arcot
in September 1750 and was confirmed as an indm or tax free
 Vijayanagara State and Society 435

gift in an order (sanad) of the Mughal emperor in August 1765.170

The report of the East India Company official, Lionel Place, on
this tract in 1799 was the first to present that system of land rights
to become known as ‘mirasi system’. The following late nineteenth
century summary of Place’s description of the system of ‘the
Jaghire’ is both accurate and interesting in its appreciation of that
system:

The Jaghire was placed in 1794 in the hands of Mr. Lionel Place, and it
was from this gentleman that we are indebted for the first correct informa¬
tion as to landed tenures in South India. The villages of the Jaghire were
discovered to be of a class already [i.e., previously] described as democ¬
ratic or mirasi. The villages, that is to say, were corporate bodies, with
an internal municipal constitution, and with the land the property
of the corporation. The land was sub-divided into shares which were
saleable, and still retained all the value of real property. In each village
there were besides the corporate members, cultivators holding as tenants
of the corporation and having on their side prescriptive rights according
to ancient agreements. Again there was a third class cultivating from
year to year without any other privileges than that of doing so. The
distinction between the shareholders and the tenants consisted in the
fact that the latter could not sell his rights of occupancy, nor enjoy any of
the various immunities and advantages belonging to the former as a
member of the corporation. Mr. Place in making his settlements, dealt
with the whole communities and not with any particular individual, and left
it to the villagers to assess themselves individually. Each village chose
its representative or representatives. There is every reason to suppose
that the joint village settlements of Mr. Place would have proved success¬
ful.:171

According to Place’s report of 1799, the village lands of ‘the

Jaghire’ were apportioned among 8,387 ‘meerassee’ holders in

no The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the
Affairs of the East India Company, 28 July, 1812, ed. Walter Kelly Firminger,
Augustus M. Kelley, New York. 1969; originally published Calcutta, 1918, v. 3,
p. xxi. Hereafter: The Fifth Report.
171 C.D. Maclean, Standing Information Regarding the Official Administration
of the Madras Presidency in Each Department, in Illustration of the Yearly Administra¬
tion Reports Prepared Under the Orders of Government, Madras, 1877; 'Section II.
Administration of the Land, Government and Alienated Land; (a) Historical Sketch .
pp. 94-5. The reference in the quotation to villages ‘already described as demo¬
cratic. . . .’ is to the first important work subsequent to that of Place on this form
of tenure, namely, F.W. Ellis, Replies to Seventeen Questions Proposed by the Govern¬
ment of Fort St. George Relative to Mirasi Right; with Two Appendices (Madras,
1818) and, perhaps, the later work critical of that of Ellis, W.H. Bayley, Memoran¬
dum on 'Mirasi Tenure’, London, 1856.
436 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

possession of 15,995 shares of income with another 1,827

shares either unclaimed or held appropriately by tenants
(‘pyacarries’), or a total of 17,822 shares.172 At almost
the same time that Place was reporting on the mirasi system of
‘the Jaghire’, other territories were being added to the Company’s
holdings in South India, including Cuddapah which was acquired
from the Nizam of Hyderabad as part of the Ceded Districts to
defray some of the costs of maintaining a British force as provided
under the subsidiary alliance treaty between the Company and
Nizam. VTsabadi was the name given to the system of village
revenue encountered by Thomas Munro, the first Company
administrator in Cuddapah. This term is a combination of a
Dravidian word for the fraction ‘one-sixteenth’ (e.g. Tamil:
vlsam) and the Hindustani suffix ‘batshare or division;173 it
applies to coparcenery villages found not only in Cuddapah, but
m much of Telingana comprising Hyderabad State and modern
Cuddapah, Anantapur, Bellary, and Kumool districts. According
to an early nineteenth century Madras Board of Revenue statement.

Under this [vlsabadt] system, a fixed sum of money was assessed on the
whole of the village for one or more years. A certain number of the most
respectable ryots became answerable for this amount, each being res¬
ponsible for his own separate portion thereof, and all for each other,
and the lands were divided by lot, as in the samudayam villages of the
Tamil country [a form of mirasi tenure in which lands are held in common
but subject to periodic redistribution174] the portion of land to be occupied
by each being determined by the proportion of the rent for which he became
responsible . . . and from this division of the lands into shares the settle¬
ment took its name of veesabuddv, namely a village settlement by shares
of ready money.175

During the vigorous, and at times acrimonious, debates in

Madras between 1795 and 1817 over the kind of land revenue system
which was to prevail in the Presidency, village systems of the sort
described above were given serious study, and, for a time at least

172 The Fifth Report, v. 3,app. no. 16;‘Extracts from Report of Mr. Place. Respect¬
ing the Land Tenures in the Jaghire; dated 6th June 1799', p. 165. Fractions in the
original have been deleted.
173 H.H. Wilson, A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, Eastern Law House,
Calcutta, 1940, pp. 67, 549.
>74 Ibid., p. 459.
175 Cited in S. Sundararaja Iyengar, Land Tenures in the Madras Presidency
(Students' Edition), Madras, 1933, pp. 81-2.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 437

— between 1807 and 1812 — seemed destined to become ‘the

Madras system’. This, of course, was in contrast to, and to some
extent in conflict with, the zamindari settlement of Bengal. Village
settlements under a variety of names were pressed by the revenue
officials;

the officers of government farmed out the lands of whole villages either
to the head inhabitants, who again sub-rented each field and settled with
each ryot, or the community of the village who settled among themselves
the land and rent which they were respectively to occupy and pay. The
apportioning of rent and land was known as amarakam,176

In 1808, the Madras Board of Revenue pronounced itself in favour

of this form of revenue system over that in force in Bengal or that
being proposed by Munro as the Tyotwar’ or ‘kulwar’ systems,
which were to triumph in the end.177
Recent study of the early phase of the ryotwar settlement in
Madras lends strong support to the wisdom of the Madras Board
of Revenue in insisting that the village settlement system was the
arrangement most closely attuned to the agrarian order they
sought to control in the early nineteenth century. Mukherjee and
Frykenberg lay particular stress upon this point.

. . .immediately prior to the introduction of Company rule, the prevailing

mode of land control was the village system. In this tradition, each indi¬
vidual had been obliged to submerge his own identity and to sacrifice
his own interests for the common weal of the village, as determined by
the lord, the elite of the village. Village affairs were controlled by persons
whose titles, by local custom, might be any of the following: pedda raiyat,
reddi, kapu, dora, patel, kadim, mirasidar, gramatamu; often the adjective
pedda, or ‘great’ was prefixed thereto. These persons were the headmen,
the elite of their villages. Invariably, they were of high and clean caste,
either Brahmans or, more often, ‘yeoman-warriors’. They stood between
the Government and the rest of the village which was composed mostly
of labouring people of lower caste.178

ne Ibid., p. 83.
177 Maclean, Standing Information, p. 101.
>78 Nilmani Mukherjee and Robert Eric Frykenberg, ‘The Ryotwari System
and Social Organization in the Madras Presidency’, in Land Control and Social
Structure in Indian History, ed. Robert Eric Frykenberg, The University of Wis¬
consin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1969, pp. 219-20. There is in this quotation
and elsewhere in this thoughtful essay a somewhat excessive appreciation of the
harmonious village life of the time.
438 Peasant State cmd Society in Medieval South India

Those whom Mukherjee and Frykenberg call the ‘yeoman-

warrior’ or, elsewhere, ‘farmer-warrior castes’179 accurately reflects
the language of early British administrators faced with the task of
establishing Company rule. The experience of the earliest admin¬
istrators was essentially military, and the formal campaigns against
the well-organized field forces of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan and
the Marathas were probably less influential on the views held by
these soldier-administrators than the bitter, little battles with
‘poligars’ and other local magnates whose forces consisted of
peasant peoples fighting on and defending their own lands and
rights. The liquidation of these rural warriors was strenuous
and effective, and their fate was often a brutal one.

In the southern part of Tamil country there were thirty-three Poligars,

for the realization of whose tribute it was found necessary to appoint a
separate European Collector. These Poligars fought desperately for what
they conceived to be their rights, and their reduction forms a noteworthy
incident in the military history of the Presidency. Of those chiefs who
held their patrimonial estates for several generations, we find in the year
1803 thirteen only still in possession; the lands of fourteen others were
under charge of the European Collector, and six were forfeited, given
away or sold. In the districts ceded by the Nizam in 1800, there were
eighty Poligars. These also resisted the Government, and had to be
reduced to subjection by force of arms. In 1807 they were found to have
been thus disposed of: Pensioned 2, holding a Jaghire 1, residing on their
estates deprived of authority 23, managing their own estates 40, expelled
by force 6, in confinement 8, total 80.180

British soldier-administrators of the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries coped with the powerful combination of
peasant-warrior, village leaders by persuasion and coercion. The
most successful, like Munro, developed a lively appreciation for the
capacity of the ‘yeoman-warrior’ to resist the imposition of Com¬
pany rule as well as their capacity to facilitate Company rule.
Once again, the findings of Mukherjee and Frykenberg are im¬
portant :

Evidence of the continuous and subtle influence of village leaders

abounded [in the later nineteenth century]. In 1882, the Head Assistant
Collector at Cuddapah reported that ryots still stood in respect and
scrupulously obeyed the 'Chiefs' or Pedda Reddis. The Pedda Reddi
was the only person in each locality who had effective control over ryots.

179 Loc. cit.

180 Maclean, Standing Information, p. 96.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 439

The only peace and stability of the area depended upon him. The Reddi
had only to express dissatisfaction at his own individual revenue settlement
and most other ryots (usually also of the same caste) would follow his
example, even it they stood to lose by doing so. Whenever any difficulty
arose in coming to an agreement, as in making an annual revenue settle¬
ment (jamabandi) with village ryots, if the cause [of the difficulty] could
be discovered — and often it could not be — it would be found that the
Reddi was responsible. As soon as he was satisfied, troubles would cease.
Ryotwari settlements, village settlements, or whatever, his influence
persisted. A ‘good’ (or cooperative) Reddi could be an asset to the Govern¬
ment; a ‘bad’ one could be its bane. It was reported that persuasion by the
whole staff of the huzur kachahri, or collector’s office, could not do in two
days what a Reddi could do in half an hour.181

It is of little wonder, as these authors point out, that revenue officials

of the Madras government were, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, as suspicious of peasant, village leaders, as they were to
become of their Brahman revenue servants during the middle and
late parts of the century.182
In only one matter were the early British administrators wrong
with respect to the village leadership with which they had to deal.
That is, they believed that the 'farmer-warrior castes’ exercising
village dominance were created by the chaos of the eighteenth
century or by the oppression of Muslim rule. The British believed,
or in any case expressed the idea, that Muslim policies and the
oppression and chaos engendered by them justified the revenue
and judicial policies promulgated by the Company. In this, the
British administrators and Court of Directors in London were like
most of the historians of Vijayanagara who consider that the
early Muslim incursions from the fourteenth century onwards
explain and justify Vijayanagara policies. The armed and powerful
village leadership of the late eighteenth century is more truely the
vestige of the amaranayaka system of the Vijayanagar period in
the particular form encountered by the British. Perhaps more
truely, this kind of local leadership dates from decline of ethnic
territoriality and the nadu in the late Chola period.

Temple and Sect

The concluding section of this chapter deals with a variety of

181 Mukherjee and Frykenberg, op. cit., pp. 222-3.

!»2 Ibid., p. 221.
440 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

issues only poorly apprehended by its title. The intention is not

to discuss ‘religion’ in the period from 1350 to 1700, though that
is a part of its subject matter; it is rather to focus attention on the
medieval South Indian temple and the relationships between it
and various kinds of social and cultural features of that society.
The temple is viewed in relation to absolute and enduring religious
corporate groups such as the Terigalai Sri Vaishnava sanipradava
as well as in relation to those relative and potential groupings to
which such terms as kattalaidar (temple donor) and idangai-
valangai (left and right caste divisions) are applied. More abstractly,
the temple is viewed in relation to morality, that is, in relation to
those conceptions about how competing and conflicting claims
among persons and groups ought to be resolved,. As in other
sections of this chapter, the purpose is less to summarize historical
interpretations on which there is wide agreement than to suggest
processes and relationships of which we are presently less aware.
Underlying the conceptions which are presented here are a set
of tensions which emerge from the preceeding discussion of the
political system and resources of the Vijayanagara period and which
repeatedly called for moral adjudication. The sources of these
tensions in the society of the Vijayanagara period should be made
explicit.
The nayankara system generated profound tensions for the
society of later medieval South India. It was an intermediary level
of authority and power which was uncertainly poised between
two very different levels of established authority: that of a macro
regional kingship, at one level, and that of atomistic, micro regional
peasant societies, at another level. Because the South Indian
political system lacked the relatively firm principle of ruling clanship
of Kshatriya ideology and because it never developed a contractual
basis similar to European feudalism, the nayaka system was orien¬
ted, Janus-like, both upward to the Rayas and downward to
thousands of peasant localities.
Vijayanagara nay aka's were creatures of the State, created by
the military' superiority and purposes of the Rayas, and therefore,
necessarily, involved in and vulnerable to the hazardous imperial
politics of this militaristic state. Notwithstanding several kinds
of divergent interests, nayakas and Rayas shared one fundamental
interest: that of preventing new regional kingships from coming
into existence. When this threatened, nayakas and Rayas together
 Vijayanagara State and Society 441

could and did cooperate in repressing such incipient states. But,

apart from this shared interest, there was little that clove the great
navakas — or the many, minor chiefs who assumed the title — to
the Rayas, and there was much that divided them from these kings.
To Telugu nayakas bent upon maintaining their often delicately
poised control over peoples and territories in which they were
outsiders, the prospect of an invasion by a Vijayanagara army-
as reportedly under Krishnadevaraya in the early sixteenth century
and more certainly under Sriranga III in the middle of the seven¬
teenth century183 — and their possible displacement was an all too
real threat. The same threat was equally before Tamil chiefs as
known from a number of Mackenzie documents.184 Contrarily,
the Rayas could justly fear the combination of nayakas which
would thwart an even strong Raya’s ambition, but, more seriously,
could lead to the seizure of dynastic control. This occurred when
Saluva Narasimha, in the late fifteenth century, brought an end to
the first dynasty of Vijayanagara. Less focused combinations of the
great nayakas could also constitute an alternative locus of Vijaya¬
nagara authority which brought about the civil wars of the early
seventeenth century.
The policy of relying upon Brahmans as instruments of imperial
control, especially during the time of Krishnadevaraya, as we have
it from the Amuktamalyada and inscriptional evidence, appears
to have been successful under a king of his power and ability. But,
this proved a weak and unenduring solution to potential cleavages
in the political structure. The career and rebellion of Sellappa
make this clear.
Sellappa Saluva Nayaka was a Brahman officer whose father
had served the deity Ekambaranatha at Kanchi. Sellappa rose
to political prominence under Krishnadevaraya, and he appeared
to have served that king’s interests in Ramnad. At Tiruppattur
there are two inscriptions of a.d. 1510, extolling the virtues of this
Brahman officer and recording endowments by him of two villages
— renamed in his honour as ’Sellappapuram’ — to a Siva temple.185

183 Krishnaswami, op. cit., pp. 193-4 and Ch.15.

184 E.g., 'Account of Kandava Rayan and Setu Rayan Who Ruled from the Fort
of Tiruvidaiccuram in the Arcot District’, Mackenzie Manuscripts; Summaries
of the Historical Manuscripts in the Mackenzie Collection, v. 1 (Tamil and
Malayalam), T.V. Mahalingam (ed.), University of Madras, Madras, 1972, p. 94.
185 Krishnaswami, op. cit., p. 200.
442 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Other honours were added in the remaining years of Krishnaraya’s

reign as he continued to hold high office along with other Brahman
notables186 in the far southern part of the peninsula; often Sel-
lappa’s inscriptions fail to even mention the King, though his loyal
relationship with Krishnaraya continued. Moreover, Sellappa
appears to have supported the troubled candidacy of Achyutade-
varaya. However, early in the latter’s reign — one day after his
coronation according to the contemporary Sanskrit work, Achyuta-
rayahhudayam of Raianatha Dindans187 — Sellappa joined the
Travancore king Udayamartandavarman, or Tiruvada (possibly
entering a marriage alliance with that king), who had come to
control a substantial part of the southern end of the peninsula by
a.d. 1530. Achyutadevaraya reacted vigorously against their
combination and used the occasion for a triumphal progress of the
southern country, conferring gifts at Tirupati, Kalahasti, Tiru-
vannamalai and Srirangam.188 No very convincing explanations
of Sellappa’s rebellion have come forward and none may be neces¬
sary to explain the behaviour of this able man apart from noticing
that the times offered numerous other examples of self-interested,
powerful men pursuing their ambitions. Against such machina¬
tions there was certain protection for neither Rayas nor nayakas,
thus the frequent political chaos of the Vijayanagara empire that
marks the strategy of political self-preservation, of all against all.
Uncertain relationships between these great nayakas and the
Rayas was replicated downward from the nayakas. In Tamil
country many of the most powerful nayakas were outsiders —
Telugus ..."Who had won their locality control through the threat
of their superior military power based upon technical advantages
and in part on the following they held among their own peoples
whose migration had preceded their control or accompanied it.
All such migrants were outsiders like the nayakas. There were
also a variety of local peasant allies offering collaboration with the

