temple urbanism in medieval south india

Temple Urbanism in Medieval South IndiaAuthor(s): James HeitzmanSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 791-826Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057102Accessed: 24/04/2010 02:59

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VOL. 46, No. 4 THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES NOVEMBER 1987

Temple Urbanism in Medieval South India

JAMES HEITZMAN

the Tamil country of South India experienced a flowering of political, economic, and cultural forces during the Chola period (849-1279). The environments sup-

porting this expansion were nucleated settlements focused on temples, surrounded by verdant paddy fields with artificial irrigation networks. This article is a study of the sacred sites and nucleated settlements that were the heart of this medieval civilization. The purposes of the study are two: first, to portray the dynamics of early urbanism during a crucial period of regional integration in South Asia, and especially to portray the geography of early centers; second, to provide the basis for a comparative study of early South Indian urbanism and premodern urbanism in other world areas.

The examination of South Indian data concentrates on four major questions: (1) What did early centers look like in terms of settlement areas, monumental structures, and relationships with land or water resources? (2) What were the processes that caused small settlements to evolve into more complex social environments that exhibited the traits associated with cities? In particular, this article explores the evolution of ceremonial sites as central mediating institutions for growing complexity. (3) Who were the actors responsible for the processes of urbanization? (4) To what extent did urban sites perform central-place functions for their hinterlands?

Urbanism and Political Economy in Early South India

Premodern urban development in South Asia passed through three stages. The Indus Valley Civilization, flourishing c. 2300-1700 B.C., has left a large number of sites that provide clues for the early evolution of village farming communities into central places within a commercial nexus and, perhaps, into systems of centralized administration. The end of this formative period in the northwest of the subcontinent resulted in the disruption of larger habitation areas and the artifactual characteristics that signaled centralized agencies, along with the commercial networking that may have supported elite consumption. The extent to which cultural and settlement patterns survived the decline of the Indus Valley cities is still debated, but it appears that subsequent urban developments in North India were fundamentally new phe- nomena (Wheeler 1968; Fairservis 1975:217-311; Possehl 1979). The second phase

James Heitzman is a South Asia research an- alyst at the Library of Congress.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago in May 1986. The author wishes to thank David Ludden for his comments

on earlier drafts of this paper. The text of this article is relatively free of dia-

critical marks. Only the first three occurrences of a Tamil or Sanskrit term appear with diacritics and in italicized form. For diacritics on place names, see the maps.

791

792 JAMES HEITZMAN

of urbanism in North India, beginning in the early first millennium B.C., originated in political and economic integration focused on the Ganga River but involving northwest and central India as well (Ghosh 1973; Thakur 1981; Thapar 1984:90-110). The familiar combinations of long-distance trade, political centralization, and ritual integration (through Buddhist institutions) marked the emergence of central places, some of which exhibited fortifications that support textual references to increased militarism (Erdosy 1985:91-98). The height of this second urban revolution occurred in the period 250 B.C.-A.D. 300, with the explosion of a North Indian political, commercial, and cultural complex throughout South Asia and into Southeast and Central Asia as well (Thapar 1966:70-135; Heitzman 1984; Bagchi 1955; Liu 1985). After c. 400 the force of ancient urbanism was spent in South Asia, for both literary and archaeological data point to a decline in the number and centrality of cities (Sharma 1972; Sharma 1983:145-56, 232; 1985). In North India, central places reemerged in the form of primarily ritual sites (e.g., Khajuraho) under the last major Hindu rulers, but urban settlement patterns with commercial and administrative connections entered a third-phase growth only under the aegis of Turkic rulers in Delhi in c. 1200 (The Cambridge Economic History of India 1982:46-47, 82-86).

The far south of India participated in the ancient urban revolution. Early cities such as Madurai, Kanchipuram, and Pumpuhar were centers of the typical ancient Indian combination of long-distance trade (especially with the Mediterranean world) and political unification under early kingdoms (Cholas and Pandyas).l As in the case of North India, this early flowering faded after about A.D. 400 followed by a period of several hundred years that have yielded few data and seem to have been a time of migrations and disunity (Stein 1980:76-80; Kasinathan 1981). A new type of urban development began under the Pallava dynasty (sixth-ninth centuries), centered especially in the capital city of Kanchipuram. Donative inscriptions at major temples in the capital indicate that religious institutions, especially temples, lay spatially and conceptually at the heart of growing political and commercial networks (Minakshi 1977:206-16, 349-56; Stein 1980:80-89; Hall and Spencer 1980:127-38). The developments originating in the Pallava period came to fruition during the subsequent reigns of the Chola kings, when many areas of medieval Tamil Nadu experienced the growth of small urban sites around temples.

The Chola kings, based in the fertile Kaveri River delta, united all of Tamil Nadu under their rule and expanded their political influence over peninsular India, Sri Lanka, and even Southeast Asia (see Nilakantha Sastri 1955; Pandarathar 1958- 61; Spencer 1983). Although earlier scholars tended to stress the centralized, bu- reaucratic aspects of the Chola empire (Nilakantha Sastri 1955:451; Krishnaswami Aiyangar 1931:250-73, 331, 375-77; cf. Stein 1975:65-69; Stein 1980:254-64), more recent research has concentrated on the ritual integration achieved by the overlords of a "segmentary" state. According to the latter approach, the kings engaged in ostentatious gift giving to religious institutions, posing as chief devotees within an encompassing royal cult that attempted to integrate more localized religious forms (Stein 1977; Stein 1980:134-40, 173-82, 270-72; Stein 1985a:74-80; Stein 1985b; Suresh 1965; Suresh 1968:437-50). Loyalty to the Chola overlords, and the mani- festation of more parochial authority, depended on displays of piety through religious

' The urban character and economic importance of Pumpuhar and Madurai appear in Dan- ielou (1969:8-22, 94-98) and the Maturaikkd,nci, summarized in Kanakasabhai ([19041 1956:133- 37). For early Kanchipuram, see Indian Archaeol-

ogy-A Review (1969-70:34-35; 1970-71: 32- 33; 1971-72: 42-43). Trade associations are described in Nilakantha Sastri (1958:133-37); Wheeler (1971:137-49).

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA 793

gift giving. In this way the unification of the Cholas spread throughout Tamil Nadu a political system in which religious donations were a means toward political integration and the establishment of local power.2 Growing temple endowments served as foci for commercial transactions and agrarian development as well, spreading to wider areas a political and economic integration begun under the Pallava kings (Stein 1960; Hall and Spencer 1980:140-45; Hall 1984).

