Question. Describe the political and agrarian structure of the Chola State in South India.
Ans. A society is to be judged or understood not only by the image its dominant or ordinary members form of themselves. Finding out how beliefs and perceptions are formed is far more relevant to the understanding of historical processes. There has been a strong debate between Indian and European historians on whether the Chola dynasty’s rule can be described as that of a ‘segmentary state’. In a segmentary state the core area has a central Kingship and the peripheral areas are ruled by various local institutions. The Chola administration (ninth-thirteenth centuries) grew on the foundations set up by the Pallava dynasty (sixth – ninth centuries).Developments that originated in the Pallava period such as land grants and communal rituals at temples came to fruition during the subsequent reigns of the Chola Kings where many areas of Tamil Nadu experienced the growth of urban centers around temples. To understand the Chola Polity, one first needs to assess the agrarian system in South India at that period of time.
According to Burton Stein, the agrarian system during the ninth century determined the social structure of South India. Political, economic and social institutions were related to and integrated with the control of the basic resource – land. Irrigated agriculture, based on tank or reservoir storage and riverine sources was the dominant and stable system of cultivation. Bullock drawn, shallow cutting plows were utilized in most areas. The standard grain crops were rice, barley and millets. As in any developing agrarian system, the clearing of forest was one of the standard methods of expansion. The integration of the agrarian system during the Pallava-Chola period was based upon the control of small territories by well established villages dominated mostly by Sat-Sudras and Brahmans who had emigrated to the south. These small territories were large in number and were scattered across a varied ecosystem. Burton Stein prefers to call them ‘nuclear areas of corporate institutions’ since they represented the most advanced levels of early south Indian life. These nuclear areas existed in the drainage basins of major rivers or in areas which ensured regular production of surplus food. These areas were integrated through two institutions: the brahmadeya or Brahman controlled circle of villages and the periyanadu or Sat-Sudra controlled extended locality.
The Brahmadeya was a mode of agrarian integration in which several existing settlements were brought together under the management of a group of Brahmans. These Brahmans made all decisions about the utilization of resources within this area and became the major beneficiaries of the productivity of the land. The Periyanadu or the ‘great country assembly’ encompassed the whole nuclear area, including the Brahmadeya. It was a legislative body directed and dominated by the Sat-Sudras, the top ranking caste group in that area. These assemblies functioned on the same lines as that of the Brahmadeya and merchant guilds. Inscriptions and literary sources for these assemblies are not enough which is why its method of composition still lies in ambiguity. Both institutions stressed on the importance of temple donations and grant of funds to temple officials. The periyanadu assembly fixed rates at which different groups within a territory were to support a given temple and laid their order on a stone inscription.
Cholamandalam in the Cauvery basin and Tondaimandalam in the Carnatic were most densely occupied by nuclear area institutions. The other two territories with lesser occupation density were Kongumandalam and Pandyamandalam in the southern portion of the peninsula. The above areas find mention in the Pallava and Chola inscriptions. The names of territories during the Chola rule were subject to frequent changes owing to new kings, conquests and brahmadeyas. Terms for territorial units, nadu, valanadu or kottam would be changed one or more times during the same reign. The nuclear areas were fundamentally independent and self governing. The institutions that controlled them performed functions such as organizing labour, adjudicating conflicts and providing protection through warriors from forest raiders. The warriors of the nuclear areas were of two sorts: high caste warriors of peasant, merchant and artisan groups and those of low caste origin divided into right hand (valangi) and left hand (idangi) castes. These warriors made looting expeditions to other regions which in turn provided wealth to the rulers and the society. Burton Stein argues that the expeditions of the Chola rulers were undertaken with the sole aim of gaining wealth and not territory. Trade was carried out between nuclear areas by the itinerant merchant associations like the Ayyavole body in which salt, iron and a few other items were exchanged. In social and cultural terms, nuclear areas were seen to be as centers of Hindusim since caste rules defined social relationships. Brahmans and Sat-Sudras were branches of the Vellala caste, the most important agricultural group. The lower castes were divided into the left hand caste (occupations associated with agriculture) and the right hand caste (occupations associated with art and husbandry). Ultimately these areas can be defined as regions of settled village agriculture whose boundaries were forest and uplands. Now that the agrarian system is understood, we can delve into the political structure of the Chola State.