186 E.g., a prominent poet in krishnaraya’s court. Allasani Peddana was granted
nayankara powers at Annur in Karirachi-Sima in modern South Arcot (A R E..
1916, para. 66, p. 143).
187 S. Krishnaswami Iyengar, Sources of Vijayanagar History, no.53, pp. 158-9,
cantos 4-6.
188 Ibid., canto 5 and V.N. Hari Rao, ‘A History of Trichinopoly and Srirangam',
unpublished Ph. D Thesis, University of Madras, 1945; typescript consulted at
the University of Chicago Library.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 443

nayakas. Among such were those who perceived new opportun¬

ities to alter their long-standing political relationships with
the ancient nattar to whom they had long been subservient. The
rise of the Pallis during the sixteenth century in modern South
Arcot and in Kongu is an example of this, so are the alliances bet¬
ween the Madurai nayakas and the Maravars. Equally, if not more
important, were the relations forged between intruding Telugu
warriors and a variety of sectarian leaders in Tamil country, a
relationship which will be examined more fully below.
By these means, Tamil country became a region of great opportu¬
nity for military adventure and imperial expansion during the
fifteenth century and earlier. But, the establishment of naycika
authority there was made possible by yet another factor: the
prior reduction of various institutions of local organization dating
from the Chola period. This was a precondition of nayaka rule in
Tamil country; it was not, as Krishnaswami and others have argued,
a consequence of nayaka rule. Under the nayakas, no new political
forms of institutions were established in place of the nadu and
periyanadu, the sabhas of brahmadeyas, or the nagarams of mer¬
chants. The locality political superstructure having previously
been weakened, and in some places eliminated, there existed a
vacuum which provided the opportunity for the installation of
nayaka rule. Nor were political institutions linking nayakas
and their peasant subjects replaced by other political or administra¬
tive institutions. Hence, the absence of effective linkages between
the supralocal, intermediary authority of nayakas and the peasant
peoples from whom they exacted tribute can be seen to have been
as great as the absence of reliable linkages between the nayakas
and the Rayas.
At the base of these political tensions were changes in the ins¬
titutional and moral order whose origins date from transformations
of the twelfth century. What the Tamil historians Nilakanta
Sastri and Krishnaswami lament as the decay of the ancient self-
governing institutions under Vijayanagara (or more properly,
nayaka) rule, and which they justify as a necessary cost of protect¬
ing South Indian Hinduism and varnasrama-dharma, is better
seen as internally generated change in the peasant society of South
India in later Chola times. The transformation of some part of
the nadu leadership into chiefs over increasingly pluralistic local
societies, the emergence of temple urban centres, the enhanced
444 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

importance of mercantile and artisan groups with whom the

periyanadu chiefs forged new and strong relations, the increased
monetization of the economy, all these were responsible for the
decay of the local institutions of Chola times and indeed the Chola
state itself.
The process continued into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
with the focus of local management of productive resources collaps¬
ing more and more around villages controlled by segments or
lineages of peasant clans of a locality. Dominant, local agricultural
groups were thus less and less coherently linked together by ethnical¬
ly defined political institutions such as the nadu and periyanadu,
and increasingly by complex cultural and symbolic relationships
to wider networks of allegiance and identity. This is seen in a
genre of poetry celebrating Tamil peasant groups and in the crucial
role played by temples and sects.
Occasional references have been made in this study to a little-
recognized Tamil verse tradition extolling the qualities of peasant
folk and the territories in which they lived. The poetic genre is a
satakam form, and the territory is the mandalam489 The mandalam
term has a history among Tamils which is very ancient. References
to it occur in the poetry of the Classical period,190 and these terri¬
tories are again referred to in the Saiva doctrinal work Tiruman-
diram of Tirumular of about the sixth century.191
In one stanza of that work, the mandalam is given a strong moral
signature:

The five Tamil Mandala are Tatvas (i.e., are regions where the truth has
been fully revealed); there roam wise men whose minds have blossomed. . .
and who have known the ancient truths. . . . They have given utterance
to their knowledge as easily as they would throw out water through their
mouths and this knowledge spread over the whole of the five Tamil
mandalas.192

The commentary on the Tirumandiram takes the five mandalams

to be : Cholamandalam, Cneramandalam, Pandyamandalam, Ton¬

's9 An essay involving these elements by the author, entitled ‘Circulation and
Historical Geography in Tamil Country’, Journal of Asian Studies, v. 37 (November,
1977), pp. 7-27.
190 Subrahmanian, Sangam Polity, pp. 224-6.
191 C.V. Narayana Ayyar [Swami Sadanandal. Origin and Early History of Saivism
in South India. University of Madras. Madras, 1936, p. 211.
192 Ibid., pp. 216-17.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 445

daimandalam, and Kongumandalam.193 Mandalams are also used

during the Chola period to designate the several large territories
comprising the Tamil portions of the Chola state of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries.
However, the satakams referred to her differ from older forms
of literature which only rarely refer to mandalams and never to
their peasant inhabitants. Several of these works survive, each
set in a pattern of one hundred verses. They exist for all parts of
Tamil country,194 as well as for southern Karnataka.195 To these
may be added a purana of the territory in modern South Arcot
between Chola country and the central Tamil plain (or Tondai-
mandalam) which celebrates the dominant Vanniyars, but is
presented as an explanation of the right-and left-hand castes.196
These works date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
for the most part. In a number of ways, these satakam afford a
striking example of ethnic pride in and identification with their
territory by powerful peasant peoples.
In almost all cases, the satakam extoll the virtues or moral
superiority of peasant peoples whose society was the core of the
contemporary social order upon whom all others depended. They
are called Vellalas in most cases.197 The Cholamandala-Satakam
refers to the banner of the Choliyar which displays the ploughshare
(me//)198 and recalls with pride the support which the ancient
Choliyar gave to the late twelfth century poet Kamban ('Kamba')
who produced the poem Erelupadu, a hymn to the plough and to the
Vellalas.199 Echoing Kamban’s appreciation of the agriculturist,
193 Ibid., p. 218.
194 The style of the satakam (Sanskrit = sataka, a poetic form of 100 verses:
Tamil Lexicon, p. 1254) is kattalaikkalitturai according to Arokiaswami, Kongu
Country, p. 25, this being a verse of four lines, each with sixteen syllables (Tamil
Lexicon, p. 647). The satakams are: pandimandala-satakam (P.S.) by Aiyain
Perumal Asiriyar of Madurai (Sirkali, 1932); colamandata-satakam (C.S.) by
Atmanathar Desikar of Velur (1650-1728), ed. Somasundaradesikar (Mayunar,
1916); tondaimandala-satcikam (T.S.) by the Jaina Brahman Jinendran or Kar-
meghakavinar of Vijayamangalam, ed. T.A. Muthuswami Konar (Trichengodu,
1923,), cited in Arokiaswami. Kongu Country, p. 25.
195 Karmandala-satakam by Araikilar of Avanasi (K.S) commentary by P.A.
Muthuthanadavaraya Pillay (Madras, 1930).
196 Idangai-valangai puranam, Oriental Manuscripts Library, University of
Madras, no. D. 2793, palm leaf.
197 E.g., P.S., v. 17 and C.S, v. 27; C.S., v. 38; K.S., v. 20-1, 23; T.S., v. 84, 98.
198 C.S., v. 38 and T.S., v. 98.
199 C.S., v. 78; Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 672.
446 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

the satakams, make claims for the peasantry as people of respectable

status whose wealth was lavished upon Brahmans and canonical
gods and who were ‘pure’, sdtsudras (Tamil -carcuttiran): ‘Chola-
mandalam is famous for its Choliyar who were the sdtsudras,
sprouted forth from the feet of Brahma and who gave the produce
their ploughs to all humanity.’200
In proof of their pretentions to ‘purity’, those honoured in the
satakams refer to most of the sacred places in their territory and the
gods sheltered and worshipped there;201 they also claim to have
founded temples and mathas,202 References are made to Manu
whose ordinances these peasants claim to uphold.203
A prominent theme of the satakams, is the political importance
of the peasantry. The Pandimandala-Satakam states: ‘The velddar
of this mandala, give horses, elephants and chariots to the Pandya
kings and put the crown on their heads;’204 while in the Chola-
mandala-Satakam: ‘The Choliyar of this mandalam had the
rights of sthdnikas [temple managers] and kdni [land holding] and
the privilege of staying near the king. . ,205 The sixty-four kudis
[lineages of Choliyar] had the right of crowning the Chola king
Karakala.’206
The Karmandala-Satakam refers to the ‘three Tamil kings’207
whom those of the territory had served in their territory along with
rulers from northern Karnataka.208 However, the Karalar deny
that any king ever subjugated them. Rather, kings like Rajaraja
the Great were accepted as the king of the Karalar because of his
ardent devotion for the god Siva, and Rajendra I, whose title, the
verse points out, was gahgaikonddn (‘conqueror of the Ganga
country’) not gahgankondan (‘conqueror of the Ganga people’)

200 C.S., v. 6. In T.S., v. 97, the title cuttirar is claimed ( Tamil Lexicon, pp. 1342,
1561).
20> C.S., v. 50, 78; K.S., v. 26-6, 31, 40-4, 49-50, 60, 80; Y.S., v. 84. 99.
2«2 K.S., v. 60.
203 C.S., v. 29; T.S., v. 56.
204 V. 17.

205 V. 57.
200V. 61; see kuti, among the meanings of which is ’family’ or ‘lineage’ ( Tamil
Lexicon, p. 968).
207 v. 27.
208 V. 28. Karnataka inscriptions occasionally use another word for mandalam,
namely, pani as in a Tamil record of a.d. 1098 (E.C., v. 10, pt 1. no.426 Mulbagal
Taluk, pp. 80-2).
 Vijayanagara State and Society 447

by which name those of Karmandalam were also known.209

Karalars were friends of the great Bana chiefs and served them,
as well as greater kings.210
The satakams have had little importance for historians because
they seldom contain evidence which would be of interest to those
concerned with conventional political history. Apart from their
use in historical geography211 these poetic works have been dis¬
missed as merely the expressions of a part of the peasantry of the
macro region Vellalas— who shared a common northern
origin myth.212
The generic terms kdrkdtta-veldlar or 'Ganga-people' refer to a
primary mythic origin in the Gangetic plain and a secondary one in
southern Karnataka — Gangavadi or Karmandalam. From here,
the verses state, these Ganga people or kdrkdtta-veldlar, spread over
the entire macro region.21 Pandimandalam was settled by these
folk after they had resided in Chola country according to satakams
of both Pandimandalam and Cholamandalam.214 Tondaimanda-
lam was also settled by folk of the Chola country according to the
satakam of Tondaimandalam and other, somewhat later, tradi¬
tions.215 Conquest is neither claimed in these verse collections
nor supported by them. There is no suggestion that the Tamil
plain was, at some time, overrun by more northern peoples. On
the contrary, even the Karalar, of what is now the southern portion
of Karnataka, claim to be devoted to the protection and preserva¬
tion of their Tamil language.216 Their boasted primacy seems
clearly to have arisen from close association with kings and great
chiefs and from their purity in ritual terms.
The satakams provide an important, poetic insight into the
broadly shared ideology of the leading stratum of peasants in the

209 v. 28. Also see v. 32 where it is stated that karalar are the progeny of gahgadat-

tan or gahgevan who was born near the river Ganga. hence they are known as gartgan.
210 K.S., v. 88.
2U See Arokiaswatni, Kongu Country, pp. 6, 13, passim.
212 Nilakanta Sastn, The Colas, p. 690, no.25; ’All vellalas are described as being

of the Gangi-kula'.
213 See T.S., v. 97; C.S., v. 98; P.S., v. 11; K.S., v. 31-2.
2H p.S., v. 5; C.S., v. 92.
215 T.S., v. 97. Also, Mahalingam, Mackenzie Manuscripts ‘Account of Kandava
Rayan and Setu Rayan who Ruled from the Fort at Tiruvadaiccuram in the Arcot
District’, p. 94. However, the P.S., v. 9 and 10 claim that Vellalas were sent by
the Pandya king to Tondaimandalam.
216 K.S., v. 60.
448 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

macro region. All claim ritual purity and respectability from their
support of varnasramadharma according to smriti and their support
of brahmanical religion; all claim respectable secular rank; all state
with pride their precedence as the leading cultivators, upon which
pivot all their relationships: those with local chiefs (udaiyar), with
lesser cultivators (kudiyar), with pastoralists (konar or idaiyar)
and with artisans and merchants of all kinds.217 Yet, these folk
were divided, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
into great territorial groupings, i.e. the mandalams. The nadu
micro unit of organization of the Chola period had, by that time,
or at least in the poetic forms of the satakams, ceased to be as
significant as it once was; a larger territorial identification was now
claimed.218 That quite localized forms of peasant social structure
and agrarian organization had not, in fact, ceased altogether to be
significant in the time of the satakams is clear from the earliest
British records of peasant peoples of the macro region.
Vellalas, who comprised the dominant landed people from the
earliest times for which there are records, conform to a clear pattern
of territorial segmentation and have long done so.219 Vokkaligas
of Karnataka and Kapus or Reddis of Andhra also fall into the
same pattern. Vellalas of Tamil country have been divided into
four main groups according to ancient geographical terms as their
titles reflect: Choliya, Tondaimandala, Pandya, and Kongu.
Each major sub-division has shared a common array of cultural
traits. These pertain to domestic and other ritual engagement
in ‘clean' (sdtvik) occupations such as agriculture and trading;
each has had its own characteristic titles as 'Pillai' among the
Choliya and Pandya Vellalas, Mudaliar among the Tondai¬
mandala Vellalas, and Kavanadan (or Gounda) among the Kongu

217 C.S., v. 27; P.S., v. 10. Also see Tamil Lexicon, p. 1204: konan.
218 References in the satakams to locality units as the nadu or kottam are rare.
In the T.S., v. 87, the ‘24 kottams' are mentioned; the C.S.. v. 61 and 81 refers to
the ‘64 kudis as if these meant the leading, localized lineages of the mandalam (cf.
Tamil Lexicon, p. 968, kuti)\ and the K.S., most explicitly of all, in v. 7, mentions
the ‘32 nadus' of the western hill tracts of Karmandalam and the ‘64 nadus' of the
eastern, plain or maidan, tract of this territory. The commentator of the kar-
mandala-satakam notes of verse 7 that the reference to 32 nadus is understood as
ihe 32,000 ve[dlar families and the 64 nadus as the leading families of the eastern
portion, thus, the reference is to karkatiaveldjar of 96,000 and an explanation of
the ancient numerical designation for Gangavadi as a 96,000 territory.
2,g Subrahmanian, Sartgam Polity, pp. 224-6.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 449

Vellalas; and all contained numerous further divisions based

primarily upon territory.220 One nineteenth century estimate
of Vellala sub-divisions was 590, most being the result of slight
variations of a territorial sort.221 Sharing an equally prestigious
role in Karnataka, the Vokkaligas are divided into a number of
territorial divisions. The Gangadikara Vokkaligas (Karalar) are
concentrated in the south-central portion of Karnataka abutting
modern Andhra having long shared the territory with Telugu
speaking Reddis; Nonaba Vokkaligas inhabit the tract on the
northern bank of the Tungabhadra, medieval Nolambavadi.222
Other Vokkaliga groups are similarly clustered in other parts of
modern Karnataka.223
Divisions among the Kapus of the Telugu-speakmg portion of
the macro region show a strong territorial character. Panta
Reddis, one of the major sub-divisions among this dominant
peasant group, were called ‘the fourteen community1 during and
after the fifteenth century. Of the fourteen names, twelve may be
conclusively identified as territorial : Pakanati Kapus of pakaddu
(between the Pennar and Gundalakamma rivers), Velanati Kapus
of valanadu (the northern portion of modern Guntur district),
Motati Kapus of mottanddu (southern bank of the Krishna river),
Morasu Kapus, like Morasu Vokkaligas, in Kolar district of
eastern Karnataka, Munnuru Kapus of Muliki 3001 country.
Panta Kapus (of Gudur taluk, Nellore district), Desati Kapus
(Ogeru river basin, Guntur district), and the following Panta
Reddi groups are named for towns in the region: Ayodhya Kapus,
Oruganti (Warangal) Kapus, Kuricheti (Kurucedu, Vellore),
and Gadikota (Cuddapah district).224
The formal territorial segmentation of Kapus may be identified
as early as the tenth century when a chief celebrated his investiture
with remissions to ‘Kampus’ of Venadu.225 Telugu Kammas,
220 E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Government Press, Madras,
1909, v. 7, pp. 374, 376-81.
221 Manual of Madras Administration, Government Press, Madras, 1893, v. 2,
app. no. XXXII, ‘Manners and Customs’, p. 228.
222 l.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes, Mysore University,

Mysore, 1935, v. 1, p. 125. Also see the useful maps prepared for that section.
223 Ibid., pp. 150-3.
224 m. Somasakhara Sarma, History of the Reddi Kingdoms: Circa 1325 A.D.

to Circa 1448 A.D., Andhra University, Waltair, 1948, pp. 51-2.