Corporate groups were typically responsible for decision making at the local level during the Chola period. The largest of these groups were the ndttdr, or assemblies of dignitaries from the nddu, a grouping of a number of villages within a common agrarian zone based often on common irrigation facilities. The ndttdr were local power- holders responsible for administrative decisions or even for tax collection (Subbarayalu 1973:19-49; Subbarayalu 1982:273-74, 298-99; Stein 1980:90-109, 118-26; Stein 1985a:61-64). Paralleling the ndttdr, who relied on their control over the dominant agrarian system, were extended systems of interregional trade carried on by itinerant merchants. Local contacts for these merchants existed in mercantile neighborhoods (nagaram) within at least one village of each nddu (Appadorai 1936:378-402; Hall 1980:51-70, 124-30). The assemblies of merchants (nagarattdr) usually existed alongside assemblies of cultivating groups (i7rdr) and assemblies of brahmanas (sabhai), the latter possessing grants of tax-free land bestowed by kings and other pious donors. All these groups met in separate assemblies to decide matters of local importance. Leading cultivating groups probably dominated most villages, governing through meetings of the hurdr. In the neighborhood of growing temples, the assemblies of all the corporate groups might meet together to decide matters relating to temple donations and temple worship (Nilakantha Sastri 1955: 486-515; Mahalingam 1954:345-79; Hall 1980:19-50). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the Chola empire declined, these assemblies appeared less often in surviving documents, a change perhaps caused by their integration within multi-ncidu assemblies (citrameli periya ndttdr) or by the growing power of individual property owners (Stein 1980:216-35; Karashima 1984:4-35; Heitzman 1985b). The various corporate groups, important individual men, and the Chola kings were the main agents within the burgeoning central places, and their changing relationships to each other and to the temples set the direction of temple urbanism.

The primary historical sources for the Chola period are vast numbers of inscriptions engraved on the stone walls of temple structures recording donations of land, money, agrarian produce, and animals to fund temple rituals for the benefit of their donors. The inscriptions describing rights of land are of greatest interest here, for they are rich mines of geographical data. The standard inscriptional procedure for describing donated lands was to refer to bounding landmarks in each of the cardinal directions. References to each piece of donated land usually describe at least four other lands or prominent landmarks in its vicinity. Often the boundaries include permanent physical features such as hills and rivers or relatively stable man-made features such as temples or village habitation sites. A substantial percentage of the boundaries are irrigation facilities including rivers, lakes, and canals, which probably changed very little during the last thousand years. When several donated lands share one or more bounding landmarks, it becomes possible to link them in a rough relation to each other; when a number of lands are so linked and when landmarks correspond to known modern

2 See the similar formulation of Geertz (1980). For the Vijayanagara period (fourteenth- sixteenth centuries) in South India, see Raghotham

(1983). For medieval Orissa, see Kulke (1979:17- 19, 26, 40, 65-67, 223-29).

794 JAMES HEITZMAN

geography, fairly extensive areas of medieval terrain come to light. In some places the number of lands with boundaries in surviving temple inscriptions becomes large enough and mutual linkages among the lands are complete enough to allow a fairly accurate reconstruction of medieval topography and landholding patterns.'

This article presents three examples from central Tamil Nadu that provide a body of Chola-period land donations containing information adequate for the portrayal and analysis of local geography and temple landholding networks. The three sites are the small village of Vadakadu in Tirutturaippundi taluk, Tirukkoyilur, a modern taluk headquarters, and a group of four temples around Tiruvidaimarudur near the Kaveri River (see Map 1). The three sites progress in size from the single village through an important district center to a multi-centered complex in the heart of the Kaveri River delta. Differences in size allow the study of differences in the strategies employed to support temple deities. The unveiling of these varying strategies reveals, amid the natural peculiarities of each site, a developmental pattern connecting temples with the expansion of South Indian urbanism and the agrarian economy.

Temple Lands at Vadakadu: The Frontiers of Cultivation

The village of Vadakadu4 lies in the southwest corner of Tirutturaippundi taluk, about two kilometers north of the town of Muthupet and about eleven kilometers north of the ocean. The place is somewhat isolated from the modern urbanization that has affected nearby Muthupet and Tirutturaippundi towns. Although the village site of Vadakadu occupies a fairly extensive area, there are no large-scale constructions there, and the house sites stand in clusters separated by open ground, gardens, or small tanks of water. The main buildings in the village are in the Siva temple of Mantrapuresvara Swamy, which has yielded a number of later Chola inscriptions. The temple compound (about 250 x 150 meters) mirrors the layout of the village as a whole, for it is generally devoid of structures aside from the inner courtyards at its western end. The village (population 1,209 in 1971) projects a spacious and quiet atmosphere.

The agricultural economy around Vadakadu has always depended on irrigation water coming from local rivers that originally receive the runoff from the Kaveri River through major canals. A great deal of effort has been expended recently in Tirut- turaippundi taluk to strengthen and extend the irrigation canals feeding local villages, but in times of drought these places, at the tail end of the system, still suffer from a shortage of irrigation water. Around Vadakadu the main water source is the Bamiyan River, which heads to the south here; it supplies water to smaller canals and storage tanks on both its banks. East of the Bamiyan River lie Vadakadu, mostly supplied through the modern Kandappirichchan River and subsidiary channels, and East Nam- mankurichchi, supplied through channels paralleling the Bamiyan River. Presently all cultivable lands in these and in surrounding villages are divided into fields serviced through the local irrigation system stemming originally from the Bamiyan River.

3 My research methodology entailed preliminary readings of all inscriptions from each study site, fieldwork in the study sites interviewing long- time inhabitants and local accountants, and a com- parison of field notes with detailed revenue survey maps of study sites. Survey maps of the revenue villages in Tamil Nadu were available through the Revenue Department in Madras. Hara and Ko-

moguchi (1981) and Bohle (1981) have used these maps extensively in their studies of several modern villages in Tamil Nadu. I have used one-inch survey maps for the section on Tiruvidaimarudur.

4 This place is also known as Koyilur, or by the combinative form Vadakadukoyilur. The 1932 survey maps show the name as Kovilkadu.


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Map 1. Urban Sites of Early South India Mentioned in the Text NOTE: The inset map shows the boundaries of modern Tamil Nadu.

796 JAMES HEITZMAN

The Mantrapuresvara Swamy temple has long been, and remains, a landowning institution in the area around Vadakadu. The temple owns 90 percent of the lands in Vadakadu and substantial lands in Nammankurichchi and all other bounding villages. Formerly the temple possessed extensive holdings in more distant locations, but during the last hundred years much of that land has been alienated.5

Thirteen detailed inscriptions6 from the temple describe the initial stages of temple land control around Vadakadu. The earliest record dates from 1123 and presup- poses an already viable agricultural community called Cattanam, also known as Ke- ralakulacani caturvedimankalam.' This brahmana endowment, in existence at least since the latter part of the eleventh century,8 had enjoyed some measure of tax-free status. The medieval locations of house sites and the temple in Cattanam were basically the same as the modern locations. West of the village site lay agricultural fields called Vikkiramacolanallur, probably including some lands of brahmanas and definitely including, in the southern sections, lands allocated for village service personnel such as carpenters (taccar) and goldsmiths (tattdn; TK 181, 198). West of Vikkiramaco- lanallur lay the hamlet (pitdkai) of Nampankuricci. The earliest inscription describes the exclusion of brahmanas from the enjoyment of Cattanam and the grouping of Cattanam and Vikkiramacolanallur into one "gift for the god" (devadinam) owned by the Siva temple. This act created the core of extensive local temple lands (see Map 2, no. 1).