The earlier approach of Nilkanta Sastri and others portrayed a royal administration that reached down to the village level through bureaucratic offices and their military and fiscal functionaries. The more recent model proposed by Stein is that of a multi-centered system of in which the king and the local institutions shared power. The debate has depended on the definition of royal activity and a variety of honorific terms attached to actors performing various functions.
Inscriptional references on the behavior of the king and the royal family fall into six major categories: a) Tirumukam, literally the ‘holy state’ was a direct royal order pronounced by the king while he sat in state. b) Vinnappam was a request made by a donor for a royal order permitting the donation of land or taxes to a religious institution. This indicated the involvement of the king in the affairs of the local communities. c) Huge donations were made by the queen and wives of princes of the royal family. These included precious metals and help for the construction of stone temples for worshipping deities during brahmanical sacrifices. d) Gifts given by the king such as stone temples and ornaments were mostly on a large scale. The sources of the royal funds for donation were taxable income (antarayam) and royal property (kani). e) The king took the position of the highest court of justice while sometimes settling disputes. The cases were mostly land disputes, defrauding of temples and law and order problems. Sometimes, even incentives were given to cultivators of temple lands in the form of tax recess. f) Donations were made to the royal family by individuals as a sign of loyalty towards the ruler. A donation of lands finds mention in the inscriptions, which was made to support a seven day festival for the benefit of Kulottunga III. These donations highlight the direct impact of the Chola lineage on the consciousness of the local people. The Chola kings and their relatives appear in only 200 out of 2400 inscriptions found in prominent areas.
Royal participation was seen in the form of setting up temples, investigating disputes and rearranging land holding and tax burdens. Since these functions only required temporary interference by the king, his constant presence was not required. This suggests that the normal stance of the ruler was to keep a distance from the local affairs and interfere only when stability became necessary. Gradually, a change in royal activities from donations to royal orders was seen during the Chola rule. Temples and religious rituals came to be seen as core sites which the rulers used to legitimize their position. Stein argues the emergence of the concept of ‘ritual kingship’ which refers to a system where the performance of rituals was used as a platform to enforce authority and demand loyalty. The kings attempted to establish templates of ritualized integration through grants to religious institutions that would provide models for political legitimacy with the king at the top. Temple lands at Vadakadu, Tirukkoyilur and Tiruvidaimarudur give a clear understanding of the kind of development achieved. Temples in central Tamil Nadu grew from small bodies into larger ritual centers coinciding with a ‘temple urbanism’ focused within adjacent settlements. During the centuries after the year 1000 A.D, secular donors, Brahmans and the kings added to the growing network of temple administration and land control by giving more gifts of land in places within the temple villages and in temple estates. In the central Cauvery river delta, the load of donations created a complex of temples with extensive landholdings in a large number of villages. Brahmans acted as administrative staff working in the name of God. They took responsibility for the expansion of temple incomes through the development of peripheral land grants into irrigated rice lands that yielded reliable income for temple rituals. Brahmans thus came to dominate the local economy as seen in Vadakadu region. Temple urbanism in turn led to the growth of commercial activities and trade. The growth of ritual endowments also stimulated artisanal activity. Since the rituals demanded elaborate offerings of foodstuff and precious goods it led to division and specialization of labour.