223 E.I., v. 30, no.46.
450 Peasant Slate and Society in Medieval South India

also dominant in medieval as well as modern Andhra, are associated

in Pallava inscriptions with a portion of the modern taluks of
Ongole and Bapatla in Guntur district which was called 'Kamma
Rashtra'.226
This elaborate mosaic of segmented territorial groupings is
further complicated over time. Ethnic groups whose historical
role with respect to control of the land has been paramount in
many localities of the macro region since the eighteenth century
cannot simply be presumed to have been dominant in these places
during earlier periods. Many changes have occurred. For example,
only in the fifteenth century is there evidence of the displacement
of Vellalas as the dominant land-controlling people of some parts
of northern Tondaimandalam by Telugu Reddis and Balijas or
by Tamil-speaking Vanniyars and their displacement from some
Kaveri delta lands by Kallars.227 Nor is it supposed that there
was a simple relationship between locality or territory and those
persistent social interactions which together constitute territorial
social structures.
On the latter issue, it has been argued in the discussion of the
Pallava period that peasant society in the Coromandel plain
consisted of ranked groupings of various kinds from Brahmans to
untouchables and that tracts outside of the ancient Kaveri tracts
and Tondaimandalam were only gradually incorporated into the
Coromandel form of peasant society. This conversion of many
localities of the macro region to peasant society was often
achieved under the domination of peasant folk from elsewhere,
and every peasant locality contained a mix of social groups, some
of which might have been residents of the territory from the earliest
times of its existence as an identifiable territory while others were
relatively recent arrivals. Some villages in portions of Tondai¬
mandalam, particularly in the north, contain groups whose pro¬
genitors settled the region almost a millenium ago, whereas many
villages in portions of Salem district contain groups whose arrival

226 A.R.E., 1916-17, para. 3.

227 F.W. Ellis, Replies to Seventeen Questions Proposed hr the Government of
Fort St. George Relative to Mirasi Right; with Two Appendices, Government Gazette
Office, Madras, 1818, pp. xi-xiv; M. Arokiaswami, The Early History of the Vellar
Basin: with Special Reference to the Irukkuvels of Kodumbalar. Amudha Nilayam,
Madras, 1954. p. 125; Diwan Bahadur T. Venkasami Row, A Manual of the District
of Tanjore in the Madras Presidency, Madras, 1883.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 451

may be dated from the eighteenth century.228 For most of the

macro region, therefore, the peasant society of a locality emerged
from the cumulative interaction of diverse, ranked social groups
many of whom were, in origin, strangers to the place. While all
such groups identified themselves, to some extent, with the locality,
often comprising endogamous sub-divisions within it, the locality
would inevitably become most clearly associated with those groups
in whom the major authority over the land was vested — the
dominant peasant people. Brahmans who were not exceptions to
this territorializing of social groups, now were lower ranked
peoples.229
Considering the complex configuration of localized ethnic
groups, numerous small-scale migrations and local conquests by
different peasant folk, and the many small territorial arenas where
all of this took place in the macro region, in what sense is it possible
to speak of a Vijayanagara society? If it refers to that segment of
Indian humanity under Vijayanagara rule, the notion of a Vijaya¬
nagara society is a weak one. The Vijayanagara political system
provided some coherence, to be sure. Vijayanagara kings were
known in all parts of the macro region as great (and it must have
been hoped, distant) sovereigns to whom chiefs great and small
paid occasional homage; Vijayanagara fortresses under Brahman
commanders would have been known to many as they moved about
searching for land or trade or on pilgrimage. But the formal
political and administrative structure generated as much fission
as fusion. It is quite another kind of integration that provided a
significant measure of identification with some meaningful whole
for most people of the macro region in Vijayanagara times. This
was created by the Hindu temple and Hindu sect.
‘Temple’ and ‘sect’ are terms which serve poorly to convey the
meanings of kdyil and campiradayam (Sanskrit: sampraddya)
because the English words necessarily carry meanings derived

228 The Bciramahal Records', Sec. Ill, Inhabitants', Government of Madras,

Madras, 1907, for evidence of this.
229 Distinctions were made between the dominant peasant families and those
of lesser importance, velkudi-ulavar, or ‘fallen vellala's. according to Kanakasabhai.
op. cit., p. 113: Brahmans are discussed in Manual of Madras Administration, v. 2.
App. XXXII, ‘Manners and Customs', pp. 226-7; Thurston, op. cit., v. 1, especially
pp. 334-93; also see N. Ramesan, Copper Plate Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh
Government Museum, Hyderabad, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad,
1962, v. 1, p. 192.
452 Peasant Stale and Society in Medieval South India

from the cultural context of their provenance. Such meanings lead

to distorted understandings of the relationships among Hindu
deities, devotees, and priestly and preceptoral intermediaries.
To some extent, of course, these distortions and their potential
for confusion are recognized. There nevertheless remains a ten¬
dency to suppose certain likenesses with other religious traditions,
especially western ones, and these presumed similarities inflect
the terms ‘temple’ and ‘sect’.
In medieval South India, divinity attached to many kinds of
beings and sacredness attached to many kinds of places. The
term ‘temple’ may therefore be applied to a prodigious array of
places where some divinity was worshipped; all may be called
kdyil. Those places known as ‘temples' to modern scholarship by
their designation as srikoyil, by their distinctive architectural
features., by their stafif of ritual functionaries, by their being ancient
resorts of pilgrimage, and, indeed, by their inscriptions are but a
selection of the vast totality of places to which the term kdyil
is appropriately applied. There is no unambiguously coded place
or thing called a ‘temple’ as in Christianity there is a church.
Nor, in the puranic Hinduism of medieval South India, is there
an institution like the church in Christianity or vihara in Buddhism
in the sense of a bounded domain of action and meaning which
separates it from other domains, such as the church from the state,
the clergy from the laity. On the contrary, a temple was wherever a
group of devotees founded a deity and were co-sharers in its gene¬
rosity, whether this was a great shrine like that of Venkatesvara
at Tirupati or the tree shrine of a tutelary goddess. Generically,
a temple is a nexus of sharers consisting of a deity and its worship¬
pers; its purpose is to protect and to transform the community
of worshippers by the boons of the god; and its means are the
transvaluing of substances — human and non-human — offered
to the god and returned to its devotees. The temple ‘institutiona¬
lized’ — that is, considered as one among many institutions in
society as it was seen by British administrators during the nineteenth
century and to an extern by modern scholars—is the temple
misconceived. Seen as a set of sharing beneficiaries in the generos¬
ity of a deity is to see the temple as it was understood by people
of the medieval age, and, conceived in this way, the temple was
perhaps above all else the model of the conception of shares and
sharing of that time. What shares of village income was for the
 Vijayanagara State and Society 453

distribution and redistribution of resources in the material order

ol the time, shares of support to deities and prasadam from these
deities was in the moral order of the time. And just as it was
stated that there could be no complete village as a material order
without its eighteen ayagars holding service shares of land, so it
would have been that there could be no complete moral order
without the sharing and transactional nexus centring upon a god,
whether of a family, a jati, a clan or of a hamlet, a village, a locality,
a kingdom.
A recent general essay on caste felicitously states certain of the
relations to which attention has been directed in the present dis¬
cussion. It opens with the following sentence:

Caste systems are moral systems that differentiate and rank the whole
population of a society in corporate units (castes) generally defined by
descent, marriage, and occupation.230

It goes on:

Every human genus (and therefore every caste) is thought to have as the
shared and corporate property of its members a particular substance
(e.g. sarira, ‘body’, rakta, ‘blood’) embodying its code for conduct (dhar-
ma). Every caste’s inborn code enjoins it to maintain its substance and
morality, its particular occupation, and its correct exchanges with other
castes.231

And continues :

The Hindu gods to be worshipped are related among themselves, like men,
by shared and exchanged natural substance. They have not merely
abstract qualities and representations like the Vedic gods, but also parti¬
cular life-like images, biographies, bodily functions, and specialized
relations to men. They are attached by particular codes of worship to
particular occasions, communities, and genera of persons. . . .232 The
codes of Hindu worship require the existence of complex local communities
of castes. Worship cannot proceed without the priest to bring the living
substance of the god into the image, made by an image maker. ... To
sponsor the worship there must be local worshippers of means, typically
a ruler or a man of wealth, who can by gifts entreat a priest to mediate
with the god. There must be specialists of appropriate castes. . . to feed,
attend, and entertain the god.233

2-’o Mckim Marriott and Ronald Inden, ‘Caste Systems’, Encyclopaedia Britannica,
15th ed (1973), v. 3, p. 982.
231 Ibid., p. 983.
232 Ibid., p. 985.
233 Loc. cit.
454 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

This conception of a moral order comprising communities of

Hindus, their gods, and priestly intermediaries sets the essential
framework for consideration of the great temple in medieval South
India as a co-sharing body of worshippers. In its insistence upon
priests, especially Brahmans, and a variegated corps of caste specia¬
lists to serve the god, this conception obviously pertains not only
to great temples but also to the entire range of shrines to which the
term kdyil is applied. Moreover, the structure of religious affiliation
of the period provided for the integration of worship and worship¬
pers of even thq most humble tutelary deity with the highest form of
hhakti, puranic worship of the age. This integration was made
possible by several means: pilgrimage, priestly affiliations, and,
most importantly, sectarian organization. The great temples of
South India form the apex of this complex system of affiliational
linkages.
Temples serve the moral order of medieval and modern South
Indian society in that they are the most important context in which
moral definition occurs. Temples define in the sense that they
determine or fix boundaries of social groupings and social space
reckoned to mark off the community of co-sharers in the worship
of a particular god. A Tamil term for ‘lineage’ is partgali, derived
from the verb pahku, ‘to share’, and the lineage in South Indian
kinship is no less delimited by shared devotion to a lineage tutelary
(kuladeva) than by genealogy. Similarly, a village is no less de¬
limited by the worshippers of its gramadeva than by its administra¬
tive boundaries. It is therefore interesting to notice that marivadai
is the term most frequently used to refer to the receipt of transvalued
substances from a god (prasddam). This Sanskrit-derived word
(maryadd) is glossed ‘honour’ in most usage. Thus, parivattam,
or the cloth which has part of the vestments of the god and distri¬
buted as prasddam to worshippers, is koyilmariyddai, that is,
temple honour and it is worn on the head of the recipient as a
a crown.234 Maryadd has the meaning of boundary, border, limit
(as in frontier or river bank); it also has a moral aspect as in the
phrase ‘limits of. . . propriety, rule, or custom.235 Hence, if in the

234 Tuni’l Lexicon, v. 4, p. 2518. The author gratefully records his indebtedness
to Carol Breckenridge for having brought this entire large and important issue to
his attention; discussions with Arjun Appadurai and Kathi L. Rose were also valu¬
able.
233 Mother-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 791.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 455

transactional nexus of a god and its worshippers, which a temple

can be construed to be, the generosity of deity is expressed by con¬
ferring ‘honours’ in the prasadam given to and accepted by devotees
of the god, then those who may offer to and receive from the god
must be seen as defined with respect to some criterion. Criteria
may be socially denotative; they may also be spatially denotative;
in all cases these criteria are viewed as morally valanced, that is
possessing a dimension of appropriateness in nature and in conduct.
Notwithstanding the importance of temples in South Indian
culture during the Vijayanagara period and notwithstanding the
fact that most of what is known of the time comes from temple
inscriptions, little is known aggregatively about temples of the
macro region. Almost nothing of their number, their spatial and
temporal distribution, nor their cultic affiliations are known.
An opportunity to fill this gap in knowledge is provided for Tamil
country at least by the publication over the past decade of a series
of volumes which form part of the 1961 Census conducted in the
Madras State. These data have been analysed by the present
writer and the results published elsewhere. Certain of the findings
and their implications may be summarized here.236

226 India, Census Commissioner, Census of India, 1961, vol. IX, Madras State,
pt XI-D. 'Temples of Madras State', 7 vols. The analysis of these temple data
appears under the title, 'Temples of Tamil Country, 1300-1750 A.D.\ in a symposium
edited by the present writer dealing with various aspects of South Indian temples
in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 14, no.l (1977); also pub¬
lished under the title: South Indian Temples: An Analytical Reconsideration, ed.
Burton Stein, Vikas, New Delhi, 1978. Before considering the significance of these
data taken from the 1961 Census volumes of Temples of Madras State (and Temples
of Tamilnadu), it is well to briefly catalogue the possible error factors which together
caution care in using the data and interpreting the findings derived from them.
Two major problems are the reliability of the method used for collecting the temple
data and the definition of ’important’ applied to the temples enumerated in the
census volumes. No trained personnel were used in the census operations to verify
information on the temples provided by questionaire. Hence, the age of temples,
one of the dimensions to which saliency is given in the present discussion cannot
be taken with the confidence that might have been wished. Moreover, some of the
individual returns of deity identification, as given in the printed volumes, are plainly
wrong (e.g., the Minakshi-Sundaresvara temple in Madurai is returned as dedicated
to a deity other than Siva, i.e., ‘Other Deity’. This too contributes uncertainty to
the findings discussed here. Even if such problems did not exist, another major
source of error derives from the temples actually enumerated. These were required
to be ‘important’ shrines, not simply shrines of village deifies or ‘bajanai koyils’.
What constitutes ‘important’ here is problematic of course, for all shrines are
456 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India
Tables VIII-3 and VIII-4 summarize data on 2035 temples which attained an important status between
1300 and 1750. Figures VIII-1 and VIII-2 provide a graphic and schematic display of these tabular data.
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458 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Kumari and Tirunelveli (1968); vi. Ramanathapuram and Madurai (1969); and vii. Thanjavur, pi (under the altered title of Temples of
City (1965): ii, Tiruchirapalli and South Arcot (1966): lii, Coimbatore and Salem (1968); iv. North Arcot and Nilgiris (1968); v. Kanya
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 460 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Figure VIII-1: Temples of Tamil Nadu, a.d. 1300-1750,

by Mandalam, Deity and Period
N = 2035 Source : Data of Table

DEITIES PERIODS
|Siva RSNGanesa a. 1300-1450
Vishnu □ Amman b. 1450-1550
c. 1550-1650
H Murugan | | Other
d. 1650-1750
Number of Temples

abed abed abed abed

Tondaimandalam Naduvil-Nadu Kongumandalam Pandimandalam
 Vijayanagara State and Society 461

Figure VIII-2: Proportions of Temples of Tamil Nadu

by Deity, for Four Periods, a.d. 1300-1750
N =2035 Source : Data of Table
Percentage of Total Tempies
462 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Variation in the number of temples by mandalam is a conspicuous

feature in the tables and figures. The 2035 temples which attained
importance between a.d. 1300 and 1750 are unevenly distributed
over the four mandalams taking all of the periods together: Tondai-
mandalam, 406 temples; Naduvil-nadu, 332 temples, Kongu-
mandalam, 517 temples; and Pandimandalam, 780 temples.
Respectively, the proportion of each mcmdalam to the total for the
entire period is: twenty, sixteen, twenty-five, and thirty-nine
per cent. There are no reasons for assuming a uniform distribution
of temples over these mandalams, of course. Variations would
stem from differences in absolute populations, population densities,
and relative wealth. Tests of such factors yields no significant
relationships which were more persuasive than the simple relation¬
ships of the number of taluks and the number of temples. This
latter relationship is shown by aggregating taluks according to the
ancient mandalam territories which yields the following:

TableVIII-5
Temples, a.d. 1300-1750, by Modern Taluks Arranged by
Mandalams

Taluks Temples
Mandalam Number Per cent Per cent Number

Tondaimandalam 19 27 20 406
Naduvil-nadu 9 13 16 332
Kongumandalam 13 20 25 517
Pandimandalam 28 40 39 780
Total 69 100 100 2035

While there is considerable variation in the size and population

of taluks of modern Tamil Nadu State, the finding of a close
relationship of taluks and temples in the period a.d. 1300 to 1750,
prompts the suggestion that the modern taluk may have an historical
validity not usually recognized, that most have been cultural areas
for the last five hundred years containing at least one temple of
importance within its area.
The general increase in temple construction over all four man¬
dalams in each period shown graphically in Fig.VIII-1, is somewhat
 Vijayanagara State and Society 463

startling in only one particular. That is, the single instance of a

decrease in Tondaimandalam in the period, a.d. 1450-1550. In
part, this is an artifact of the data. There is no comparable informa¬
tion on temples for a substantial part of Tondaimandalam because
the northern taluks of this ancient territory are included in the
modern states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh which did not
conduct temple surveys. However, from contemporary inscrip-
tional evidence, it is obvious that northern Tondaimandalam, like
much of Kongumandalam, witnessed intensive temple-building
activity during the post-Chola period. And, it is precisely in the
period from a.d. 1450 to 1550 that the short-lived Saluva dynasty
of Vijayanagara controlled the fortunes of the empire from its
base in northern Tondaimandalam. The growth of the Tirupati
temple in this period may be taken as symptomatic of the general
support for existing and new temples of this region by chiefs whose
fortunes rose with those of the Saluvas and who drew resources
from a large region, including the southern parts of Tondaiman¬
dalam.237
Apart from the anomaly of Tondaimandalam in the fifteenth
century, the increase in structural temples in the four mandalams
of the macro region is striking as is variation in this growth. Con¬
sidering variation from one period to the next, the doubling of
important temples in Tondaimandalam and Pandimandalam
from a.d. 1550 to 1650 appears modest in comparison with the
sixfold increase in Naduvil-nadu between a.d. 1450 and 1550,
and the more dramatic sixteenfold increase in Kongumandalam
at the same time. These relatively short-termed variations may in
turn be compared with changes in the rates among mandalams
over all of the periods. In Kongu the transformation of older
modest shrines into major temples or the construction of new,
large temples increased by a factor of forty between a.d. 1300 and
1750, and in Naduvil-nadu the increase was an impressive sixteen¬
fold; whereas in Pandimandalam, with the largest number of
such temples, the increase between the first and the last periods
was about threefold, and in Tondaimandalam it was even less.
Finally, the 1961 census data reveal differences in the propor-

237 Stein, Tirupati Temple', pp. 53, 61-2, especially Table 3, p. 53 recording grants
of land to the Tirupati temple between a.d. 830 and 1628 as 168 of which all but
2! came between a.d. 1456 and 1564 and grants of money as 397 of which all but
126 came during the same period.
464 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

tions and number of major temples presided over by the six types
of deities utilized in the survey. Considering the entire period
of four and a half centuries, 2035 temples analysed here show
Siva temples to comprise twenty-nine per cent of the total, Vishnu
temples twenty-six per cent, Murugan temples four per cent,
Ganesh temples nine per cent, Amman temples twenty-one per cent,
and "Other Deities’ ten per cent. Each of the mandalams contribute
to this array in quite different ways. Thus, in Tondaimandalam,
Siva temples comprise forty-one per cent for all periods while in
Kongumandalam, Siva shrines comprised only eighteen per cent
of the major temples. In contrast, Amman temples in the former
territory comprised a mere six per cent whereas in Kongu, Amman
temples accounted for thirty-eight per cent of its major temples
between a.d. 1300 and 1750..
Or, looked at slightly differently, the six types of deities can be
reduced to three classes of gods to elicit certain differences. Siva
and Vishnu can be considered together as universal Hindu gods
of the highest order; Murugan and Ganesha may be regarded as
secondary universal deities in medieval Hinduism; while Amman
and ‘Other Deities’ are essentially local, tutelary gods. Arranged
thus, Siva and Vishnu temples constitute the overwhelming majority
of temples for Tondaimandalam over all of the periods: seventy-six
per cent; and in Naduvil-nadu, these two deities accounted for
seventy-two per cent of those presiding over major temples. In
both mandalams,, Siva temples dominate. By contrast, only forty-
two per cent of the major temples of Kongu were the resort of Siva
or Vishnu, and here Vishnu temples predominated in about the
same proportion as Siva temples in Tondaimandalam and Naduvil-
nadu (i.e. about six per cent). In Pandimandalam Siva and Vishnu
temples in almost equal proportion, comprised half of the major
temples from a.d. 1300 to 1750.
Murugan and Ganesha temples were unevenly distributed over
the four mandalams considering the entire period. In Tondai-
mandalam these secondary, universal deities constituted nine
per cent ot all major temples with Ganesha temples three times as
numerous. The elephant-faced deity also dominated over his
puranic brother as the object of major temple worship in Kongu¬
mandalam and in Naduvil-nadu where these two deities com¬
prised thirteen and eight per cent of temples respectively.
While all of these findings of the 1961 census survey of temples
 Vijayanagara State and Society 465

pertaining to temples oi the Vijayanagara period deserve attention,

concentration will be given to the interaction of Siva and Amman
temples.
A detailed argument on the question of the relationship between
Siva and Amman, has been given elsewhere by the author.238
A summary of that argument begins with the observation of what
appears to be the displacement or supercession of major temple
devoted to Siva by those devoted to goddesses. Such a notion
could be taken from Figure V11I-2 where there is shown to be a quite
startling reciprocal symmetry in the curves plotting the proportion
of each of these types of temples over the four periods. This finding
jars conventional expectations based upon the dominance of Siva
worship among Tamilians from Chola times at least and the dyna¬
mism of the Saiva Siddhanta movement during the medieval period.
An alternative to displacement as an explanation of the finding
on Siva and Amman deities is one of complementarity, and this
proposed explanation prompts a useful consideration of the re¬
lationship of worship and sectarian affiliations of Tamilians during
the Vijayanagara period, the subject of the present section.
Complementarity in the relations between major Siva temples
and major shrines devoted to goddesses rests in two historical
features of South Indian religion. One is the establishment of
separate devi shrines within the precincts of and thus as indepen¬
dent components of Siva and Vishnu temples from the eleventh
century onward; the other is that Siva deities and goddesses alike
have served as territorial deities.
The progressive enhancement of devi worship as a component
of the highest form of puranic Hindu praxis in South India and the
guardianship of goddesses over Tamilians combined to produce
the startling prominence of Amman temples in parts of Tamil
country, especially in Kongu and in Pandya countries. It is to be
stressed that these often impressively enshrined goddesses are
correctly treated as independent deities by the 1961 census survey;
they are not regarded as the consorts of either Siva or Vishnu. How¬
ever, religious scholars have noted that though the many goddess
shrines in Tami 1 country do shelter seemingly independent divinities,
these are often hagiographically linked, at least weakly, to a major
Vedic god, usually Siva.239 This linkage may be considered to