The next series of important additions to temple lands occurred approximately one hundred years later, when substantial portions of Nampankuricci were transferred to the temple (Map 2, nos. 15-28). Here prominent local notables partially alienated their own private lands. Leading in this movement was a group of chiefs calling themselves Coliyavaraiyan. The first donation by a member of this group occurred when Piccan pallavarayan, also known as Colavaraiyan, from Paiyyur in Paiyyur nadu, gave over four me of land around Cattanam village.9 Irajakampira Coliyavaraiyan, also known as Cokkanayan, later met with temple officials and issued an order (olai) creating a new endowment for rituals and allocating lands (ARE 1908:203). Later,

5 Informants at Vadakadu, including T. Mu- rugesa Desikar and A. Margamurti Ayyar, with whom I spoke in July 1982, said that large blocks of temple land in other villages were sold during the twentieth century to a member of a Muslim mercantile community. Many thanks to S. Raja- gopal, who visited Vadakadu with me in 1982 and revisited the site in 1984 to gather further details and maps. Special thanks also to N. Sethuraman, who provided valuable logistical help during our first visit to Vadakadu.

6 TK 181, 182, 183 (= TK 209), 196, 198; ARE 1908:203 (= TK 211), 205 (= TK 213), 209 (= TK 217), 210 (= TK 218), 211 (= TK 219), 213 (= TK 221), 215 (= TK 223), 216 (= TK 224).

7 TK 181. The term caturvedimangalam, or "auspicious [sitel of the four sacrificial hearths," refers to endowments bestowed on learned brahmanas to support performances of sacred rituals.

8 Epithets of the Chola kings denigrating the Cheras, the conquered overlords of Kerala, appeared in Chola records during the eleventh century when the Cholas achieved control over most of Kerala.

9 ARE 1908:215. Paiyyur nddu did not lie in

the central area of the Chola polity. The honorific title Pallavaraiyan suggests an association with Tondaimandalam in northern Tamil Nadu, where the Pallavas had earlier held sway. Another donation at Vadakadu by a certain Atittatevan from Vellur in Paiyur kottam places the area in Ton- daimandalam (TK 214). A village called Paiyur lies in North Arcot in Arni taluk. A village called Payyur lies in North Arcot in Cheyyar taluk (Kirdmankalin akarra varicaippatti 1972:3,8). See further a Payjyur kottam during the Vijayanagara period in Ponneri taluk, Chingleput district (Palat 1981:526-27).

A m4 was 1/20 veli. The veli was the main unit of measurement for land in the central part of Tamil Nadu during medieval times. When the British first came to power in South India, a standard veli amounted to 6.74 acres (Tamil Lexicon 1982:3838-39). However, varying sizes of medieval measuring rods may have meant regional variations in "standard" units. There are some in- dications that administrations altered the recorded sizes of a veli according to official whims (Subbar- ayalu 1981:97-105). In this article I have attempted to draw land extents approximately to a scale of 6.74 acres per veli.


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798 JAMES HEITZMAN

Vanarayar ("Lord of the Banas"), also known as Coliyavaraiyan, set up a monastery here named after himself (ARE 1908:210, 211). A final record describes Coliyava- raiyan as a "ruler" (vanniyar) here, with a subordinate (akampatiyar) in charge of local security (kdval kuli; ARE 1908:192 C = TK 203,208}). Notables in Nampankuricci transferred property (kdni) there to the temple and defrayed taxes on the donated land by adding them to the taxes due from their remaining landed property. Boundaries of the donated lands in Nampankuricci indicate that these men held much of the land in the north of the village, although members of cultivating castes (ve.l.llar) also continued to own land there. Nampankuricci remained, at least during the time of these donations, a settlement of agriculturalist groups, increasingly dominated in the early thirteenth century by notables who were probably newcomers to the area.

Mercantile communities from several places in the vicinity of Cattanam donated lands and resources for the deity there. The prominence of local commerce, probably based on the exploitation of salt marshes along the coast, appears in the name of the road passing through Cattanam ("the big road of the three hundred," next to no. 6 on Map 2) referring to a pan-regional trading association and in the naming of a trading settlement to the east (Uppur, the "salt village") after the main local article of commercial value. The donations of mercantile communities were instrumental in providing the Cattanam temple with small plots of land in eight exterior villages by the end of the Chola period. 10

Although the early brahmana assembly of Keralakulacani caturvedimankalam was deprived of the official enjoyment of the expanding temple lands, the brahmana families were probably not sent packing but remained in Cattanam with emoluments for ritual duties through the temple. In addition, lands in the immediate vicinity either remained in the hands of brahmanas or came under their control as cultivation expanded. The area north of Nampankuricci was known as Tantinallur (Map 2, nos. 19, 20, 28), probably controlled by brahmanas. The areas north of Cattanam, un- mentioned in earlier records, comprised brahmana lands in the early thirteenth century (Map 2, no. 2; TK 182, 183, 198, 209, 224). The settlement of Kalyanapuran- kontacolanallur, several kilometers to the west, was also a brahmana enclave.11

The boundaries of donated lands provide some insights into the extent of the local irrigation system in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The main irrigation canal was called the Katukali River, which originated at the Akalaka River (the modern Bamiyan River) north of Nampankuricci, flowed south-southeast on the eastern side of Nampankuricci and turned to flow east past the northern side of Cattanam (see TK 181, 182, 183, 198). Branching from this main river were a number of smaller channels, some of which were labeled by numbers (the second through sixth channels appear in the surviving inscriptions; TK 182, 198, 203; ARE 1908:192, 209, 210, 211). The terminal areas of the minor channels were, and still are, the sites of a number of tanks that conserve water for longer periods. The channel system of the Katukali River is the only irrigation network traceable until the later inscriptions of the thirteenth century mention lands and canals north of Cattanam. There

10 Out of eight exterior villages seven may be located with some degree of accuracy. Three seem to have lain in the neighborhood of the temple. One lay about five kilometers to the east. One lay about twelve kilometers to the southwest, on the route of the modern road heading down the coast. Two lay near Tirutturaippundi, about twenty kilometers to the northeast.

" Since the Chola capture of Kalyanapuri (capital of the Western Chalukyas in modern Karna- taka state) took place during the eleventh century, the naming (and perhaps the foundation) of Ka- lyanapurankontacolanallur ("the temple village of the Chola who took Kalyanapuram") probably occurred during that time.


donations by brahmanas bounded irrigation facilities north of Vadakadu corresponding to the modern Kandappirichchan and its extension, known then as the Anaimatai vaykkal and the Patoti vaykkal (Map 2, nos. 2-5). The existence of these main channels indicates that the fields north of Cattanam village were cultivable, probably under brahmana control, in the early thirteenth century.