Landholdings were maintained by group on a variety of tenurial arrangements based on rights and orders issued by the king. At Vadakadu, the temple’s land was tax free by which it could maintain a huge surplus. The habitations in the villages were set on a pattern corresponding to divisions in occupation and caste. The holy street (tiruviti) surrounded the temple on all four sides with subsidiary roads linking the whole neighbourhood with nearby villages and bodies of water. Gardens, tanks and cultivable fields were contiguous with the housing blocks. At Tiruvidaimarudur, cultivated areas existed adjacent to the temple and palace grounds. Separate from these neighbourhoods lived the labour population required essentially for routine production processes. The arrangements for the support of expanding temple personnel preserved an agrarian economy in the heart of multiplying neighbourhoods. According to Hilton, this semi-village, semi-town pattern was typical of the early phases of urbanization in contemporary Western Europe as well. The ‘urban’ character of these large settlements rested on the integration of individual settlements grouped around ritual centres. Through irrigation facilities, these religious institutions took upon themselves the task of capital formation for agrarian expansion. The Chola kings assisted in this process by giving tax relief and sanctioning donations of peripheral lands to Brahmadeyas which in turn made the cultivators do all the work.
On comparing the Chola period of urbanization with other civilizations, one discovers that the former was largely independent and experienced indigenous developments which were quite new in south India. The Chola administration saw the growth of temple endowments with time and also experienced a growth in social stratification and conflict within the commercial and artisan communities.
The Chola sites were characterized by monumental architecture, agrarian surplus, occupational specialization, trade and religious institutions – which classified them more or less as cities according to Childe’s theory. The decentralized, segmentary nature of the Chola State found parallels in the Maya civilizations ceremonial centres.
The theory of the segmentary state put forward by Stein is strongly contested by Kesavan Veluthat in ‘The Role of Nadu in the Socio-Political Structure of South India (c. AD 600-1200)’. Veluthat begins his argument by stating that the Nadu and not a village was the most important factor in the socio-political structure of south India under the Pandyas, Pallavas and Cholas. He defines a nadu as a corporate grouping of vellanvagai villages (agrarian settlements) brought together spontaneously by landed interests. The body which represented the nadu and which carried out royal orders is termed as nattar, a sort of a territorial assembly which functioned in the territorial unit known as nadu. The nattar comprised representatives of each village or of the most influential residents of the unit. The nattar performed various governmental functions such as delimiting boundaries of land grants, resettling the occupants and implementing the gratns in other ways. The evidence for this is found in inscriptional references to the governmental functions of the nattar in the area of Pudukkottai and Tirukkoyilur during the rule of the Chola King. Thus Kesavan Velluthat refers to them as the local expression of the Royal government. He argues that Stein contradicts his own arguments and accuses him of having an ‘orientalist assumption of an unchanging India’. Stein states that according to the Sangam literature that the basic structure of the nadu has not changed from the ancient to the medieval times. Unlike Stein, Veluthat states that the nadus were evolutionary in character and that their number and character changed over centuries. Burton Stein further states that the name of the nadu was based on a village which was its earliest settlement and was its inner core which attracted subordinate settlements around it and thus wielded together a peasant territory. However Veluthat argues the opposite by saying that there was nothing special about the village whose name was chosen and that there was no centre or headquarters of the nadu. He refuses to accept Stein’s argument that only conquests can lead to social change and asserts that social changes are determined mostly by developments in the means and relations of production.
Stein makes a distinction between three types of nadus – the central, the intermediate and the periphery. The distinction is based on the fertility of the land, political hierarchy and social differentiation in different territorial units. However, Veluthat argues that these distinctions are not supported by any evidence and is based on mere speculation. Veluthat’s underlying argument is that although the village (ur) was the smallest peasant community, all major decisions were taken by the nadu. These groups were recognized by the rulers of south India as it agents to carry out royal writs such as assessment of revenue and settlement of land.
Kesuvan Vekuthat’s arguments though quite strong are extreme in nature which is why the Chola State is largely believed to be segmentary in nature. Through ritual kingship and a strong bureaucracy such as the administrator (adhikari), military commander (senapati) and arbitrator (natuvirukkai), the Chola dynasty increased its stronghold in southern India. The revenue required for administering the state was attained through various taxes such as land taxes in money and kind, provisions for officials and commercial or occupational cesses. Thus the process which started with settlements around temples gradually developed into a complex political system.
Bibliography
- Burton Stein – Integration of Agrarian Systems in India
- R S Sharma – The Segmentary State and the Indian Experience
- Kesavan Veluthat – The Role of Nadu in the Socio-Political Structure of South India
- James Heitznan- Gifts of power