238 See note 236.

23y W'hitehead, op. cit., pp. 17fT, in which categorical distinctions between Vedic
466 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

strengthen the complementarity hypothesis advanced here, especial¬

ly when it is considered with other evidence which may be adduced
on religious affiliations in Kongu, where the highest proportion
of Amman shrines came into importance during the Vijayanagara
period.
How the increasingly numerous Amman shrines were com-
plementarily linked to Siva shrines cannot be ascertained from
evidence of the Vijayanagara period. The process must be inferred
with the assistance of late eighteenth century evidence from British
sources (e.g. the Baramahal Records and Buchanan’s Journey. . . .)
and from more recent ethnographical research. From these post-
Vijayanagara vantage points, the contact of Amman shrines with
established canonical shrines seems to have been achieved through
affiliations of priests and sectarian and pilgrimage networks.
Non-Brahman priestly custodians (panddrams) of most Amman
shrines appear to have become participants in the management of
great shrines of Siva as well as Vishnu where Brahman priests were
dominant ritual functionaries. Entry into and participation within
these great shrines by non-Brahman religious leaders was achieved
through endowments (kattahis) to these shrines in a process
recently elaborated by Carol A. Breckenridge. In addition, there
were connections of such non-Brahman religious leaders with
sectarian organizations through mathas located at the great shrines
of the canonical gods. Sectarian mathas, were the seat of sect
organizations, and there were both Brahman and non-Brahman
orders. To the latter mathas,, under their mudaliyar dcdryas re¬
ference has been made above (chapter VI). These institutions
were established during the later Chola period in several parts of
the southern Tamil country and were regularly attached to major
Siva temples.240 Discussing these mathas, K.A. Nilakanta Sastri
noted that while they were first established only at major religous
centres, they soon

deities and village deities are delineated, the former possessing the following at¬
tributes: they are 'forces of nature’, not ‘facts of life’; they are male, not female;
they are worshipped according to bhakti principles of ahimsa, not propitiated with
animal sacrifices; and they are officiated by Brahman pujaris,. not panddrams. How¬
ever, in the lengthy story of the goddess Ammavaru or Ankamma (pp. 126ff). this
goddess is consistently associated with Siva and symbols of Siva, especially (pp.
132-8). Also, H. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Harper
Bros., Torchbook. New York, 1962, pp. 189-216.
240 A.R.E., 1909, para. 53, pp. 101-2; Rajamanickam, op. cit, pp. 236-8.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 467

spread all over the land until almost every important temple came to
possess one or more mathas functioning in close proximity to it. In course
of time they grouped themselves around a limited number of santanas
or successors of gurus, each having a central ma(ha which was looked up
to for guidance by a number of subordinate mathas in different places.241

He observes further that while the heads of these orders were often
ascetics who could own no property,
their mathas often owned vast estates earmarked for their maintenance
and the encouragement of learning and the arts. . . . The well-to-do
householder has ever been ready to make gifts (dana) to the orders because
he was assured of a good berth [.s/r] in the other world as much for his
dana as the ascetic for his renunciation and austerity.242

What Nilakanta Sastri might further have pointed out in connec¬

tion with the wealth and influence of these heads of religious orders
(mathddipatis) is that they utilized their material resources to
contribute to the growth of temples in the macro region by their
often substantial endowments from the wealth which was conferred
upon them by their followers; they also constituted the clearest
linkage element among the various shrines of Tamil country through
their influence with peasant followerships for whom access to
major regional temples devoted to the worship of Vedic deities was
otherwise limited. The non-Brahman santanas were the crucial
intermediaries between the priesthoods and worshippers of local
subcaste temples and the great temple centres of Tamil country.
It is therefore no coincidence that the proliferation of major
structural shrines devoted to peasant subcaste tutelaries and the
non-Brahman matha movement occurred at about the same time.
These two developments must be viewed as causally linked. Such
a view addresses the question of vertical connections among shrines
raised by the recent work of Brenda Beck.243 It accords well with
the evidence from Kongu provided by the Baramahal Records
and Buchanan, and it is a view which finds impressive inscriptional
and other support from the Vijayanagara period according to the
recent doctoral research of Arjun Appadurai whose writings have
shaped much of the present discussion.
In a paper presented recently, Appadurai has offered a powerful

241 Development of Religion in South India, p. 118.

242 Ibid., p. 117.
243 Peasant Society in Kohku, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver
1973.
468 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

interpretation of Vaishnava sectarianism during the Vijayanagara

period.244 His argument extends and bolsters suggestions outlined
above with respect to the relationship of Siva and Amman temples.
This investigation of the vadagalai-tehgalai conflict and his original
formulations of Vaishnava sectarian history in South India bear
centrally upon the question of relationships among temples in the
macro region, between temples and sectarian organizations, and
between both of these and various levels of political authority.
His findings address with particular cogency the manner in which
various levels of shrines during the Vijayanagara age achieved
and maintained a coherent integration in the absence of formal,
bureaucratic, ecclesiastical structures.
Appadurai’s work on medieval Vaishnavism is part of a larger
research work dealing with the Sri Parthasarathiswami temple in
Triplicane during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that
larger study, he argues that the distribution of temple honours is
central for an understanding of Hindu temples in modern South,
Indian society. His research and that of Carol Appadurai Breck-
enridge on the Minakshi-Sundaresvara and Ramesvaram temples245
have brought forward considerations of the greatest importance
for understanding not only the modern temple in its social context,
but the temple in its medieval setting as well.
The work of these two scholars outlines a redistributive process
involving temple honours and material resources. Appadurai
delineates four sets of transactions involving honours during the
Vijayanagara period: the stanattar of temples conferred honours
(e.g. prasadam) on warrior chiefs and kings; kings and chiefs

244 Workshop on Religion in South India at Bucknell University under the auspices
of the Conference on South Indian Religion, June, 1975 (‘Honor and Conquest:
Warrior-Kings and Vaisnava Sectarianism in South India 1350-1700'). A slightly
altered version presented at a conference on ‘Honor and Honors’, University of
Chicago, June, 1975 (‘Why Think About Honors?’). This paper is published in
the symposium number ot the Indian Social and Economic History Review devoted
to South Indian temples and under the editorship of the present writer, mentioned
above, note 236.
245 In two papers entitled: Betel Nut and Honors: Exchange Relationships
and Temple Entry in a South Indian Temple' presented at the Association of Asian
Studies meeting in San Francisco, March, 1975, and ‘Notes to an Honor-Interested
Generation: Honor in South India’ for a Conference on Honor and Honors,
University of Chicago, June 1975. Versions of this work are published in Con¬
tributions to Indian Sociology as well as the symposium number, edited by Burton
Stein, of the Indian Social and Economic History Review; note 236.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 469

conferred honours, e.g. insignia and regalia upon sectarian leaders;

temple leaders conferred honours on sectarian leaders (e.g. prasci-
dam); and sectarian leaders conferred honours on chiefs and kings
(e.g. investiture). Material transactions among these various actors
involved endowments by chiefs and kings to temples and gifts
to sectarian leaders as well as endowments to temples by sectarian
leaders. These transactions in the media of honours and material
resources are equal or symmetrical with one exception.
That is, while between chiefs and kings, on the one hand,
and sectarian notables, on the other hand, honours are
exchanged symmetrically, material resources went only from
chiefs and kings to sectarian leaders. Appadurai asks whether, in
the relationship between chiefs and kings and sectarian leaders,
there is a transaction in some medium or of some sort to correspond
with the material resources conferred by the former upon the
latter. That is, what is the gain of political personages in their
transactions with sectarian leaders? The answer: kings and
chiefs received political constituencies. Sectarian leaders were
‘crucial intermediaries for the introduction, extension, and legitima¬
tion of warrior control over. . . [peoples] and regions. . . [which]
might otherwise have resisted conquest’. Appadurai concludes:

Put differently, it might be said that the ceremonial exchanges of honour

between warrior-kings and sectarian leaders rendered public, stable and
culturally appropriate an exchange at the level of politics and economics.
These warrior-kings bartered the control of agrarian resources gained by
military prowess, for access to the redistributive processes of temples,
which were controlled by sectarian leaders. Conversely, in their struggles
with each other, and their own local and regional efforts to consolidate
their control over temples, sectarian leaders found the support of these
warrior-kings timely and profitable. Empirically, and diachronically,
this relationship is neither simple nor transparent. It is a complex symbio¬
sis in which mobile figures, of both types, augmented and sustained each
other.246

To the dynamism of the Vijayanagara period engendered by

relations among temples, sects, and the warrior elite, must be added
the modified functions of the right and left divisions of castes.
During the Vijayanagara period, the potential or relative character
of the right and left divisions of the Chola period continues; the

246 Cited from Appadurai’s doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Temple' Politics in South
India; The Case of the Sri Parthasarathiswami Temple’, ch. 2, pp. 14-15, Com¬
mittee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, 1976.
470 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

divisions are not corporate social units as are castes and sects247,
but divisions, like the segmentary state, underwent modifications.
Particularly the divisions were differentially linked to two comman¬
ding institutions of the age: temples and royal figures.
The question of functions of the dual divisions during the Vijaya-
nagara period can scarcely be separated from the persistent com¬
position of each division. During the Chola period, there is only
the most inferential evidence on their composition. However,
thanks to the evidence provided by foreigners in South India
during the eighteenth century and after, it is possible to specify in
considerable detail the composition of each division in various
parts of the macro region.
The most complete inventory of the constituent social units of
the divisions becomes available in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. At that time, references to the dual divisions
are often to urban contexts utterly foreign to the Chola age. Thus,
while it would obviously be improper to consider this eighteenth
and nineteenth century evidence for an analysis of the dual divisions
during the Chola age — that is to provide eighteenth century ans¬
wers to tenth century questions — it is appropriate to consider
this later evidence for more proximate periods when urbanization
had in fact become as significant as it was during Vijayanagara
times. Moreover, the temporal reach involved is not different
from that of one of the master craftsmen of rural historiography,
Marc Bloch, whose classic work on the agrarian system of France
to the eighteenth century provides examples of the use of the relati¬
vely full evidence of the eighteenth century to clarify much earlier
situations.248
European travellers and early administrators are responsible
for much of the detailed understanding we possess about the func¬
tions and composition of the dual social divisions. Because these
divisions fall outside brahmanical culture — Brahmans being

247 Where ‘sect’ is equivalent to sampradaya, 'When a guru or set of gurus is

recognized by a series of disciples, a particular cultural tradition (sampraddva)
is established, and its authentic transmission is traced through a chain of disciples,
who in turn become gurus to the next generation. In this sense, every Indian sect
or philosophical school forms a cultural tradition’, from his 'The Radha-Krishna
Bhqjanas of Madras City’, in Milton Singer (ed.), Krishna: Myths. Rites, and At¬
titudes. University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, Chicago, 1968, p. 108. Also:
M. Monier-Williams, Hinduism, London, 1906, pp. 135-6.
Ftench Rural History; An Essay on its Basic Characteristics, University of
California Press. Berkeley, 1966.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 471

excluded from the divisions249 — and notwithstanding the referen¬

ces to the divisions in inscriptions of the Chola period and later,
the South Indian brahmanical tradition completely fails to note
the divisions. However, Europeans of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries were as struck by the divisions as they were
nonplussed by them. The Abbe J.A. Dubois, in India from 1793
to 1823, commented upon the divisions in the following way.
There is yet another division more general than any 1 have referred to
yet, namely, that into Right-hand and Left-hand factions. This appears
to be but a modem invention, since it is not mentioned in any of the ancient
books of the country. . . I do not believe that any idea of this baneful in¬
stitution, as it exists at the present day, ever entered the heads of those
wise lawgivers who consider that they had found in caste distinctions
the best guarantee for the observance of the laws which they prescribed
for the people.250

The earliest enumeration of the divisions was made by Pierre

Sonnerat, an agent of the French government in Asia from 1774
to 1781.251 Noting that ‘sudras’ were divided into right and left
hand divisions, Sonnerat listed fourteen groups of the right and
seven groups of the left. He also mentioned seven groups of
‘sudras’ who were totally separated from either division. These
latter castes differ from those enumerated in other lists of the dual
division in consisting of low status groups such as idaiyars (herds¬
men), kusavars (potters), muchchiyars and chitragaras (painters)
as well as fishermen, long-distance porters, hunters and other
forest folk.252 Most others who have provided lists of the dual
divisions affiliate these particular ‘separated’ groups with the
right hand division and reserve the category of aloofness from or

249 Appadurai notes that Brahmans were ‘faction leaders’ in the seventeenth
century right-left strife in Madras city. These Brahmans were town merchants
in competition with other merchant leaders and their factional strategies included
making use of the divisional symbolism and recruitment presumably to counter
the strategies of their opponents. Appadurai notes that Brahman faction leaders
recruited support from any quarter, not from among established groupings. This
supports Appadurai’s interpretation of context variability of the right-left divisions
in this colonial city where Brahmans were involved in mercantile activities and
thus contextualized in the divisions as merchants. However, during the Chola
period, we hear of no Brahman merchants, or artisans or others who might be
included within the divisions (Appadurai, op. cit., pp. 250-3).
250 Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 24.
251 Voyage Aux Indes Orientates et La Chine, v. 1, Paris, 1782, pp. 95ff. Con¬
sulted in the James Ford Bell Collection, University of Minnesota.
252 Ibid., p. 61.
472 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

neutrality with respect to the divisions to high status groups,

always Brahmans. The most exhaustive listing of groups of the
dual divisions was compiled under the direction of Colin Mackenzie
during his career as soldier, engineer, and surveyor-general of the
Madras Presidency from 1786 to 1815. The work is entitled:
idahgai-valahgai jatiydr varaldru (History of the Left-Hand and
Right-Hand Castes).253 Here, the canonical ninety-eight castes
of the right-hand and the same number of left hand groups are
spoken of, though less than this conventional number are actually
listed. In addition, the flags and other symbols which each allegedly
used are inventoried. The form of this Mackenzie document, like
others of that collection, affects an archaic style. Thus, the right
and left hand castes are enumerated in the Manu-like manner of
caste generation through miscegenation. The listing of right and
left hand groups by Gustav Oppert, an early student of Indian
cultural history, was based upon a court record of the Chingleput
zillah magistrate George Coleman, 25 July 1809. An Indian
judical official, A. Krishnaswamy Iyer, prepared the list for Oppert,
and the same list, with minor exclusions, was published by Maclean
in the glossary volumes of his Manual of Madras Administration.
The Maclean version of the divisions included sixty right hand
groups and seven left hand groups together with their symbols.254
A somewhat shorter list of the constituent groups of the divisions
for the interior upland of Salem was prepared by the first British
administrators of the tract called ‘the BaramahaP (modern Salem
district) in the 1790s. Forty right hand castes and eleven left hand
castes are enumerated here, but an almost equal number, forty in
all, are identified as ‘neutral’ (madhyastam) with respect to the
dual divisions. Among the ‘neutral’ castes are Brahmans who
appear to be excluded from all lists, but also many groups which
appear as right hand groups in other lists.255 The Srinivasachari
list of Tamil castes of the right and left hand is based on a culling of
inscriptional and early English records to elaborate the first list
provided by M. Srinivasa Iyengar in 1914. Srinivasachari's dis-

253 'idahgai-valahgaijatiydr varaldru’, Mackenzie Manuscript Collection, Madras

Oriental Manuscripts Library, no. R. 1572.
254 Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency in Illustration of the
Records of Government and the Yearly Administrative Reports. Government Press,
Madras, 1893, v. 3, ‘Glossary’, pp. 1036-7.
255 The Baramahal Records; Section III, ‘Inhabitants', Madras, 1907, pp. v-vii.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 473

cussion is the first by a modern historian.256 For the southern

portion of Karnataka, the lists of Francis Buchanan and Lewis
Rice are important. Buchanan, reporting in 1800, restricted his
observations to the town and neighbourhood of Seringapatam in
modern Karnataka state where he was commissioned by the Court
of Directors of the East India Company to report on the new terri¬
tories acquired after the last Mysore war.257 In the late nineteenth
century Lewis Rice, the Director of Archaeological Researches
of the state of Mysore, enumerated almost the same eighteen
castes of the right hand and nine of the left hand among Kannada
speakers on the basis of census returns. Rice’s antiquarian interests
led him to search for antecedents of the divisions in Karnataka as
they existed in his day, but he had to acknowledge failure to find
documentary evidence of an earlier time.258 Evidence from among
Telugu groups are in fact enumerated in the lists of Oppert, the
Mackenzie document, and the Baramahal Records where they
are usually distinguished by the terms vadugu (‘northerner’) or
telinga. Only one discussion of dual divisions among Telugus
exists, that of Subha Reddi in which nineteen right hand and seven
left hand groups are enumerated as a result of this anthropologist’s
work with roving acrobats and other custodians of caste lore.259
Table VIII-7 presents only a portion of the confused evidence on
the composition of groups of the dual divisions as they were known
during the nineteenth century. From the hundreds of castes
enumerated, only those with substantial numbers and those which
appear on at least two lists have been noted. Many of the groups
enumerated in the Mackenzie document cannot be identified
with actual castes or tribes in the compendia of Thurston and
Ananthakrishna Iyer.260 Other groups are sub-divisions of castes
found in these compendia and are not listed separately.