Several features of these inscriptional references to lands and irrigation facilities suggest that the agrarian economy around Vadakadu was slowly expanding during the Chola period. The earliest land record carefully enumerates the boundaries on the southern and western sides of the original temple land endowment but contains little reference to boundaries on the north and east. The reason for this omission may lie in the relatively undeveloped irrigation system of the twelfth century, when the Katukali River was the central irrigation facility. Cultivable lands clustered around the channels branching off from this river. In Chola land deeds, changes in the ownership of land required the delineation of boundaries in order to separate the lands of different owners. Uncultivated land, without access to the irrigation system, remained the public domain of the village; because the land bordering this public domain impinged on no one's individual land rights, it required no boundary references. Thus the lands north and east of the original temple endowment were probably unirrigated, uncultivated, and public property in the early twelfth century. One hundred years later, however, a major canal system existed north of Cattanam, ir- rigating lands controlled by brahmanas. The donation of those lands to the temple required the careful delineation of boundaries in order to differentiate between the donated lands and contiguous lands in the hands of other owners. The wastelands of the twelfth century had become irrigated rice lands in the thirteenth century, along with the individuation of land control that accompanied rice cultivation.

The expansion of the local landownings of the temple at Vadakadu was closely connected with an expansion of the local cultivable area that proceeded in several stages. The earliest permanent settlement known to exist here was the brahmana settlement of the eleventh century, either set up on virgin territory or imposed upon an original village of cultivators around Nampankuricci. The creation of this early brahmana community was the work of the Chola kings, who allocated at least the tax revenues from the village lands. The alteration of the official title of the village from a "gift for brahmanas" (brahmadeyam) to a "gift for the god" (devadinam) in- corporated the original brahmana titles within the larger organization of the temple. Subsequent endowments came from secular notables who added to temple lands from their own properties. These notables seem to have been newcomers to the area, moving from Tondaimandalam to take possession of sections within a shrinking Chola domain. The concentration of all these donations among the fields watered by a single irrigation canal changed at the end of the Chola period when the construction of new canals to the north opened up new cultivable lands. The main actors in this new expansion seem to have been the brahmanas connected with the temple. The importance of commercial communities in local trade was translated into a few small, peripheral donations of lands in exterior villages. The main initiators were the kings, then local secular notables, then the temple staff alone.

Temple Lands at Tirukkovalur: The Ritual Center

Tirukkoyilur is the headquarters of a taluk with the same name on the southern bank of the Pennai River. The place has a very long recorded history; it was the scene

800 JAMES HEITZMAN

of legendary exploits recorded in Sangam literature from the early Christian era (Sri- nivasan 1980). Today the place is a bustling, crowded urban center (population in 1971 was 18,226) offering a marked contrast to the isolation of Vadakadu. The modern town contains two main centers of habitation that revolve around two medieval temples. Tirukkoyilur proper centers on Tiruvikrama Swamy temple, one of the main shrines for the worship of Vishnu in Tamil Nadu, known in Chola times as the abode of Tiruvitaikali Alvar. The smaller settlement of Kilaiyur (called Kilur, or the "eastern village," in lists of inscriptions) centers on a Siva temple that in Chola times was the abode of Tiruvirattanattu udaiyar.

The Vishnu temple has received numerous donations from devotees since the Chola period, and its original Chola-period architecture is surrounded by massive and im- pressive constructions dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. During the Chola period the temple was in the hands of an autonomous temple administration, but presently a monastery administers the temple's affairs from its center directly east of the temple. 12 The Siva temple received less patronage during the post-Chola periods and today presents a less imposing appearance that enhances the pristine beauty of its Chola architecture. The two temples contain inscriptions describing a total of 104 individual named plots of temple lands from the Chola period, of which 60 have been located for the present study (see Map 3).

During the twentieth century Tirukkoyilur has experienced an increase in population and market activity typical of most taluk headquarters, but a major facet of the local economy is still agriculture. Despite the addition of numerous tube wells throughout South Arcot district during recent years, agriculture around Tirukkoyilur depends even today on irrigation waters obtained from the adjacent Pennai River. Sluices located several kilometers to the west divert Pennai waters through irrigation ditches to either a large lake (periya eri) or a small lake (cirreri) south and west of Tirukkoyilur town (see Map 3). In accordance with the generally eastward slope of the land, the large lake waters fields directly to its east, while the small lake waters lands between it and the Pennai River, to its north and northeast. The lands to the west of the big lake receive irrigation waters from several small lakes and irrigation systems to the west and the south.

The legendary history (sthala purdynam) of the Vishnu temple describes Tiruk- koyilur (then called Tirukkovalur, the name retained for the rest of this study) as originally a brahmana community in which the main activities were the performances of sacrifices, worship, and austerities by brahmanas and religious mendicants. Al- though the Vishnu temple and bathing sites (tirtham) on the Pennai River were important in this early community, the presence of the brahmanas appears as antecedent. Surrounding the community was a wilderness full of ferocious beasts (Tirukkivalgr sthalapuronam 1978:10-12). Despite the rather formulaic portrayal of the settlement, which is simply a localized version of the forest hermitage (Granyam) appearing in classical literature, the legendary history here may preserve a memory of some original brahmadeyam that grew up in the early history of settled agriculture along the Pennai. The wilderness around the settlement corresponds to the uncultivated areas that, as we have seen, surrounded the early brahmadeyam at Cattanam.

12 The Emperuman Jiyar monastery lies on the north side of the street heading east from the eastern entrance to the Vishnu temple. The modern monastery exists directly in the center of the area called ampalam during the Chola period. This is a

striking, but not uncommon, example of the lon- gevity of brahmana settlement patterns and ritual control, transformed from the original brahmadeyam and sabhai systems into late medieval monastic institutions.

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH ASIA 8 01

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4 = 178-129. Se the eXt fr deSriPtinS Ofthe nmbere ...... SORE .TrUkY1r.SI7.3,.3,1914;E P. 142-4;. STI. 6;.AR.190:2;.92.1309

311,~~~~~~~~~........ . 31,38,32.32.3-4,35,38.49.5;.943525 .46.5; Klr .... 7:863, ................,8 3,9 3,91 ,91 , 2 ; IT 2,44 4 ; R

1905:11,~ ~ ~ ~~~........ <2 ........

802 JAMES HEITZMAN

By the Chola period, the geography of Tirukkovalur revolved around the Vishnu temple. The temple itself, originally a brick structure, was rebuilt in stone in the middle of the eleventh century (SII 7:135[= El 7, pp. 145-461). Although there was undoubtedly an original surrounding wall, an additidnal wall was added sometime around 1100.13 It seems likely, however, that the addition of a surrounding wall did not necessitate the expansion of the sacred ground devoted to the lord. References to the nearby roads and house sites suggest that an original expanse of sacred ground became covered with temple structures during a long period of temple construction. Today, imposing towers (gopuram) give access to buildings on temple grounds covered in paving stone. In the Chola period, the same ground was covered with flower gardens (Map 3, no. 13), separating the sanctum from its surrounding wall and the surrounding wall from other habitation structures. This layout is more visible today at the Siva temple in Kilur, somewhat distant from other buildings, more neglected during the last eight hundred years.