256 C.S. Srinivasachari, The Origin of the Right and Left Hand Caste Divisions’,
Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, v. 4 (1929), pp. 77-85.
257 A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar,
3 vols., London, 1807. The decisions are referred to in v. 1, pp. 76-80.
258 B. Lewis Rice, Mysore; A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed„ 2 vols.,
London, 1897. The discussion is in v.. ‘Mysore in General’, pp. 222-4.
259 n. Subha Reddi, ‘Community-Conflict among the Depressed Castes of
Andhra’, Man in India, v. 30, no.4 (Oct.-Dec., 1950), pp. 1-12. He makes the interest¬
ing observation that while most Brahmans remain aloof from the dual divisions
in Andhra some Vaishnava Brahmans associate with the division. This aberrant
feature is also mentioned in the Mackenzie history of the dual divisions where Vai-
474 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Table VIII-6
Valangai-Idangai Designationsa'

Occupation Source b.
Caste Name I 11 III IV V VI VII VIII

AGRICULTURISTS
Banajiga (Karavar) R R R R R R
Malaiyaman R R o
Nattaman Vellala R R R o
Palli L L L L L
Vokkaliga R R R
Reddi R O R O
Vaduga Vellala R R
Vellala R R O

MERCHANTS
Beri-chetti L L L L L L L
Gujarati R R
Jaina R R L O
kamma R R O O
Komati R R/L R R R R/L R
Lambadi R R R R
Ladar R R R
HERDERS
Golla R R R/L L O
Kannidaiyar R R
Kuruba R R R O

kanasa Brahmans are listed among the right hand division (ibid., p. 5).
260 Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India. 7 vols., Madras, 1909
and L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes, 4 vols.. Mysore,
1928-35.
a. Shown as usually spelled on at least two lists, these sixty-eight major castes
are designated by the following symbols: R’ = 'Right hand' or valangai; ‘L' ‘left
hand’ or idangai: where castes are given as sometimes one or the other, 'R/L'; and
when they are given as neutral, ‘O'.
b. Sources: I: Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency in Illus¬
tration of the Records of Government and the Yearly Administrative Reports, 3v.,
Government Press, Madras, 1893, 3, 'Glossary', pp. 1036-7; IT. Pierre Sonnerat,
Voyage Aux Indes Orientates et La Chine, Paris. 1782, pp. 95ff. consulted in the
James Ford Bell Collection, University of Minnesota Library; III. C.S. Sriniva-
sachari, ‘The Origin of the Right and Left Hand Caste Divisions’, J.A.H.R.S.,
4 (1929), pp. 77-85; IV: B Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Govern¬
ment, 2 v., London. 1897, 1, pp. 222-4; V: N. Subha Reddi, 'Community-Conflict
 Vijayanagara State and Society 475
Occupation 1 II III IV V VI VII VIII
Caste Name

WEAVERS
Devanga L L L R
Kaikkolar L R L L L L
Pattunulkarar R O
Rangare R R R
Padma Saliyar R R R
Pattu Saliyar R R R
Sedar R R
Kannidiyan Seniyan R R
Vadugan Seniyan R R R

OILMEN

Ganiga R R
Hegganiga L L
llai Vaniyar R O
Nagara Vaniyar L L L
Ontierutu Vaniyar R O
Sekku Vaniyar R R

PAINTERS
Chitrakara R R ..
Muchchiyar R O R

ARTISANS
Kammalar L L L L L L L
Kanciyar R L
Vaddi R R
Veli Tachchar R R
•

Among the Depressed Castes of Andhra’, Man in India, 30, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec., 1950),
pp. 1-12; VI: Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of
Mysore, Canara. and Malabar, 3v., London, 1807, 1, pp. 76-80; VII: idahgai-vatahgai
jdtivar varaldru in the Mackenzie Mss. of the Madras Oriental Manuscripts Library,
University of Madras, no. R. 1572; VIII: Fort St. George, Government of Madras,
The Baramahal Records, sec. 3, ‘Inhabitants’, Government Press, Madras, 1907,
pp. v-vii.
476 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Occupation j u in IV V VI VII VIII

Caste Name

BASK ETM AKERS

Kuravar R O
Medara R R
Vetakarar R L

POTTERS
Kumbara R R R
Kusavar R O R R

MUSICIANS

Dasigal R R
Melakarar R R

TODDY TAPPERS

Sannar R L R R
FISHERMEN
Besta R R R R
Karaiyan R L
Pattanavar R O

LABOURERS
Ottiyar R O
Uppara R R R

WASHERMEN
Agasa
po 70

R R R R
Vannar R
BARBERS
Ambattan R R/L R R
Mangali R R
Nayinda R R R
ACROBATS
Dommara R R

PRIESTS

Mariamman Pujari R R
Vaduga Pandaram R O

HUNTERS
Enati R R
Irular R O R

BEGGARS

Kudukudupaigaral R R
 Vijayanagara State and Society All
Occupation
I 11 III IV V VI VII VIII
Caste Name

SCAVENGERS
Holeya R R
Pallar L L L
Paraiyar R R R R R

LEATHERWORKERS
Madiga L L L L
Sakiligal L L L

The lists from which the above table was constructed raise
obvious problems. One is that only rarely do all or most of the
lists consider the same groups. Where this occurs, however,
there is moderately strong agreement (i.e. more than half agree
on the assignment of a division to particular groups), thus eight
of the major caste groups of the macro region may be designated
with confidence as of the right or the left division (Banajigas,
Pallis, Beri Chettis, Komatis, Kaikkolars, Kammalars, Vannar,
and Paraiyars). Moreover, the compositions by language regions,
as those of Rice for Karnataka and Subha Reddi for Andhra,
fail to register the variation which must have existed within such
regions.261 And, the sixty-eight caste groups comprise a small
fraction of those in the region during the nineteenth century; the
1901 Census of Madras Presidency enumerates over 400 caste
groups divided into twenty-one major classes.262 In general,
sources of the late nineteenth century neglect the division and thus
are of no help on this matter.263 One of the lists of the right and

261 Buchanan noted this variability when comparing compositions of the divisions
from Bangalore with those of Seringapatam, op. cit., p. 79; F.W. Ellis, in an 1812
report on the divisions cited above, stated: ‘...throughout the country, where
these distinctions [of the right and left hand divisions] prevail, a general resemblance
in the customs regarding the Right and Left Hand Castes [exists], yet this is liable to
so many local variations, that there is scarcely a district or a town of note where
there is not some difference to be found in these customs . . .’, from Madras, Public
Department Consultations, v. 391, p. 1450, dated 6 March 1812.
262 Census of India, 1901, v. 15, Madras, pt 2, ‘Index to Castes and Tribes’, pp.
156-7.
262 The Mysore Gazetteer of Rice is an exception, as are some of the Manuals
and Gazetteers of the Madras Presidency published in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Of the latter, the following make some references to the dual
divisions: C.S. Crole, The Chingleput (Late Madras) District: A Manual, Madras,
1879, pp. 33-4; F.A. Nicholson, Manual of the Coimbatore District in the Madras
478 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

left hand divisions used here is that of Chingleput compiled for

an 1809 judgement by the magistrate George Coleman and used by
Oppert, as already noted. This district, which included the city
of Madras, contained a high immigrant population of Telugu
and Kannada speakers, and it may distort our expectations of
elaborateness for other places. Yet, the Coleman list is shorter
than a list submitted about a year later for the same place to a
special committee of inquiry appointed by the Government of
Madras. The report of that committee in 1810 included petitions
from right hand persons enumerating 130 constituent castes in
their division, whereas, the Coleman list included only fifty-six
valangai castes.264
As might be anticipated, the affiliation of some castes according
to broad division is ambiguous. For example, Komati merchants
are usually associated with the right hand division, but they are
referred to as sometimes of the right and other times of the left
hand division by Sonnerat.265 Similar ambiguities are reported for
Ambattan, barbers, by Sonnerat.266 Kaikkolar weavers are retur¬
ned a left hand group by some, but as a right hand group by Son¬
nerat.267 The confusion in the Kaikkolar case is mentioned in
early eighteenth century English record where it noted that the
Kaikkolars were ‘very fickle in their caste. . . sometimes of one
(division), sometimes of another’.268 Fiat was resorted to in
1812 when it was ordered that in the territory under the administra¬
tion of the East India Company, Kaikkolars were to be regarded
as belonging to the left hand division.269 This was an act of authori¬
tative adjudication reminiscent of the Vijayanagara period.

Presidency. Madras. 1887, pp. 61-3; J.H. Nelson, The Madura Country: A Manual.
Madras, 1868, pt 2, pp. 4-7; F.J. Richards, Salem Gazetteer. Madras, 1918, pp.
125-6; and F.R. Hemingway, Trichinopoly Gazetteer. Madras, 1907, pp. 92-3.
These are brief references lacking, for the most part, in any appreciation for or
perception of the functions of the divisions. This is further substantiated by the
virtual absence of any discussion of the divisions (one para. v. 7, p. 298) in Thurston,
op. cit., though many castes are mentioned as affiliated with one or the other division.
264 Madras, Public Department Consultations, 6 March 1812, p. 1506. These
lists are not included in the report.
265 Op. cit., p. 55.
266 Ibid.
262 Ibid.
268 Referred to in Madras. Public Department Consultations, 6 March 1812,
p. 1416.
269 Ibid..
 Vijayanagara State and Society 479

Sect affiliations played a part in the dual divisions of the eighteenth

century and earlier. This was notably the case in Andhra where
the divisions appear to have been late to develop.270 Here the
divisions, when they arose, did not use the designations ‘right and
left hand’ but often used religious designations.271 Similarly,
Buchanan, in 1800, reported that in Karnataka artisans were
divided between two sects of Siva worshippers. Panchan Banajigas
were Lingayats and associated with the right hand along with
Lingayat agriculturists while non-Lingayat, but Saivite Panchalars
were leaders of the left hand division.272
Problems posed by the eighteenth century lists are best understood
within the context of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
In only one essential respect can they be supposed to reflect condi¬
tions of an earlier time. That is, the association of the right hand
division was with agricultural activities and the left hand division
with mercantile and craft interests. This distinction between the
two divisions is suggested in the earliest records, but the distinction
is made more salient during the later period with the growth of
towns. Urban conditions throughout the Madras Presidency
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced stresses
and corresponding solidarity requirements which were anticipated
in the towns of the earlier Vijayanagara age. Teeming ‘Black
Town’ behind Fort St. George in colonial Madras, where idangai-
valangai outbreaks regularly disrupted life, may have had few
earlier parallels in any earlier period in terms of densities, diversity
of residential groups, and economic and social competition. How¬
ever. the stress of progressive urbanization of South Indian society
from the twelfth century on was manifested in the relationships
between right and left caste groupings in many parts of the macro
region, and especially in the continually improving terms of ad¬
vantage to the mobile craftsmen and traders who were the core of
idangai groups everywhere.
Urbanization as a factor in the evolution of the South Indian
dual division of castes is given an importance in the present discus-

270 K. Sundaram, Studies in the Economic and Social Conditions of Medieval

Andhra (A.D. 1000-1600), Triveni Publishers, Madras 1968, p. 89. He states that
medieval Andhra was free of this division, though the functional characteristics
of the divisions appear clear from his discussion.
271 Subha Reddi, op. cit., p. 4.
272 Buchanan, op. cit., v. 1, pp. 77-8.
480 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

sion which is not found in two recent and important studies of the
right and left castes — that of Beck on Kongu and that of Appadurai
on seventeenth century Madras. It has been argued here that the
bifurcated groupings of middle and low castes into those of the
right and those of the left was based upon the essential'interests
of broad occupational groupings which gave rise to alliance systems
of a potential or occasional kind; that conflict between the two
groupings was never the sole nor even a primary characteristic of
the divisions (though conflict was often expressed in terms of right-
left caste confrontations); and that the major activities of these
potential groupings during the Chola period pertained to warfare
and colonization and to the assimilation of various peoples to the
expanding agrarian order. Temple urbanization of the later Chola
period was important in changing the power terms under which
mobile artisans and traders operated and therefore the bloc of
local groupings with whom such mobile groups were, on occasion,
allied.
Another way of conceiving the dual division in Chola times is to
differentiate two broad groupings of local caste groups. First,
there was the cluster of rural groups which focused upon the
redistributional nexus of locality leaders — nattar or muvenda-
ve\ar — who presided over nadu societies not simply as powerful
groups of chiefs, but as ritually integrative yajamdnas. These
were the valangai, local, and therefore variable, social formations
capable of being mobilized for a variety of purposes and cohering
not simply through shared and interdependent agrarian functions,
but also shared ritual affinities centred in the dominant locality
leaders. Contrasted with such locality clusters were those groups
whose livelihoods were not dependent upon fixed clienteles nor
centred upon the redistributional authority of powerful local chief¬
tains and clans, but rather oriented to an extensive consumer
network — any and all who could pay for their specialized products.
These included goods brought into localities through the itinerant
trade network of the time, or goods produced by highly skilled
craftsmen (e.g., goldsmiths, stone and metal sculptors). This
second grouping — idangai — being tenuously connected to the
prevailing and normative system of locality societies and, further,
tainted by association with ancient, heterodoxical religious affilia¬
tions — Buddhist and Jaina — underwent a transformation of
their standing beginning in the eleventh century in connection
 Vijayanagara State and Society 481

with Chola-inspired temple construction, an activity widely imitated

by locality leaders throughout the macro region. The demand
from temples lor the special craft skills and exotic ritual materials
controlled by idangai groups enabled them to claim increasingly
prestigious places in the society of later Chola times.
Temples of later Chola Hinduism became the prime moral
centres of the age. and great temples caused the creation around
them of towns. Over time, such urban places incorporated and
centralized many functions previously dispersed over the country¬
side: political authority, trade, and perhaps most important, the
earlier ritual primacy of the local, yajamana-nattar. Whereas
rural localities of nattar ritual primacy precluded idangai groups
from any but the most marginal places, towns were places where
artisans, craftsmen, and merchants along with those allied to them
in left caste clusters could be important and, indeed, thrive.
During the Vijayanagara period, this process of urbanization
continued, responsive still to religious factors, but also to the
political and military centralization of the nayakas and to the
significant economic functions which urban places acquired as a
result of the deliberate autarchic economic policies which led,
among other things, to the destruction of the itinerant trade system
by the enterprising nayakas. To the importance of temple centres
as the focus of ever-expanding pilgrimage networks and as the
seats of the acharyas who commanded large sectarian followings
was added the ever-present Vijayanagara kings. Their dharmic
rule was most succinctly expressed in their protection and support
of these sacred centres; Vijayanagara kingship cannot be separated
from these purposes. Hence, it is not an accident of preservation
that the historical record of Vijayanagara kingship should exist
in temple inscriptions. It was here that the civil, as against the
military, aspect of kingly rule was most clearly realized. Each
temple city was like the capital city itself; it was a world, and, as it
was the duty of kings (rdjadharma) to protect and nourish the
world, the inscriptional record of their custodianship is found
at all such centres. It is as stated by A.M. Hocart:

We have seen that king, priest, animal, tree, corpse, idol all represent
things it is desired to control. So do the temples and palaces in which
these cult-objects . . . are housed. So does the city in which stand the
temples and palaces ; it is sacred in the same sense as they are, that is they
are equivalent to that on which the life of the people depends. Only the
482 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

city never stands for anything specific; it is never less than the whole
world, and its parts are the parts of the world. . . .273
Certain of the views of the dual division of Vijayanagara times
presented here are sympathetic with and find support from recent
work by Arjun Appadurai and Brenda Beck. But there are impor¬
tant differences from these recent works too. Beck and Appadurai
have made important use of the dual division to explain specific
aspects of South Indian society; Beck, the bifurcation of Tamil
castes in the Kongu region and Appadurai, conflicts in seventeenth
century Madras city. In the course of their work, each has de¬
veloped a different set of explanations of the dual divisions in South
India, and each has emphasized different attributes of the divisions.
Thus, Beck sees the divisions as arising from two conditions;
(1) a long-standing differentiation of ‘immobile’ castes whose
claim to precedence was based upon landed wealth and control
of people through control of land and in contrast to which there
were ‘mobile’ castes whose wealth derived from crafts and trade;
(2) an equally well-established ambiguity in models of esteem
and precedence derived, on the one hand, from economic and
political dominance with little concern about purity or ritual
standing, and, on the other hand, from precisely such a concern
as the basis of precedence (in the fashion of Kongu Brahmans who
owned little land).
Beck then proposes that in Kongu and perhaps elsewhere in
South India where conditions are similar, two structures of castes
within a region come into existence. In one of these structures, fixed
landed groups develop strong clan organization and elaborate clan
and subcaste religious affiliations while in the other structure, taking
as its model the high status, but land-poor Brahmans of Kongu,
mobile wealth is used to achieve ritual purity through strict empha¬
sis upon hierarchical social relations and exclusive devotion to
universal Hindu deities. Here is a system of stable equilibrium
expressed as an abstract and formal dualistic model in which a
single Kongu society is divided into essentially non-conflicting,
complementary halves.
Appadurai proposes a different conception.274 He speaks of a

273 Kings and Councillors, p. 250.

274 Appadurai, ‘Right and Left Hand Castes', p. 225-6, no.22 contains a trenchent
critique of Beck’s argument.
 Vijayanagcira State and Society 483

dual division as occurring within a single, unified, South Indian

cultural system; however, for him the division is a conflict mecha¬
nism, a way of dealing with ‘conflicts, anomalies, and antago¬
nisms’275 which derive from two different preconditions in South
Indian caste: (1) the high degree of territorial segmentation of
caste groups and especially the confined marriage networks of
South India resulting from the conceptions of South Indians
of the equal role of both parents in imparting qualities to their
offspring; (2) the absence of varna categories called, or cognate
with, Kshatriya and Vaishya. Ingeniously Appadurai offers the
notion that the right and left divisions of the social body is a somatic
metaphor like that of the horizontally divided body in the prototypic
image of the Purusha-sukta of the Rig Veda, a metaphor which
simultaneously can express a great variety of social conflicts while
yet affirming the unity of South Indian society. The formulation
of this conception Appadurai dates in the Chola period, and his
analysis of the various traditions preserved about the divisions,
lead him to conclude that the dual division formulation was invoked
at times of weak political integration when regal adjudication was
inadequate to the task of settling disputes among castes except when
these profoundly threatened civil order.276