A processional street probably surrounded the grounds of the Vishnu temple, although the inscriptions only refer directly to the eastern street. This street, running north-south, eventually reached the Pennai River after crossing several important irrigation channels. Another road branched off from this street north of the temple walls and headed for the embankment separating the two lakes, reaching the lands south of the small lake. East of the temple lay the ampalam, or site of the learned community. It is likely that here lived the majority of the brahmanas involved in the assembly (sabhai) of Maturantaka caturvedimankalam, the name bestowed on the brahmana community here in the early Chola period. 14 Much of the space in the area of the ampalam was taken up by habitation structures (manoai), but as in the case of the temple, there were gardens and agricultural lands separating some of the houses even in this section of the town (Map 3, nos. 10, 11). The area north of the ampalam, near the major canals, contained minor temples of Pillaiyar and Subrahmanyam and at least one Jain monastery-temple (pa(/iccantam). Today this area is still the site of minor temples and a variety of public offices.

The geography of southern Tirukkovalur is unknown for the Chola period, but references to the mercantile community (nagarattdr) suggest that there was a commercial establishment in the southern part of town near what is now the merchants' quarter. During the early Chola period the nagaram at Tirukkovalur appeared as an assembly dealing with corporate responsibilities toward the temple, taking deposits yielding interest for temple rituals, guaranteeing supplies for temple worship and provisions for personnel (SI1 7:858, 864, 870, 932, 935). During the later Chola period, the nagaram was associated with weaving and oil-vending groups and with nadu-wide commercial groups (SI1 7:129, 865, 901). The wider scope of association visible in the mercantile organization of Tirukkovalur paralleled the presence of nadu- wide coalitions of cultivators (citrameli periya ndttdr), who were acting within the Vishnu temple as major donors during the thirteenth century (81 7:129; ARE 1921:341).

13 All inscriptions in the Vishnu temple from the twelfth century exist on the walls of the second surrounding wall (prdkdram). The earliest record on these walls comes from A.D. 1133 (ARE 1921:349).

14 The earliest reference to the Tirukkovalur

sabhai comes from the 21st regnal year of the Rash- trakuta king Krishna III (SII 7:897 [= El 7, pp. 142-43). The Rashtrakutas, based in what is now Maharashtra state, overran the northern areas of Tamil Nadu for about thirty years in the mid-tenth century.


Two inscriptions describe the boundaries of Tirukkovalur around the year 1000. Kannattampati village lay east of the Siva temple. South of the big lake, Arumpakkam village (corresponding to a modern village of the same name) formed the southern boundary; it was in turn bounded on the south by Venmaru village, modern Vimmar. On the west lay Karati, on the site of the modern village of the same name (S1 7:144, 857). The original endowment of Maturantaka caturvedimankalam may have constituted the entire extent of lands within these large boundaries, but the Chola records reveal sabhai control only within the ampalam and in the lands in the west, flanking the small lake to the north and the south (SII 7:137, 139, 140, 872). Later inscriptions mention the existence of settlements called Comaci kiranur and Panriyur in the western sections of Tirukkovalur adjoining the lands of the brahmana community; perhaps these were recent additions to cultivated acreage formed out of, or next to, lands of the brahmanas. In the eastern sections of town, the modern administrative division between Tirukkoyilur and Kilur had its medieval antecedents, for references to the lands near the Siva temple mention several settlements called Tevankuti ("settlement of the god"; SI1 7:863; SITI 44, 45), Civapuram ("city of Siva," perhaps a trading quarter; 81 7:858; ARE 1934-35:246), and Putupperur (the "new, big town"; SII 7:144; ARE 1905:12). In the absence of further details, we may identify these names with the modern habitation areas in Kilur around the Siva temple.

The irrigation facilities around Tirukkovalur have retained the same basic con- figurations and even the same names since the Chola period. Several inscriptional references indicate that the small lake (cirreri) stretched then, as now, from a point in the west where its feeder canal joined it near the Ndrai kal rocky ground, to an embankment in the east separating it from the large lake (periya eri; ARE 1921:211, 322, 341, 345). The large lake, never specifically mentioned in the Chola inscriptions, did exist during the Chola period, for the description of land number 17 mentions embankments to its east that must have retained waters of the big lake; the Chola- period name of the "small" lake also implies its pairing with a "large" lake. The main irrigation canals from the Chola inscriptions similarly match several main modern canals. Predominant for Tirukkovalur town was the "canal of the small lake" (cirreri vdykkdl), flowing from the eastern end of that lake to the northeast and then the east, watering fields in the town and especially between the town and the river. Equally important was the Nittavinota vaykkal, which started from a sluice a bit northwest of the small lake, flowed directly east past Tirukkovalur town, and eventually went past Kilur to points east.

The lands donated to both the Siva and the Vishnu temples lay generally in areas close to the Pennai River that were irrigated by the major canals. Land donations in the east and far west during the tenth and eleventh centuries shifted to donations immediately north or northwest of Tirukkovalur town or farther to the southwest during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 15 The lands of the Siva temple lay around

15 Many of the lands between the river and the Vishnu temple may actually have been controlled by the Vishnu temple quite early inthe Chola period or earlier, but they appear in the inscriptional record only in later transactions. The total extent of temple lands in these areas may have amounted to twice the amount portrayed on Map 3, since only about half of the total recorded lands have

been located. One inscription, for example, mentions temple lands of 11.25 veli in the area north of the small lake and 10 veli in Kilanur-none of which have been located on Map 3 (ARE 1921:340 [ = SITI 64). The contexts of the unlocated lands suggest, however, positions very close to those of the located lands.

804 JAMES HEITZMAN

modern Kilur (Map 3, nos. 1-9), while lands of the Vishnu temple lay around Ti- rukkovalur town and to the west (Map 3, nos. 15, 16, 21-30). Lands of both temples lay north of Tirukkovalur town, but even here in the thirteenth century there was an explicit attempt to divide the holdings into different, compact blocks. 16

Originally much of the land controlled by the temples was in the hands of the brahmana assembly of Maturantaka caturvedimankalam. Earlier transactions involved sales of land by the brahmana assembly to the temple directly or through intermediary donors, and the growth in temple lands was probably proportional to a decrease in the lands of the brahmana assembly during the later Chola period. 17 Temple lands, accumulated from plots within the lands of the brahmanas, intermingled with those lands remaining with the brahmanas. Additional lands interspersed among the fields of the temples or of the brahmanas belonged to persons or groups connected with the temples or other religious institutions. Sections of land were given to temple security personnel (kaikkolar). 8 Other lands mentioned as boundaries refer to endowments for monasteries, Jain establishments, or lesser deities. 19 With the exception of one land apparently set aside as a service tenure (jivitam; ARE 1905:2), lands for religious institutions and personnel seem to have formed a solid block, especially in the stretch of lands along the Pennai River.