275 Ibid., p. 221.

276 Ibid., pp. 233-45 where these are summarized. According to Appadurai,
‘the explicit formulation of the [‘root paradigm'] scheme occurred under Chola
auspices’ (p. 223). From that time it appeared ‘in varied contexts and served multiple
functions’. These included assimilation of peoples new to caste-agrarian society
of the Chola period, military activities, status strivings of artisans to a position
of parity with Brahmans, and sectarian conflict between Jainas and Brahmans in
medieval Karnataka. Appadurai’s emphasis upon the heterogeneity of issues
which invoked the dual division is certainly sound and provides a reminder of the
hazard of attributing single causes or functions to so enduring and widespread a
phenomenon as the dual social division of South Indian castes. But, even in the
elicited heterogeneity of Appadurai’s examples, most pertain to divisions between
the broad occupational groupings upon which the conventional interpretation he
is seeking to correct is based (e.g. the Brahman-Jaina conflict resolved in a.d. 1368,
p. 226). He may wish to argue — but does not explicitly — that these persistent
occupational alignments are incidental to the heterogeneous causes of conflict
involving the two divisions in pre- and early Vijayanagara times, but the overall
constancy of the recruitment and composition of the divisions throughout the macro
region and over many centuries bids that the more conventional interpretation
not be too hastily abandoned. This caution is reinforced by the fact that there is
no explicit annunciation of the vertically divided body image during or after Chola
times. This metaphor, it must be recognized, is one contrived by Appadurai as a
484 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

Both of these rich and original studies achieve theoretical clarity

by appearing to convert perceived central tendencies into principles.
For Beck, conflict assumes no serious place in the alignment of
Kongu Tamil castes as formal, exhaustive, and complementary
structures of the right and left castes; for Appadurai, it is conflict
alone which created and sustained the divisions. In the present
analysis, the complementarity of attributes of the divisions catalo¬
gued by Beck and the persistent occupational or materialistic basis
for the major groups in both divisions is taken as very significant.
However, the manner in which the divisions bridge highly localistic
kinship territories and the explicit conflict motif of many of the
valangai and idangai records, as argued by Appadurai, must be
considered very important also. Both complementarity and conflict
appear to characterize the divisions. Appadurai also attributes
major importance to the fact of urbanization, an issue which Beck,
concerned with the Kongu peasantry, says little about. Appadurai
notes that the situation in seventeenth century colonial Madras
— the case which he examines in detail — does not constitute a
sharp break from urban situations of the Vijayanagara period
in being especially volatile social stress points.277 This assessment
by Appadurai is the more impressive as it re-emphasizes the way
in which the Vijayanagara period provided the basic forms — in
rural land relations as well as relationships in towns — which
constitute the foundations of modern society in South India
during the later British period.
Appadurai’s provocative discussion of the dual division does
draw attention to a matter of great importance in relation to the
present analysis of right and left castes during the Vijayanagara
period. That is, he has, in his discussion of the dual divisions and
in his discussion of the sectarian dualism among Srivaishnavas
also discussed above, directed attention to the significant role of
kings in the society of the time. This he concludes from a close
study of Vijayanagara inscriptions and from his reading of a
variety of the traditions (‘indigenous explanations’) about the dual
divisions. The latter are succinctly summarized by him,278 and
he notes that all of these traditions relate to conflicts over emblems

means for moderns to understand the divisions; it is not a formulation of any South
Indians of the past.
277 Ibid., pp. 245-57.
278 Ibid., pp. 233-42.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 485

and practices claimed and disputed between groups which led

to or may have threatened public order and thus prompted authori¬
tative adjudication, usually by a king.
Considerable inscriptional evidence supports this point of
royal intervention as well as Appadurai’s attributed cause for
conflict over largely symbolic objects: intensified urbanization
with the concomitant stress entailed in that.279
In Tamil country, royal intervention into both temple and
valangai-idangai affairs became continuous around the middle of
the fifteenth century. According to Krishnaswami and other
Vijayanagara scholars, this coincides with the major period of
sustained intrusion of Vijayanagara authority into Tamil country.
Even before, however, during the late fourteenth century, such
intervention was noted in inscriptions with respect to the restoration
of temple worship as has already been discussed. Not so well
recognized is a similar appreciation of the dharmic intervention
of Vijayanagara kings or their agents in matters pertaining to the
relations ol the right and left castes. The reconstructed Vishnu
shrine at Dharapuram in Kongu country contains a record of the
late fourteenth century which pays the following tribute to the
dharmic kings of Vijayanagara:

Affording protection to all and the enjoyment of freedom and prosperity

to people of all sects — Srivaishnavas of the eighteen lands, Sri Mahes-
varas, to the right and left communities — may they so govern the country
foreover. To them this dharmam is dedicated by all Srivaishnavas.280

The late period of the reign of Devarya II (a.d. 1422-46) provides

good documentation of such dharmic intervention. Then, accord¬
ing to a record from Takkolam (in modern Arkonam taluk of
North Arcot) the Vijayanagara king issued an edict which was
circulated to the major Siva and Vishnu temple centres of Tondai-
mandalam, including Tiruvorriyur, Kanchipuram, Kalahasti, and
Tiruvalangadu, providing for the remission of certain dues from
temple lands and their use by the temples.281 Devaraya’s successor,
Virapratapa, who reigned for about a year (a.d. 1446-7),282 re¬
established the rates of dues to be paid by right and left castes to a

279 ibid., pp. 227-8.

280 Viraraghavacharya, ‘The Srivilliputtur Temple’, p 6, no.8, p. 1.

281 A.R.E., 1922, para. 45, p. 110 regarding 270/1921.

282 Nilakanta Sastri, History of South India, p. 300.
486 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

level which had existed at an earlier time before these dues had
been increased and coercively collected, thus compelling the flight
of many in the dual divisions.283 This occurred at villages around
the town of Tirukkoyilur and elsewhere in modern South Arcot.284
Another record of Devaraya’s reign comes from another temple
centre, Vriddhachalam, in South Arcot, which recounts a royal
order including the following passage:

members of the Valahgai and Idahgai sects met . . . and came to the
decision that, since the officers of the king (rajanyas) and owners of
JTvitas [tax-free prebends]285 oppressed. . . and the kaniyalan [holders
of hereditary land rights] and the Brahmanas took the rajakaram (i.e.,
taxes), none of Valahgai and Idahgai people should give them shelter and
that (none of the people of the two sects) bom in the country should
write accounts for them or agree to their proposals. If any proved a
traitor to the country (by acting against this settlement), he should be
stabbed. . . ,286
In discussing this Vriddhachalam inscription, the epigraphist
noted that similar records of Devaraya II are to be found in Tan-
javur and Tiruchirapalli.287
Such cooperation between the divisions may have been less
common than competition. Many Vijayanagara inscriptions refer
to the equalization of the rights of each division with the other,
from the Arunachalesvara temple at Tiruvannamalai, dated Saka
1340, contained an order of Devaraya I, possibly issued by his son,
to the effect that the idangai and valangai groups at Tiruvannamalai
should enjoy the same privileges.288 The same notion is conveyed
in a record of Achyutadevaraya which speaks of the ninety-
eight casts comprising both the right and left divisions.289
This adjudicated parity of privileges may reflect pressure
of idangai demands arising out of their steadily augmented
urban power. Such a sense is conveyed in several records of
the later Vijayanagar period pertaining to special demands of
idangai groups. One from Madurai reports the action of Virappa

283 A.R.E., 1922, para. 46, pp. 110-11 regarding 476/1921.

-84 A.R.E., 1907, para. 55, p. 69, and A.R.E., 1904-5, para. 30 regarding a record
at Kilur, Tirukkoyilur taluk. South Arcot.
285 S.I.T.I., ‘Glossary’, p. xx.
286 A.R.E., 1918, para. 68, p. 163.
287 Ibid., regarding 92/1918, dated saka 1357.
288 A.R.E., 1903 regarding 564/1902 and v. 1, p. 94.
289 A.R.E., 1906 regarding 103/1906, from Jambai, South Arcot.
 Vijayanagara State and Society 487

Nayaka in confirming the fivefold division of Kammalars of the left

division at the request of the latter.290 In another inscription from
Tiruvadi in Cholamandalam, Chinnappa Nayaka exempted the
five classes of Kammalars from certain taxes which had previously
been exacted under threat of force and had caused many of the
idangai artisans to flee the town.291 Still another inscription from
Tiruvamattur in modern Villupuram, South Arcot, refers to a
resolution by residents of the place before Krishnappa Nayaka,
agent of the Vijayanagara king Sriranga, establishing for the
Kammalars of the vicinity the same rights and privileges as those
enjoyed by artisans of the idangai in the towns of Padaividu, Senji,
Tiruvannamalai, and Kanchi.292
This evidence of idangai demands for political intervention to
achieve parity of privileges with their fellows in other places and
with right caste groups must occasionally have resulted from or
led to conflict as may be judged from an epigraph of the late four¬
teenth century referring to conflict between right and left castes
in Tondaimandalam which endured for four years.293 Tondai-
mandalam also exhibited another form of stress which appears
to have occasioned royal intervention during the latter Vijaya¬
nagara period. This was competition between Tamil-speaking
Vellalas and Telugu-speaking Balijas for locality headships. The
perceptive Francis W. Ellis, in his 1818 discussion of mirasi rights,
reported that when Tondaimandalam came under the control
of the Bijapur sultanate, probably around a.d. 1650, following the
ejection by the Muslims of Sriranga III, the office of ndttdn cus¬
tomarily held by Tamil Vellalas was reduced in importance by the
creation of a parallel local office called desdyi filled by Telugus.
Nattdns of Tondaimandalam had previously regulated all disputes
pertaining to caste and were especially important in valangai
affairs in the seventy-nine nadus of Tondaimandalam. Desdyis,
appointed from among Telugu Balijas, claimed joint jurisdiction
with the Tamil ndttans in an office which came to be called nctdu-
d'sam. Idangai groups, Ellis reported, disputed the authority
of both.294
290 A R E., 1918, regarding 55/1917.
291 A.R.E., 1922, regarding 413/1921.
292 Ibid., 65/1922.
292 A.R.E., 1906, regarding 422/1905 dated sake 1305 from Gudimallur. North
Arcot.
299 Replies to Seventeen Questions Proposed by the Government of Fort St. George
488 Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India

While the frequency of royal intervention into local, Tamil

affairs, including conflicts of the right and left castes, certainly
increased during the fifteenth century, the few inscriptions pertain¬
ing to these matters continue to reflect the potential nature of the
divisions and the ability of these groupings to cooperate against
exploitation at the hands of others: Brahmans, royal officials,
soldiers, and others.295 This the assembled right and left caste
groupings did just as they had done during the Chola period when
there were few signs of royal adjudication.

Relative to Mira si Right, Government Gazette Office, Madras, 1818, App. 1, ‘List
of the Nadus, Kottams and Villages of Tondamandalam', p. ix, note.
295 See the undated, probably post-Chola record from Pennadam on the Vellar
River boundary of Cholamandalam, A.R.E., 1928-9, para. 79, p. 90; also a late
Chola record, possibly Kulottunga III from Aduturai, Tiruchirapalli, A R E.,
1913, regarding 34 of 1913.
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 Index

Accuta Vikkanta, 78 Andhra plain, 4, 33, 34. 36, 44;

Achyutadevaraya, 486 southern parts of, 57
Achyutaraya, 375, 411 Annamalai, 36, 42
Agama : vaikhanasagama, 238; Aparaka, 388
pancaratra, 238 Apasthamba sutra, 352
Agamic prescriptions, 85 Appadorai A., 248. 249, 258, 262,
Agesthialingam, S.. 422 379-80, 419
Agni, 342 Appadurai, Arjun, 54n., 179, 204,
Agraharam,t 145 383n., 428, 432n., 467, 468-9,
Agr4rian relations, 16; historically, 47in., 480, 483n., 482-5
13, 16; between Brahman villages Appar (Tirunavukkarasu), 78, 295
and nattar, 164 Arasanimangalam, 157
Agrarian system. 14, 24, 63-89, 173,
Arcot (South and North), 4, 27
254-65; historically, 16; and gar¬
Arokiaswami, A., 45, 110, 111, 112,
den cultivation, 26, 27, 28; dry,
113, 115, 199, 304, 311, 314
wet and swidden land in, 26, 28;
Artisan-traders, 104, 171, 175, 252,
and agricultural strategies, 27, 28;
362; kil kalanaigal, 181; kollar,
and technology, 29; and peasants,
188, 250; nattar, 181, 250; taccan,
34; and Brahmin-peasant rela¬
181, 250; koliyar, 181, 250
tionship, 63, 69; instability of,
Arulnandi, 235
216 Ashoka, 31, 45
Ahobilam, 239
Asvamedha, 277, 386, 387, 388
Aiyer. K.V. Subrahmanya, 123, 217,
Avani, 191, 194, 195, 204
221, 227, 229, 231, 251, 322, 374
Ayagar, system, 423-4
Ajnapati, 383
Ayyangar, S. Krishnaswami, 367,373
Alangudi, 197
Ayyavali, 248
Alavandar, 233
Alayev, L.B., 226 Baden-Powell, B. H., 13
Alvar, 240 Bahmani state, 381, 392
Amarakosa, 197 Bahmani Sultan Muhammad, 402
Amaram tenure, 375 377, 422-3, 427 Bailey, F. G., 90, 118, 242n.
Amaramakani, 421 Balagey, see Caste
Amaranayaka, 377. 422, 423, 426 Balasubrahmanyam, S. R., 335
Ambuliyar river, 98 Banavasi, 34
Amman, 237 Banavasi-12,000, 108, 128
Amuktamalyada, 402 Banerjea, J. N., 337
Anaimangalam. 122, 360 Bangalore, 34
Anantanarayana, 360 Baramahal, the, 42
Anbil, 228, 235 Beck, Brenda E. F., 176n., 315, 418,
Andhra-mandala. 195 458. 467, 480, 482, 484
520 Index

Bezwada, 20, 24b distribution of, 305-6, 307;

Bhakti, 53, 81, 86; and folk deities, association of Cholas with, 344;
84; ideological components of, 87; not exclusively Brahman settle¬
and Sankara, 342 ments, 344; institutions of higher
Bhandarkar, R. G., 30 learning in. 345; functions of,
Bhubaneshwar, 44 349; and inscriptional preambles.
Bhuvane Raviran Samarakolahalan. 356
409 Brahman(s), 4, 9, II, 28, 46. 48, 50.
Bloch, Marc. 470 51. 63, 183, .186, 198, 229. 404,
Bombay-Karnataka, 43, 57, 59, 61. 441; and non-Brahmans, 5,6. II,
62 49, 212. 231, 239, 240; their in¬
Boxer. C. R., 376n. fluence on Dravidian societies, 51;
Brahma, 342 and high non-Brahman alliance,
Brahmaderas, 3, 51, 53, 106, 120, 51; as secular authority, 52, 141.
123. 141-72, 181, 197, 215. 229. 340; and locality power. 53; and
231, 232, 250, 252, 305, 367. 410; high non-Brahman castes. 54;
conditions for existence of, 142; and rural Brahmanical institu¬
identified with the plain, 142; and tions and assemblies, 64. 73, 82;
divergent aims of peasants and their relations with peasants,
Brahmans. 142; and peasant 71. 82; and cultivating groups.
villages, 143; their situation and 72; Brahman-peasant alliance,
characteristic names, 145; super¬ 83, 87. 253; and ‘clean’ non-
vision and administration of, Brahmans, 85; and marriage
145-7; sanfyarappdcli, 148; and system, 102; and gotra 103;
non-Brahman villages, 150; distri¬ their secular authority, 141; in
bution of Brahman villages in. relation to naclu and nattar. 143
150. Map IV-1; and conditions of 150, 163; Malayali Brahmans.
agriculture. 151; ‘central place’ 161; Vadama Smarta Brahmans.
in, 152. 154, 158; and ritual 210; their monopoly over higher
functions, 152; hagiographical sacral functions, 21 I; Vaikanasas.
importance of, 153; educational 211; and false allegations against
functions of, 154; mercantile and other Brahmans. 224; their
artisan groups in. 155; inscrip¬ participation in non-Brahman
tions found in, 155; their indebt¬ rituals. 230; teachers and
edness to temples, J57; and students, 230; and Sanskrit,
transfer of rights, 159; change 230-1; and non-Brahman culture.
of names of, 160; external 231; Aradhya Brahmans. 235;
intervention in, 160; residential and excommunication. 235;
groups in, 162; voluntary basis of. North Indian Brahmans, 322;
166; offices of mahasabhd in, 169; relation of. with Chola rulers,
and cultivation, 169; and 343: as commandants and terri¬
relationship between sabhas, and torial ‘governors'. 371; Telugu
«rs, 170; role of, 170; life-style in, Brahmans, 410; Niyogi, 411;
171; and niahasabhas, 217; ideological role of, 413
 Index 521