Although there is a striking concentration of lands in the hands of religious personnel along the river and near the temples, there is an equally striking absence of temple lands in areas to the south. The agricultural fields watered by the large lake do not appear in the donative inscriptions, although those fields were undoubtedly being cultivated during the Chola period. References to agricultural groups (urdr) from other nearby settlements (SII 858, 880, 886, 889; ARE 1905:2) parallel a complete lack of references to urar from Tirukkovalur. There was, then, a bifurcation of roles between the ritual personnel of the two temples and agricultural groups tilling the land. Most of Tirukkovalur was a separate ritual center, controlled by high-caste ritual personnel who also exerted great control over adjacent lands. The boundaries of this ritual center were, however, quite circumscribed-a total land area of approximately 3.5 square kilometers-and its influence extended to few places outside its immediate environs .2

Within the boundaries of the ritual center, control over lands was manifold and fragmentary. The expanding temples officially controlled heterogeneous land rights and duties. Most lands probably directed defrayed tax income to the temples. Temple officials administered some lands outright as property of the god. Some private properties were legally required to set aside part of their nontaxable produce for the temple.21 Lands remaining with members of the brahmana community, mixed with

16 SITI 42; ARE 1905:2. This attempt at mutual exclusion in the late Chola period is reminiscent of similar trends toward sectarian divisions manifest at Tirumeyyam in southern Pudukkottai district. See Tirumalai 1981:119-24.

17 El 7, pp. 142-43; SII 7:139, 140-42, 864, 868, 893; ARE 1905:11, 20; 1921:311, 322, 338, 349; 1934-35:250.

18 ARE 1921:347; 1934-35:253. Persons called Kaikkolar appear during the Chola period exclusively as warriors and policemen, but later data reveal them as members of weaving communities. See Mines 1984.

'g For monastery lands (matapuram), see ARE

1921:318, 349. For the Jain monastery (palliccan- tam), see SII 7:890, ARE 1905:2 (= SITI 42). For the temple of cuppiramaniya pillaiydr, see ARE 1905:2.

20 Lands outside the immediate area of Tiruk- kovalur providing resources to the temple include Ariyur (79?10', 11?52'), Aviyur (79?4' 30", 11056' 30"), Karikalacolanallur (79010', 11059'), Marutur and Pullalippuram (not located).

21 Inscriptions portraying the various types of land and resource control are SI 7:142,143, 917, 922; SITI 45; ARE 1921:345; 1934-35:245-50. For a greater discussion of these records, see Heitz- man (1985a:210-11).


Table 1. Donors at Tirukkovalur During the Chola Period

Subperiod 1 Subperiod 2 Subperiod 3 Subperiod 4

(849-985)a (985-1070)a (1070-1178)a ( 1 178-1279)a

Type of Donor Number % Number % Number % Number %

Individual brahmanas 5 11 1 4

Brahmana assemblies (sabhai) 1 6 4 9

Shepherds 4 9 1 6

Merchants 5b 11 fc 6

Local leaders 1 6 8d 17 7 26 2 13

Persons with high honorific 5 28 9 20 2 7 3 19 titles

Miladu or Malaiyaman rulers 10 56 9 20 17 63 9 56

Chola kings/queens 1 6 2 4

TOTAL: 18 100 46 100 27 100 16 100 a The four-part chronology used here first appeared in Sitaraman, Karashima, and Subbarayalu

(1976:89); Karashima, Subbarayalu, and Matsui (1978:xlv). b Includes two donations by corporate bodies or merchants (nagarattdr). c Includes one donation by nagarattdr. d Includes two donations by village assemblies of agriculturalists (u7rdr).

the temple lands, were undoubtedly subject to several types of cultivating arrangements, including subletting to tenants and employing agricultural laborers. Several service groups such as security personnel (kaikkolar) probably did not personally cul- tivate all the lands providing them with support, necessitating the participation of cultivating groups in the production process. The actual tilling of much of the land within the ritual center remained the job of cultivating groups, probably living in the settlements east of Tirukkovalur around the Siva temple, probably dominating groups of agricultural laborers (paraiyar).22 The cultivators and associated laborers, invisible in the recorded transactions of temple, brahmana, and mercantile assemblies, were a necessary component of the complicated tenurial system within the ritual center.

The Siva and Vishnu temples yield a total of 107 inscriptions (82 percent of the extant inscriptions from these sites) that mention the donors of land and other resources to the ritual center at Tirukkovalur. Table 1 lists the different types of donors appearing in these records and the numbers of donations given by donors during four separate subperiods within the Chola period. These data demonstrate that significant persons and groups within the ritual center and economy of Tirukkovalur contributed relatively little to the expansion of the temple networks. Noteworthy among those individuals not appearing are brahmanas and merchants, who acted more often as

22 For discussions of tenancy and labor during the Chola period, see Nilakantha Sastri (1955:555-57); Kumar(1985:348-5 1); Heitzman (1985a: 147-63). Cultivators around Tirukkovalur appear in only one record, in which the tillers of

Vishnu temple lands agree to help support rituals by forwarding small amounts of paddy from their share of the produce (kil vdram), along with other temple dues (koyil katamai; ARE 1921:346).

806 JAMES HEITZMAN

administrators of the temple or receivers of deposits than as donors in their own right. Similarly, corporate groups (sabhai, nagarattar, urar) that often appear as authors of inscriptions rarely alienated their own resources to the temples, acting instead as witnesses or registering agencies. Shepherds provided as many donations as brahmanas or merchants, testifying to the close interpenetration of rustic, ritual, and commercial economies. The Chola kings, represented here by female members of their families (El 7, p. 144; ARE 1905:3), exerted little direct influence on the development of temple rituals and estates.

The types of persons most responsible for the expansion of temple resources and landholding fall into three categories of political leadership based primarily on control of the agrarian economy outside Tirukkovalur. The categories of leadership are sug- gested by a hierarchy of titles attached to personal names in the inscriptions. At the lowest level were persons whose names appear without honorific titles or with terms indicating "possession" of land and/or influence in some named village. 23 These local leaders accounted for an average of 16 percent of the donations forwarded to the temples. A higher level appears in the names of persons associated with high honorific titles, typically containing epithets of kings, who in addition were often "possessors" in one or more places. These persons accounted for an average of 19 percent of donated resources.24 The category that appears most frequently in the donative inscriptions refers to the highest stratum of local political power, associated with overlords of the entire region surrounding Tirukkovalur along the Pennai River. During the tenth century a lineage of Vaidumba rulers claimed control over the region of Miladu as subordinates of the Rashtrakutas, a powerful dynasty from the area of modern Ma- harashtra state to the northwest, who overran the northern reaches of Tamil Nadu for a period of about thirty years.25 The subsequent reconquest by the Cholas allowed the reinstallation of a lineage of Miladu lords who posed as little kings in their own right through elaborate poetic praises of their land and their rule and through in- termarriage with the Cholas (Srinivasan 1980:120-31; Trautmann, 1981:391). After 1070 a new lineage calling itself Malaiyaman, harking back to ancient rulers of this area, took control of Tirukkovalur and made the area its main cult center (Srinivasan 1980:147). In fact, the location of this place in the core of the area called Miladu, along the fertile alluvium of the Pennai River, always made Tirukkovalur a strategic center for the political control of the northern marches of the Chola country and stimulated repeated donative statements by the parade of subordinate little kings who ruled the area. These noble donors were responsible for by far the largest amount of resources donated to the temples (averaging 49 percent of all donations), mostly land or defrayed taxes from land.

Tirukkovalur offers a perspective on the relative position of religious institutions within Chola-period political economy. The small area included within the ritual center was administratively dominated by brahmanas and temple administrations.

23 The category of "local leaders" used here includes a few persons with the title of "elder" (kilavan), "possessor" (utaiyan), and a few who were part of temple staffs. For discussions of the terms kilavan and utaiydn, see Karashima (1984:57-58).

24The most common of the high honorific phrases are those ending with the terms "lord" (araiyan), "leader of the nadu" (ndtdlvdn), or "member of the cultivating castes [serving] the three kings" (muventaveldn)-the three kings rep- resenting the dynasties of the ancient Cheras, Pan-

dyas, and Cholas, all absorbed into the Cholas. For discussions of these terms, see Karashima (1984:58-64); Subbarayalu (1982:278-81).

25 Vaidumba inscriptions at Tirukkovalur, all engraved during regnal years of the Rashtrakuta emperor Krishna III, are El 7, pp. 142-44; ARE 1905:16. For the Rashtrakutas, see Nilakantha Sastri (1955:128-34); Altekar (1934:115-19); Srinivasan (1980:117-19). See also records of the Banas, allies of the Cholas in their early struggles (S1 7:930, 935; El 7, pp. 140-41).


However, their economic influence outside the area of the ritual center was low. The temples possessed few rights to lands beyond the immediate neighborhood of the town-limited in the inscriptions to small parcels in only five villages. The villages bounding Tirukkovalur had no known connection with the temple. But even within the boundaries of Tirukkovalur there were large expanses of cultivable lands located east of the big lake that were separate from the temple, probably cultivated by small peasants either independently or in subordination to larger landowners. The tendency around Tirukkovalur was to concentrate most temple lands within a fairly narrow band irrigated by the old channels connected with the small lake.26

Tirukkovalur was an old settlement with a small, independent irrigation system, which accumulated sacred myths and sites as its archaic economy developed. As in the case of Vadakadu, where the earliest records describe the grant to a brahmana community, the endowments around the original Vishnu temple were the domain of an early brahmadeyam. During the Chola period, the interests of the brahmana community slowly coalesced into the administrations of the Vishnu and Siva temples, to which members of the brahmadeyam progressively alienated their lands. Simul- taneously, the donations of secular notables gave the temples greater access to the agrarian resources from more and more lands within the boundaries of Tirukkovalur. The leaders in this parade of donations were local rulers, mostly the Miladu lords and then the Malaiyaman lineage, but other notables and local leaders also participated. As at Vadakadu, local mercantile interests were a continuing but subsidiary source of donated lands, no more important than pastoralists in donation largess.27 The piecemeal accumulation of land rights at Tirukkovalur resulted in a variegated control of lands, unlike Vadakadu where the bulk of land donations was the work of a few agencies and involved the ownership of lands by the temple. The transfer of donated funds into Tirukkovalur did not result in the penetration of its temple administrations into larger areas; it led instead to an increasing concentration of heterogeneous holdings within the ritual center.

The relatively circumscribed spatial extent of temple land control within Tiruk- kovalur nevertheless contains several hints of local agrarian expansion. The locations of the earliest endowments, mostly east of the Vishnu temple (Map 3, nos. 1-4, 12), may portray an early reliance on irrigation waters flowing east from the small lake. But even at an early period, small pieces of land farther to the west (Map 3, nos. 28-31) were donated, a phenomenon that increased in subsequent centuries. The later concentration of donations in the far west may represent an ongoing creation of distant, peripheral fields.28 A related development is the later reference to Panriyur

26 Informants at Tirukkovalur indicated that the Vishnu temple presently holds only ten acres of land directly north of the temple along the river-those lands comprising the medieval holdings of nos. 9 and 15 on Map 3. L. Thyagarajan found that the Siva temple presently controls no lands within the town but possesses lands in several exterior villages. This segregation of lands per- petuates the divisions beginning in the twelfth century. Informants at Tirukkovalar included the head of the Emperuman Jiyar monastery, which administers the Vishnu temple, the retired ac- countant of Tirukkovalur, and a number of in- structors at a local high school. My thanks to all of these people and to L. Thyagarajan and to Ram Anirai Kavalan for arranging the interviews with

them. 27 One inscription from the Siva temple refers

to the "lamp shepherd of this god" (inndyandr ti- ruvilakku manrdti), indicating that the temple retained overseers of flocks supplying milk to make oil (SII 7:915). The pastoral economy around the temple sites may have been considerable, but it is poorly represented in surviving records.

2 The locations of temple lands suggest that many of the lands were poorly suited for rice agriculture. The block in the far west was near the edge of the irrigation system running from the small lake. Lands east of the road to the river were on somewhat higher ground, which even today is used for public buildings. Many of the flower gardens near the river remain dry lands (puncey) today.

808 JAMES HEITZMAN

village in the peripheral zone south of the small lake, bounding the lands of the brahmanas (Map 3, nos. 18, 19). This location suggests the association of later temple lands with the edges of cultivation, as seen earlier at Vadakadu.

Temple Lands in the Kaveri River Delta: The Temple Complex

The temple landholdings around the Kaveri River during the Chola period reveal developmental patterns familiar already from the studies of Vadakadu and Tiruk- kovalur, rendered more complicated by larger networks of interaction among different places. In contrast to the relatively localized temple lands of the former places, the temples along the Kaveri River drew proportionately larger resources from lands outside the boundaries of their villages. The existence of lands in exterior villages created a complex of temple networks, rather than the relatively unique networks visible in more isolated areas. The development of these temple complexes, which flourished during the later Chola period, reveals more clearly the role of secular donors in temple landholdings and the continuing role of temples in agrarian development.

The central temple forming the hub of the developing temple complex is at Tiruvidaimarudur, a small modern town (population 10,410 in 1971) lying about two kilometers south of the Kaveri River in Kumbakonam taluk. This was the site of a Siva temple praised in the pre-Chola hymns of Saiva saints, the focus of great patronage during Chola and post-Chola periods (Champakalakshmi 1979:20-22). Remodeling in the twentieth century destroyed the medieval inscriptions here, but fortunately the Archaeological Survey copied them before their destruction and preserved 141 inscriptions from the Chola period. Several kilometers east of Tiruvidai- marudur lies Maruttuvakkudi, the site of a temple containing eight later Chola inscriptions. North of Tiruvidaimarudur, on the north bank of the Kaveri River, is Veppattur, containing nine later Chola inscriptions. Three kilometers downriver from Veppattur is Tirumangalam (medieval Mankalakkuti), the site of a temple erected under royal auspices in the twelfth century (SII 5:703; 23:302). The four temples form a rough quadrilateral flanking both sides of the Kaveri River in central Kum- bakonam taluk (see Map 4).