Brahman-peasant alliance, 83, 87, Chera, 45

253 Chettis,Nattukkottai, 301
Brahman-sat-Sudra alliance, 50 Chidambaram, 198, 235, 246
Brahmardyan, 114, 343 Chiefs: titles of, 278; power of,
Breckenridge, Carol A., 428n.,432n., 271; of the Chola state, 283; at
454n., 466, 468 Kodambalur, 303; as hunters and
Briggs, L. P., 336 pastoralists, 304
Brihad, svara temple, 49, 230, 256, Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. 241
341 Chingleput, 26, 27
British: territorial power, 50; land Chittiramejivinnagar, 220, 222
policies, 53; Brahmans as depend¬ Chola(s), 36, 63, 70, 93, 94, 143,
able se wants of, 53; institutions, 147, 173, 239, 241, 366; as rulers
204; of! cials between the 17th C. and kings, 40, 45, 57, 367;
and early 19th C.. 206 overlordship, 34, 40, 57, 98,
Buchanan, Francis, 473 240-1, 252-3; pillaging raids of,
Buddhadatta, 78 40, 41; boundaries of their macro
Buddhism/Buddhist, 73, 77,78,79, region, 57; inscriptions of, 102,
80, 81, 83, 86; shrines. 120; 114, 181; regional names of, 115;
institutions, 208 families of chiefs in C. times,
Bukka Raya, 202 115, 116; ritual sovereignty, 116;
Bureaucracy, 190 and 550 nadus of Cholamanda-
Bureaucratic government, 13 lam, 151; army of, 188; and
velaikkarar, 189; regiments of,
Cakravartin, 70. 88 190; peasant military units, 190,
Cambodian kingdom. 37 214; idahgai forces of, 191; land-
Campiratdyam. 230 tax of, 192; status of artisans
Cardamom, 36, 42 and merchants, 199, 200, 208;
Castes: principles, 9, 10, II; and urbanization, 204; agricultural
jajmani system, 10, 177; ‘the expansion, 205; dominant peasant
eighteen castes’, 11; tripartite groups in C. period, 208; territo¬
horizontal division of, 54; of rial segmentation of society in C.
macro region, 55; and nadu, 174, period, 208; ambiguous position
South Indian associations of,
of non-Brahmans in C. period,
180; lower, 204; socio-political 208; expanding agrarian system
associations of, 205; and ‘Sudra’, of, 208; putative centralized state
212; see also Right-hand and structure of, 218; increased
Left-hand divisions of castes demand from holders of kilvaram
Cattatavan, 212 in C. period, 226; Saivite and
Chalukyas, 59, 294; of Badami, 295 Vaishnavite doctrine of, 230;
Chalukya Vikramaditya II, 295 temples of, 232-3, 245; archi¬
Champa, 336, tecture of, 246; 2nd major
Chamundi, the goddess, 320 zone of segmentary state, 297;
Chan Ju-kua, 251 and Pandya country, 299; an¬
Chan Ta-kuan, 336 cient tradition of kingship, 300;
522 Index

and intermediate zone, 302; parakesari in, 363; dharmic

distribution of brahmadeyas and character of kingship in, 364;
temple inscriptions in C. period, locality segment in, 408; ideolo¬
305, 307; peripheral zone of C. gical role of Brahmans in, 413
segmentary state, 318; origin Chola, Sundara, 257
myth of, 322; Arya Brahmans, Cholaganga tank, 362
322; three ancient kingships of, Cholamandalam, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97,
323; and cult of Siva, 323; and 98, 109, 214, 216, 261, 446
Vijayanagara society, 367; king- Cilappadikaram, 71, 75, 204, 215
ship, 367; land tenure in, 415, 418 Citrameli, 220, 228, 228n.
Chola state, 3, 22, 23, 216, 380; Citrameli-periyanaltar, 221, 227,
decline and fall of, 216; historio¬ 239, 251, 252
graphy of. 254; self-governing Classical times (Sangam era), 75,
institutions in, 255; army and navy 114, 209; Tamil poems in, 88;
of, 257; administrative structure great families of chiefs in, 114;
of, 257-64, 340, 358; and agrarian and poets, 209; two disparate
order, 258; revenue terms in, 261; social orders 209; urban centres,
and emergence of Tondaiman- in, during, 251
dalam, 294; irrigation in, 318; Coedes, G., 336
effective territorial sovereignty Coimbatore, 4, 26, 27, 28, 35, 42,
of, 321; hegemony of, 321; core 43, 54, 58, 126, 216
territory of, 321, 322; alteration Complementary opposition, 274
of kingship in, 334; king as Conti, Nicolo, 384, 388
divine incarnation in, 334; Conventional numbers, 251; Ganga-
sacral Hindu kingship in, 335; vadi ‘96,000’, 129; ‘108’ families,
funerary temples of, 335, 338, 149; ‘eighteen’, 218-19
339, 364; ritual hegemony of, Copperplates, 131, 132
339, 341, 344; dharmic incor¬ Coromandel plain, 27, 31, 32, 33,
poration in, 339; and brahma- 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 69, 73,
deya, 344; as solar line of 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 102, 107, 127,
Kshatriyas, 344; and sastric and 141, 143, 172, 310; entrepots, 38
ritual scholars, 345; and salais,
345-6; and meykkirtti, 350; and Dana-Sasana, 46
inscriptions, 355; ritual hegemony Ddnda and artha, 267, 280, 362
in, 356, 357, 358; ideological Dani, A. H., 33
framework and canonical style of Darasuram, 246
workmanship in, 357; eulogistic Dasavanda, All
reference to royal house in, 358; Day, W. M., 32
administrative specialists in, 360; Deccan, 30, 31, 32, 35; cultural
scribal function in, 360; ad¬ sphere in, 60
ministrative specialists in, 360; Derrett, Duncan M., 278, 317, 318,
pyramidal segmentation of, 361; 319, 406, 407
massing and incorporative process Desai, D., 219
of, 362; titles of rdjakesari and Descent system, 55
 Index 523

Devadana, 53, 111, 120, 158. 161. Gana (puga), 22

231, 243 Ganapatideva, 59
Devalige ‘70’, 122 Gangas, 108, 310, 316, 317, 318;
Devaraja, 256, 335, model of kingship for Kongu
Deva Raya II, 384, 485 chiefs, 317
Devaram, 311 Gangadikara, 319
Devi Bhagavatam Purana, 390 Gaiigaikondacholapuram, 230, 256,
Devi worship, 237, 238, 239, 245 334, 341, 362
Dharmapuram niatha, 236 Gangavadi, 92, 108, 309, 310, 317,
Dharmapuri, 320 318, 319, 393, 447; minor kingly
Dharmasdstra, 23, 101, 245, 267. lineage, 316; central domain of
278, 279, 355, 363 Hoysala state, 318; karmandalam,
Dikshit, Appaya, 201 320
Dikshit, G. S„ 122, 129, 219 Gangavadi ‘96, 000’. 108, 126, 128,
Dirks, Nicholas, 296, 383 129, 130
Dorosamudra, 200 Gangetic plain, 31, 32, 37, 48
Dravidian, 5, 7, 35, 36, 51, 64, 100. Ghalikas, 230, 232, 351; at Kanchi.
101 347
Dubois, Abbe J. A., 471 God-king, see Devaraja
Dumont, L., 242n., 267, 390n. Godavari, R., 26. 35
Durga, 238 Gudavari-Kistna basins, 31, 36, 44
Durgadannaik, 403, 404. 41 ! Gonda, J., 276. 277, 279. 280. 281.
Durkheim, E., 269. 384n., 390n.
Gopuram, 245, 246
Ellis, Francis W., 435, 487 Grand Anicut, 24
East India Company, 366 Gros, F., 156
‘Eastern Ghat’, 36 Guilds (sretil). 22. 49. 249; see SreiiT
Edagey, see Caste Guhaii, 237
Ennayiram, 153, 160, 230 345
Ekabhogam, 149 Habib, Irfan, 15
Evans-Pritchard, E. E.. 270 Hall, D. G. E., 335
Hall, R. Kenneth, 416
Fallers, L., 8 Hampi, ruins. 390
Festivals, 384-6 Harle. J. C., 246, 248
Filliozat, Vasundara, 373 Harsha, 48
Firth, R., 12 Heesterman, J. C., 277n., 281
Fleet, J. F., 128 Hemmanahalli, 122
‘Folk’ culture, 5; ‘folk’ tradition, 5, Heras, H., 373
7; folk and high tradition, 6; Hocart, A. M„ 276, 277, 280, 281,
assimilation of folk elements, 384n„ 390, 392, 481
239 Hopkins, E. W., 278, 280, 281, 334
Frykenberg, R. E., 437-8 Hoysalas, 77, 202, 226. 381; their
incursion into the lower Kaveri.
Gajapati inscription, 407 319
524 Index

Hoysala Ballala II, 319 Iyer, Ananthakrishna, 60

Hsuan Tsang, 73, 78, 297
Hultzsch, E., 190, 199, 346 Jaina(s), 34, 46, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83,
Huzur Office plates of Trivandrum, 86, 119, 202, 203, 231, 298, 316;
348 shrines, 120; institutions, 208
Jambukesvara, 246
Idangai, 222 Janaka, king of Videha, 348n.
Idangai-edangai, see Right-hand Janapada, 362
and left-hand division of caste Jatavarman Kulasekara Parakrama,
Idangai-magamai, 202 409
Idangai-vari, 202 Jdtis, 249
1 ilangai-valangai Jatiyar Varalaru, Jyeshtha, 238
184
Ilangovels, 115 Kadamai, 226, 258, 262, 263
Inden, Ronald, 453n. Kadamba Mayursarmam. 347
Indian kingship, 41; sacral character Kadaram, 40
of, 276 Kadavarayans, 115
Indo-Aryan civilization, 37 Kadu, 91
fndo-Aryan culture, 101, 171 Kaikkolar, 186, 199, 478
Indo-Gangetic plain. 31 Kailaspathy, 351, 362
Indonesia, 38 Kakatiya kingdom, 59, 407
Inscriptions, 46, 353, 354; riadu Kahbhra, 76, 77. 78. 81. 84. 88. 295
signatories of, 121; stone, 131; Kalamukhas, 81
copperplate, 131, 132; Sanskrit vs Kalahasti, 127
non-Sanskrit plates, 59, 132; Kalanai, 249
distribution of brahmadeya and Kalinga, 36; see also Orissa
temple, 305; circumambulation Kalittokai, 74
of land in, 349; and meykkTrtti, Kallar, 28, 50, 109, 110. 118. 139.
350-1; eulogistic preambles in, 301, 304, 417
355; prototype for the mevkkirtti, Kamma Rashtra, 450
in, 356; standardization of, 356; Kammas, 85
ceremonies recorded in, 358; Kammalars, 138, 199. 201, 227. 248,
circumambulation by female 487
elephant recorded in, 360; attest¬ Kammanacheri, 199,
ing signature in, 361; puranic and Kanchi, 38, 68, 171, 188, 230,
sastric, 362; results of sacred 241, 247, 351
transformations recorded in, 363; Kandalur, 345, 349
invocation of royal protection in, Kane, P. V., 245
363; Chola epigraphs in, 365 Kanimurruttu, 181, 231, 352
Inscriptional prasasti, 296 Kannada, 34, 60
Inscriptional preambles. 24, 250 Kanya Kumari, 107, 322, 355
Irrigation, 17, 24, 27 Kanyapidariyar, 322
Irrukkuvels, 116, 303, 304 Kapalikas, 81
Itinerant guild. 39 Kapava Nayaka, 381
 Index 525

Kapilesvara (king), 408 Karandai Plates of Rajendra I, 343

Kapus, 131, 448, 449 352, 354, 356
Karalar, 320 Kongu-Chola, 115, 304,
Karashima, N., J51, 260, 262 Kosambi, D. D., 6, 100
Karmandalam, 34 Kosminsky, E.A., 14
Karmandala-Satakam, 101, 130.319 Kovil Olugu, 233
321. 446 Kra Isthmus, 38
Karnataka, 4, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, Krader, L., 268
58, 61, 88. 92, 108, I 10, 1II, 126, Krishna, 85
145, 172, 200, 202, 208, 310; Krishnadeva Raya. 76
southern parts of, 57 ; dialect Krishnan. K. G.. 232, 249, 352n..
division in, 60; and ‘eighteen 354n.
Phana Group’, 60,61; as transi¬ Krishnaraya, 371, 375, 401
tional zone, 61; inscriptions, 110; Krishnaswami, A., 374. 378, 379.
numerical designations for ter¬ 394, 410, 443, 485
ritories, 128; artisans of. 200; and Kroeber. A. L., 6, 8
Nolambavadi, 316; and Bana- Ksaira, 24, 267. 296. 339. 360
vasi, 316 Kshatriyas, 47. 48. 50. 70. 71,
Karve, Irawati, 33 213, 279
Kaveri, R., 24, 26, 32, 36, 42, 49, Kudigal, 198
57, 60, 69, 93, 97. 99, 107, Kudimai. 263, 264
I 14, 162, 258, 294. 367; oriented Kudivarani, 168
districts of. 61 Kitdumbus. 148. 224. 224n
Kaveripatnam, 38 Kulottunga I, 35. 69. 126. 127. 128.
Kaveripattinam, 68 243. 257, 283
Kerala, 32, 33, 48. 58 Kuiottunga III. 115. 246, 247, 283.
KTI-kalanai, 198. 315
Kllvaram, 168 Kumbakonam. 243n.
Kingship, sacred, 23, 24 Kula. 22
Kistna, drainage basin of the, 60 Kulasekhara, 299
Kistna-Godavari, 32, 35, 69; see Kuliuka, 279
also Godavari-Kistna Kumara Kampana, 409
Kodambalur, 303, 304
Kolar, 34 Lakshmi. 238
Koliyar\ 250 ‘Larger Leiden Plates', 49. 121. 122.
Kollar, 250 354, 356 359, 360
Kolleru (Collari) lake, 27 Lingat, R., 267, 278, 279, 280
Kollidam, 93 Literature, classical, 65. 100
Konadu, 302, 3Q4 Longhurst. A. H., 385, 389
Kongu country, 110, 115, 118, Ludden, David, 34n.
137, 138, 216, 309-11, 314-15, Lynch. Owen M.. 242n.
485
Kongumandalam, 251 Machlipatnam. 38
Kongunmndalo-Satakmn, 316 Macleane. C. D.. 201
526 Index

MacKenzie, Colin, 395, 472 Merchants. 260, 252, 282

Mackenzie Collection. 379. 441 Meykandar, 235
Macro region; see under South Meyklrtti, 47
India Migration, 368
‘Madhyasta’, 121 Minakshi-Sundaresvara temple. 468
Madhyastankaranattan, 121 Minchirai, 349
Madurai, 68, 78, 107, 171 Moreland, W.H., 15
Mahadeva temple, 152, 156 Mudali, 225
Mahajana, 146 Mudaliyar, 236
Mahalingam, T.V., 98, 259, 260. Mughals, 14, 15, 16
276. 283, 374, 379 Mukherjee, N., 437-8
Mahanavann festival, 384, 385, 386. Mummudi, 323
387, 398, 401 Munro, Thomas, 259, 336. 438
Mahanavami Tirtha, 399 Murudaiyaru, 97
Maharashtra, deccan lavas of, 43 Murugan, 84
Mahavamsa, 299 Muslims, 87; conquest in 14th C.,
Mahdsabha, 82, 146, 149, 158, 161, 59; control over Indian Ocean,
162, 169, 247 39; and Coromandel, 39; Muslim
Mahendravarman 1, 78, 80, 295 states of the Deccan, 372
Malabar Coast, 107 Muttaraiyar, 115
Maldives, 40 Mu-vendar, 45
Malaiyamakkal, 222 Mu-venda-velar, 45, 111, 112, 113.
Mandalam, 261, 494 114, 117, 193, 194, 195, 323, 359
Mannargudi, 217, 222, 223, 225. Mysore, 34, 42, 43
227, 228
Mananilanallur, 146 Nachchiyar, 238
Mandapatn, 245 Nadars, 205
Manigramattar, 38 Nadu, 3. 90-140, 173, 206, 207, 216,
Manimekalai, 215, 276 222, 223, 250, 342; and massing
Mantri, 111, 112. 273 of primary local segments, 22;
Marai, 235 defined, 90-1; and kunam and
Marathas, 31 kottam, 91; in classical poems, 91;
Maravars, 28, 50, 74, 109, 1 10. 1 14. as unit of local administration,
115, 139, 301, 302, 304 98; as source of names, 104;
Markanam, 38 and ‘founding’ villages, 105; and
Marriage, 9, 55, 103, 104 classical period, 107; in southern
Marriott, Mckim, 33, 453n. Karnataka, 108, 122; administra¬
Marudam, 74 tive functions of. 111; nayagam
Mathas, 142, 195, 200. 229. 230. of, 117; and variation, 117; and
236,' 252 agrarian operations, 118; and
Mayurvarman, 34 vellan-vagai (peasant share
Medhatithi, 363 villages), 123; and nattar, 124;
Melvaram, 167, 192, 226 ‘central nadus', 134-5; inter¬
Mercantile groups. 18 mediate nadus\ 135-9; peripheral
 Index 527
nadus, 138, 139; Brahmans in, Nellore, 35, 222, 232
143; as unit of peasant organi¬ Nicholas, R., 178
zation, 167; vertical integration
Nilaippadai, 127
of, 207; and vishaya, 218; and Nilgiris, 36, 42
medieval South Indian state, 282;
Niyayattdrs, 186
and pyramidal articulation of
Nolambavadi-32,000, 108
segments, 282
Non-Brahman, respectable, 103, 198
Ndduvil-nddu, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 231
307
Non-peasant (people), 73, 76; and
Nagapattinam, 81
maravar and eyinar, 75; warriors,
Nagara, 123, 180, 245, 250, 251, 79
282
‘Northern Circars’, 43
Nagar attar, 144, 181, 219, 227,
Nulambavadi, 126,127
228; linked subordinate^ to
Nuniz, Fernao, 375, 376, 385, 386,
brahmadeya, 251
396, 401
Nagaswamy, R., 156
Nalayira Prabandham, 81 Okkalu, 122, 129, 418
Nallur, 153 Oppert, Gustav, 201, 203, 472
Nammalvar’s Tirumoli, 190 Orissa, 33, 44
NQnadesi (merchants), 180, 227
Nandivarman I, 197 Paes, Domingo, 375, 376, 385, 387,
Nandivarman II Pallavamalla, 80, 396
282, 294, 295, 334, 362 Palar, the, 36, 42, 60
Narasimhachar, R., 373 Palaiyakkarar, 50
Nattamakkal, 187, 188, 222 Palasige-12,000,108
N attar, 105, 110, 111, 117, 120, 123, Pallamkoyil, 119
124, 131, 167, 181, 206, 207, 214, Pallava(s), 37, 55, 63-5, 68, 70, 81,
218, 223, 239, 282, 352, 358, 361, 82, 84, 88, 97, 118, 150, 202, 208,
412, 416-17, 418; transfer arrange¬ 241, 294, 316, 323, 339, 364; and
ments, 119; of Tondaimandalam, bhakti sects, 64; Prakrit records
125; differentiation of, from other of, 65; military power, 66; society,
important groups, 130; a corporate 67; as southern variant of Aryan
entity, 131, 229; and royal grants, civilization, 69; and territorial
230 segmentation of, 210; and agres¬
Nava-ratri festival, 390 tic labourers, 211; expansion of
Ndyaka, 369, 379, 396, 406, 407, 408, wet rice cultivation, 211; and
409, 410, 415, 440-1, 442, 443; forest dwellers, 211; and pumi-
kings of Madurai, 392; warriors, pputirar, 212; and village arti¬
415 sans and service groups, 212;^
Ndyaka system, 375, 396, 397-400, overlordship in Tondaimandalam,
434, 440 294; and Jainism, 295; inscription,
Nayanars, 240 296; conversion of many macro
Nayankara system, 370, 376 regions,450
Nayar ‘Kshatriyahood’, 48 Pa Hi, 188
528 Index

Pal/iccanda,, 181, 231 212; support of Brahman ritual

Pallippadais, 338 and learning, 239
Paini, 36, 42 Peasant societies, 2, 7, 8, 10, 11,
Panchanamuvdru, 200 15, 90; concept of, 12, 14; and
Panchatantra, agamic, 5 culture, 55; defined, 67-8; expan¬
Panchayattars, 138 sion of, 83
Panchan Banajigas, 479 Peasantry : and Brahmans, 7, 69,
Pandimandalam, 92, 137, 251 72-3, 82-3, 86-7; and the external
Pandimandala-satakam, 446 world, 18, 20; armed, 214; and
Pandya(s), 36, 77, 84, 93, 297-9; support of non-Vedic ritual
regal tradition of, 297; warriors, and learning, 240;. in Tondai-
traders and rulers of, 298-9; mandalam and Naduvil-nadu,
supreme power in southern penin¬ 305; Palli, 306; and the Gangas
sula, 300; of peripheral tracts, and Gangadikara, 318; and
301 Karalar, 320
Paraiyar, 209 Penner, R., 36, 60, 93, 97, 99, 316
Parantaka I, 146, 283 Penugonda, 248
Pasupatas, 81 Periyanadu, see Supra-local assem¬
Pasupata matha, 343 blies
Pasupata Saivism, 342 Periyanattar, 221, 222, 225, 227, 252
Patikam (poetic epilogue), 350 282; the sub-culture of, 229-41;
Patirruppaiiu, 350 mediators between Brahmans and
Pattak karar, 315, 418 peasantry, 225
Pattakkaran, 137, 315 Periyapuranam, 341
Pattinam, 242, 251 Pillai, Krishnaswami, 369
Pattinayar, 250 Pillay, K. K„ 247
Pattupattu, 55 Piranmalai, 227, 228, 234, 251
Peasant, passim; localities, 8, 10, 19, Place. Lionel, 435
22; household, 11, 16, 20; and Pocock, David F., 242n.
English peasantry, 11; relations ‘Poligar’, 50
with land, 11; agrarian relations, Polonnaruva, 188, 199
16; economics, 17; family, 18, 19; Ponnaiyar, 36, 42, 305, 306
village, 19; movement, 19, 310; Ponnani (R.), 42
community, 20; conservativeness, Prasasti, 47
20; external and internal pres¬ Pre-Pallavan era, 64
sures on, 21; ecotypes, 25, 26; Puduchcheri, 38
expansion of peoples, 35; hierar- Pumiputtirar, 187
chial ordering of, 71; and non¬ Punugonda, 200
peasant folk, 69, 75, 79, 81, Pur am, 242, 251, 362
82, 83, 84; and religious sects, Purananuru, 91, 298
79-81, 84-7; relations with Puri, 44
Brahmans, 82; village assembly
{Ur), 82; and Brahman-peasant Raghavan, V., 6n.
alliance, 82-3, 86-7; absconding, Rajadhiraja II, 283
 Index 529

Rajamanickam, 236, 237 and trade activities, 179; ‘relative’

Rajaraja I, 35, 98, 99, 116, 125, 151, and ‘potential’ groupings of, 180-
155, 188, 207, 214, 249, 256, 263, 1; South Indian caste associations
310, 321, 340; armies of, 174 of, 180; division of, 182;relative
Rajaraja II, 126 work with, 213; lack of
Rajaraja III, 218, 223, 237 emphasis upon stratified relations
Rajaraja Chola, 39, 46, 57, 33-4, 380 among, 184; and shared insignia
Rajarajesvara temple and shrine, and symbols, 185; and occu¬
155, 338, 364 pational interests, 185-6; and
Rajaraja-vijayam, 338 Brahmans, 186, 206; and military
Rajarajesvara-natakam 338 activities, 188-9, 204, 206; and
Rajendra I, 126,' 188, 207, 256, 283, mercantile and craft occupations,
299 196,206; and possible explanation
of these designations, 201-2;
Rajendra Chola I, 39, 40, 46, 125,
groupings, 205; and artisan-
126, 256, 283, 334
traders, 206, 215; gaps in
Ramanuja, 233, 246
evidence about, 207; origins of,
Ramayana, 334, 387, 389
Ramesvara temple, 468 207-15; and ‘stranger’ versus
‘indigenous’ classification, 209;
Ramnad, Sethupati of, 302
Rangacharya, V, 306 and left-hand caste, 249
Rose, Kathi L., 454n.
Rao, M. Rama, 389n.
Rashtrakuta, 294
Sabha, 47, 48, 49, 121, 141, 144,
Rathakdra inscriptions, 196-8, 215
166, 412
Razzak, Abdur, 384, 386
Sacrifice (yajna), 363
Reddi, Subha, 473
Sacral kingship, 280-1
Reddis, 85, 213, 448, 449; Telugu
Sahlins, Marshall, 417
Reddis, 417
Saiva, 212
Redfield, R., 6
Saiva Siddhanta, 7, 235, 236, 239
Revenue, 13; land, 14
240, 341
Rice, Lewis, 128, 473
Saivite, 78, 79
Right-hand and left-hand divisions
Saivaite Panchalars, 479
of castes, 54, 61, 72, 85, 104, 173-
Salai, 346-7, 349, 351
215, 282,485; dual divisions in,
Salem, 4, 27, 28, 35, 42, 43, 54, 58,
61, 185, 368; ‘Nine Phanas and
216
Eighteen Plianas of, 61; balagey
Saletore, B. A., 367, 373
and edagey, 174, in classical
poetry, 175; self-organized, 176; Saliyar, 250
and assimilation of new peoples, Saluva Narasimha, 395, 401
Sambandar, 80
176, 182-3, 206; and idangai, 176
(in Tamil country), 248; coloni¬ Sawpraddya, 185, 230
zation of, 177, 204; as a corporate Samudragupta, 41, 48
institution, 177; conflictful rela¬ Sankaracharya, 337
tions between, 177; and Chola Sahkarappadiyar, 249, 250
inscriptions regarding, 179, 181; Sangam, 33, 34
530 Index

Sangam era, see Classical times hierarchial power structure in,

Sankarappadi, 156, 162 272; administrative staff of, 273;
Sankarappadiyar, 198 conception of, 274; ritual
Sanskrit: language and ideas, 51 ; incorporation of, 276; and fragile
institutions of, and non-Brahman character of medieval Indian
learning, 52; inscriptions, 65; states, 281; and Tamil plain, 305;
knowledge, 240; ghatikas and and Tondaimandalam, 305; as an
salais, 345, 346 inferred structure, 321
Sanskritization, process of, 66 Sendamangalam, 235
Santana, 236 Sethupati, 302
Santanamudlaiyars, 239 setti, 103
Sapta-matrikas, 238 ‘Seven Mothers’, 238
Sarma, P. Sree Rama, 373n., 374n., Sewell, Robert, 366
394 Shanmugam, S. V., 422n.
Sastri, Krishna, 190, 249 Share (pangu) rights, 137
Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, 66n., 77, Shiyali Taluk, 38
98, 106, 111, 112, 113, 147, 165, Siddhesvaramatha, 44
166, 170, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, Simhavishnu, 63
196, 229, 245, 253, 255, 256, 260, Singer, Milton, 470n.
263, 276, 367, 369, 372, 373, 374, Sirkar, D. C., 353, 374, 376, 377
380, 406, 419, 421, 443, 466, 467; Sitaraman, B., 260, 262
centralist-bureaucratic bias of, Sivaji, 392
^ 283 Sivalinga, 337
Satapatha Brdhmana, 387 Sivaramamurti, C., 338
Satakam, 444, 445-8 Smriti, 259
Satavahanas, 31, 37 Sonnerat, Pierre, 471
Sattanur, 158, 162 South Arcot, 176, ? 16, 236
Sattra, 280 South India, 32-4; physical elements
Segmentary state, 3, 8,21, 22, 23, of, 35-7, 41-4; political, cultural,
44, 63, 274, 280, 282, 362, 366, and social elements of, 44-62,
367; pyramidal segmentation of, 64; macro region of, 48, 49,
21; ‘ritual sovereignty’ of, 35, 366; fragmented character of,
46, 273; dharmic kingship in, 173; South Indian Caste
45; and chieftains, 45; massing Association in, 180; social status
of localities in, 90; characteristics of non-Brahmans in, 207; seg¬
of, 265; ritual hegemony in, 266; mentary society in, 223; and
dual territorial sovereignty in, temples, 246; progressive urbani¬
266, 268; nadus in, 270; opposing zation in, 479
elements of, 271; tnuvendavelar South Indian macro region, 48, 49,
in, 271; transformation of, 271; 54, 55, 173, 366
central and peripheral relation¬ Southall, Aidan, 23, 265, 321, 340
ship in, 272; distinction bet¬ Spate, O. H. K., 33
ween pyramidal structure and Spencer, W. George, 41n., 164, 338
 Index 531
s

Srem, see Guilds Tamil inscriptions, 4, 34, 65

Sri Lanka, 38, 39, 40, 188 Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, 78
Srikakulam, 44 Tamilaham, 107 ,
Srinivasachari, C. S., 186, 472 Tanivur, 152, 170
Srirangam, 81, 233, 239, 487 Tanjavur, 27, 37, 40, 46, 50, 54.
Srivaishnavas, 85 236, 241, 249, 258, 341
Srivijaya, 40 Tankura, 152, 170
Srivilliputtur, 171 Tanks, 24-5
Stein, Burton, 429 Tattanur, 359
Stone inscriptions, 132 Taylor, William, 391
Subbarayalu, Y., 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, Technology, 24
97, 98, 99, 123, 419. Telikii 200, 248
Subramaniam, T.N., 124, 253, 345, Telingana, 58-9; Kakatiya kingdom
346, 348, 355, 356 of, 59
Subramanian, N., 209, 240n. Temples, 46, 229, 252, 455; and
Suchindram, 161, 247 locality authorities, 229; Hindu,
Sudra, 85, 212, 233 231; aniconic propensities of,
Sundaram, K., 248 232; early Chola, 232; Brah-
Supra-local assemblies, 216-41; manical, 233; and Sudras and
their functions, 217-23; and non-Brahman leaders, 233; and
itinerant merchant groups, 223, supralocal assemblies, 234; for
228; resources of, 225; as chief female deity, 237-8; urban
supporters of temples, 226, 234; characteristics of, 243; Vedic, 244;
and cultural development, 229-41; Brihadesvara, 245, 337; architec¬
their support to Brahman institu¬ tural changes and enlargement of,
tions, 230 in Chola period, 244-8; and urban
Suresh, B., 102, 103, 114, 115 settlements, 246; and urban popu¬
lation, 246; and urbanization, 248;
Tagadur, 320 and worship of Vedic Shiva, 323;
Tambraparni, 36 and aniconic form of worship,
Tamil, 88; plain, 33, 34, 323; funerary, 335; strategic con¬
305; poetry, 33, 88; civilization, siderations for site of, 334; Bri¬
35; classical works, 55; five-fold hadesvara siva/inga in, 337; and
division of ancient speakers, 56; pallippadai or samadhi shrine,
literature, chronology of, 56; 337; and the sacred Ganga, 341;
country, 57; speakers, poetic situ¬ and moral order in South Indian
ations of, 100; Sanskrit sutra of society, 454; analytical informa¬
raurava agama into, 231; hymns, tion about, 20-35; temples of
232; as a vehicle of teaching, Tamilnadu, 456-63 (tables); of
235 Aditya I, 364; of devi worship,
Tamil country, 57; and zone of 465
Telugu speakers, 394; and Vijaya- Tenali, 27
nagara leadership, 396, 400 Territorial segmentation, 71, 74, 99,
532 Index
102, 104; and marriage and kin¬ Town-life, 241-2; rise of, during
ship networks, 101; tripartite divi¬ 12th Cent, 250; and trade, 252
sions of, 103 Tribhuvani, 158, 230, 345
Tevaram, 81 Tribhuvanam, 246
Thomas, P., 337 Tripurantaka, 338
Thorner, Daniel. 14 Tungabhadra, R.. 316, 367, 381
Three kingships mu-vendar, 45 Turner, Victor, 203n.
Tinai, 55, 100 UJavars, 71, 74
Tiruchchattimurram, 236 Umapathi, 235
Tiruchchengattangudi. 236 Ur, 82, 121, 166, 282
Tiruchirapalli, 233 Urar, 144
Tirukkalukkunram, 247 Urban milieu, 241-53; also see
Tirukamakottanu 238 Town-life
Tirukkoyilur, 187. 220, 234. 486 Urban-rural dichotomy, 6
Tirumangai. 81 Urrattur, 182, 184. 202, 204
Tirumalai, 246, 247 Uttaramerur, 146, 147, 149, 150.
Tirumukkudal. 345 153, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163,
Tirunavukkarasar, 236 165, 168,
Tirupati. 246. 395, 428 Uyyakondan-Udaiyar. 197
Tiruppalatturai, 236
Tiruvanaikkaval, 246 Vadavanpatti, 258
Tiruvannamalai. 486 Vadugan, 50, 189, 395
Tiruvidaimarudur, 236 Vaigai, 36
Tiruvadutturai, 158, 230. 263. 345 Vaikdnasa, 121, 157. 21 I. 238
Tiruvalangadu, 161, 162 Valanadu, 306
Tiruvalangadu Plates of Rajendra Valarpuram, 235
Chola I, 122. 132, 354, 360, 362 Vaishnava Sampradaya, Sri, 211
Tiruvallam, 188 Vaishnavites, 78, 79
Tiruvanaikkaval. 237 Vaishnavism, 233
Tirutturaipundi, 237 Valangai-idahgai, see Right-hand
Tiruvenkadu. 188 and left-hand divisions of castes
Tiruvorriyur, 230, 247, 342 Valahgai velaikkara. 124
Titles (administrative), 111-14, 117 Vanniyar. 445
Tolkappiyam, 107 Varahanadi, 97
Tondanur, 122 Varanjuram. 183, 187, 204. 222
Tondaimandalam. 82, 88, 91, 92, Variyanu 146, 166. 168
109, 125* 127, 137, 161, 171. 188, Varna. 70, 103
191, 193, 204, 214. 216, 268, 295, Velaikkdrar, 189-90. 209, 214
307, 309, 319, 394, 447, 487; Vellalas. 50, 84, 85. 103, 131. 187,
Jayarigondacholamandalam, 125; 188, 199, 213, 224, 231, 235, 236,
as a ‘48,000 country', 127, 129; 239, 304, 448-9, 487; ol Tondai¬
and peasant settlements, 210; mandalam. 237. 417; of Choliyar.
chiefs of, 297 417
 Index 533

V el Ians, 250 481; diversity of people in, 393;

Vellan-vagai, 123 Telugu speakers and warriors in
Veliaru, 93, 97, 304 Tamil country, 394-6, 406-15;
Vembarur, 174 military components and organi¬
Venadu, 45, 58, 351 zation in, 396-405; temples and
Vengadam Hiils, 107 fortresses in, 404-5; land system
Vengi, 59, 200, 393 and tenurial forms in, 415-39;
Vengur, 187 ‘village’ in, 417, 419, 420; temples
Vennir Vellala, 350 and irrigation in, 427-8; temples
Venkayya, V., 190, 214 and sects in, 432; 439-41; trans¬
Venkataramanayya, N., 367, 373, formation of nadu leadership into
375, 376, 378, 379, 409, 410, 411 chiefs in, 443; and mandalam,
Vettiperu, 231 444-5; and satakam. 444-8; and
Vidyaranya, 411 Kapus, 449; temples and society
Vijayamangalam, 235 in, 455-6; devi worship in, 465;
Vijayanagara State and society: Shiva and Amma shrines in, com¬
nature of political system, 366, pared, 465-6; mathas in, 466-7;
367, 380-1, 396-7, 409, 414; and Vaishnavism in, 468; Right and
new elements in Tamil society, left-hand division of castes in,
366; comparisons and contrasts 469-87; urbanization in, 481; and
with Chola society, 367-9; nature royal intervention, 485, 488
of kingship, 367, 383-4, 386-91; Vira Saivite, 60, 235, 240
and religious institutions, 367-8; Virarajendra Chola, 322, 355
migration and military conquests, Virapratapa, 485
368, 380-2, 395; martial charac¬ Visavadi, 436
ter of, 369, 370, 383, 400-401; Vishakapatnam, 43
and ‘feudalism’, 369, 374-9; and Vishayattar, 220, 227
nayankdra system, 369-71, 376, Vokkaligas, 131, 319, 448, 449
394, 397-400, 405-10, 415, 433, Vriddhachalam, 486
440-1, 442-3; viewed as military Vyaparin, 198, 250
state, 370, 372, 400; political
and military roles of Brahmans Warriors, 12
in, 370-1, 410-14, 441-2; political Warriors of South India; peasant
systems of, 371-405; and Deccan origin of, 71; Telugu, 87
Muslim power, 372; founding dy¬ ‘Western ghats, 36
nasty and. origin of, 373-4; ex¬ Wodeyars of Mysore, 392
pansion of V. overlordship, 380-
2, 394; expansion of, 382; festi¬ Yadavas, 59
vals in, 384-90; Muslim contin¬ Yajnavalkyasmriti, 101, 353
gents in V. army, 392, 400, 402-3; Yajur Veda, 5, 352
and dharmic ideology, 392, 400, Yudhisthira, 387
DATE DUE
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Stein, Burton, 1926- 010101 000
Peasant state, and society in

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0011!54S 4
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OS484.65 'S7^926-80
Stein, Burt0"’ e, and society

in^medieval South ^gg^g

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