The central place in this area in medieval times, as today, was the town of Kum- bakonam (medieval Kutamukku), located about ten kilometers west of these four places in the "corner" (ko.nam, mzikku) formed by the branching of several major ef- fluents from the Kaveri River. During the Chola period, Kutamukku was a major site in the "urban" complex attached to Palaiyaru, a Chola capital, which spread over a large area to its south and west. Palaiyaru and Kutamukku contained a number of important brahmana settlements, temples, royal palaces, and military encampments and were the scenes of major political and diplomatic events throughout the Chola period (Champakalakshmi 1979:6-19; Minakshisundarar and Pandarathar 195 1). The wide official boundaries of Kutamukku stretched in the east to include the temple village of Tirunagesvaram and lands as far as Karampaitillainayakanallur (Map 4, no. 10; Champakalakshmi 1979:9-10). Any discussion of Chola-period developments around Tiruvidaimarudur proceeds in the context of a large and active royal presence centered in nearby Kutamukku.29

29 Kulottunga Chola III (1178-1218) con- structed the great Kampaharesvara temple only a few kilometers west of Tiruvidaimarudur. This was

the last of the monumental central shrines built by the Chola kings (Sarkar 1974).


The configuration of settlements and activities within the immediate vicinity of Tiruvidaimarudur resembles the geography of medieval Tirukkoyilur. The Siva temple and its encompassing grounds stood at the center of town, surrounded by walls with entrance towers (gopuram) added during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.30 Processional streets surrounded the temple walls and other streets branched off toward the east and toward the river to the north. Another main road probably ran through Tiruvidaimarudur from Kutamukku in the west, heading to Maruttuvakkudi and points east. 31 Aside from garden lands for the temple, the town included a settlement of cultivators (fr) and a mercantile community (nagaram), perhaps comprising several discrete neighborhoods, that was very active in temple affairs especially during the early Chola period.32 Contiguous to the town was the brahmana community called Tiraimur, which remained officially separate from Tiruvidaimarudur but in fact func- tioned as the most important assembly monitoring temple affairs. The early formation of lands at Tiraimur into a devaddna-brahmadeyam, that is, a simultaneous endowment for the temple and for the brahmanas, is an early example of the interpenetration of temple and brahmana interests that dominated religious institutions everywhere in the Chola domains after approximately 1100 (SII 3:203).

The kind of information on temple lands contained in the inscriptions at Tiru- vidaimarudur differs from the data found at either Vadakadu or Tirukkovalur. The latter places provide detailed descriptions of individual pieces of land within their own boundaries, complete with interesting references to irrigation systems and village landmarks. Although there are a few such records from Tiruvidaimarudur, they are inadequate for an in-depth portrayal of village geography there. The singularly un- informative references to the irrigation system within Tiruvidaimarudur, for example, indicate only that Kaveri River water filled canals running east among the lands dedicated to the god and to brahmanas (e.g., SI1 5:702). The reason for this difference lies in the early action of the Chola kings in forming large areas of the town into a devaddna-brahmadeyam, which, combined with lands for the temple grounds and gardens, funneled a large amount of local agrarian produce directly into the temple. As at Vadakadu, the early control of these large expanses by the temple forced subsequent donors to provide for additional rituals either by adding lands on the edges of the early endowment or by seeking resources in other villages. The necessity to look outside for resources resulted in the much larger network of villages yielding lands and produce to the temple at Tiruvidaimarudur.

The creation of multi-village landholdings was underway early in the Chola period.33 An early sphere of temple involvement was probably Vannakkuti, just to the

30 Inscriptions from the tenth and eleventh centuries were on the walls of the central shrine. Inscriptions from the twelfth century were on the walls of the first surrounding wall (prdkdram). In- scriptions from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries appeared on the first and second prdkdram and, in one doubtful case (SII 23:310), on the east tower of the second prd am. Refer- ences to the temple entrances (tiruvacal) on the south and east appear in SII 23:2&8.

31 The tirumanicana peruvali in Tiruvidaimaru- dur (SII 23:291) headed north. References to a "big road" at Tiruvidaimarudur (SII 5:722) and at Adu- durai to the east (KK 147) describe it as heading toward the north. The road surrounding the temple at Tiruvidaimarudur appears in SII 5:708; 23:288.

32 Hall (1982:397-403) states that the name of the nagaram at Tiruvidaimarudur was Kumar- amattantapuram, coming down from Pallava times, although the single Chola-period reference to this name provides no clues to its location (SII 23:227). Manaparanapuram seems to be a neighborhood within Tiruvidaimarudur's nagaram (SII 5:7 13).

33 It has been possible to locate a large percentage of the exterior villages through the use of a computerized concordance of Chola-period place- names. My thanks to Ella Shum of the DRL Com- puter Center at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote the programs for the concordance. Thanks also to John Abercrombie, who gave me access to his sorting programs.

810 JAMES HEITZMAN

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SOURCE: (Tiruvidaimarudur) SII 3:202-3; 5:694, 702-3, 705, 707-8, 711, 713, 7 16-18, 722-23; 13:195, 270; 19: 162, 181, 195, 220, 222-23, 227, 249, 257-58, 264, 272-73, 275-76, 286-89, 291, 301-3, 305, 307, 309, 342; (Veppattur)ARE 1910:51-52;(Maruttuvakkudi) SII 23:386-90, 392-93; (Tirunagesvaram) SII 6:34.

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812 JAMES HEITZMAN

east of Tiruvidaimarudur (Map 4, no. 3), where tenth-century donations formed the basis for an endowment that totaled one hundred veli of tax-free land by the twelfth century. Equally important was the more distant site of Vilankuti (no. 26), where a series of small donations built up an endowment for the-temple in the tenth century. The addition of small endowments in three other sites (nos. 15, 24, 25) created by the year 1000 an extended landholding network that resembled the extended networks associated with the temples of Vadakadu or Tirukkovalur.34

A major expansion of the extended landholding network of the Tiruvidaimarudur temple took place during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some lands came to the temple from close at hand, as several nearby brahmana communities gave up produce from pieces of land among their holdings (nos. 4-6). Another endowment of ten veli of land came from a position quite far to the east (no. 22). The major focus of temple involvement in this later phase was in the south, where a number of transactions provided the temple with lands in at least four locations (e.g., nos. 34, 35). The additions of these new lands formed an extended landowning network that perhaps doubled the area connected to the temple (SII 5:702, 705, 707, 708; 6:34; 23:289, 291).

The expansion of the landholding arena of the Tiruvidaimarudur temple brought it into closer contact with the landholdings of neighboring temples that were expanding in a similar fashion. The temples at Veppattur and Mankalakkuti possessed intersecting lands on the north bank of the Kaveri River in an area where the Ti- ruvidaimarudur temple also controlled fields (nos. 13, 14; SII 5:703, 708; 23:302). The Maruttuvakkuti temple resembled the Tiruvidaimarudur temple in its accumulation of lands from brahmana communities between it and the Kaveri River (nos. 7 and 8) and its involvement with lands to the south (no. 33) that were shared with the Tiruvidaimarudur temple (SII 23:392, 393). These temple interests created a close-knit complex of temple rights that intersected and moved out into wider agrarian hinterlands.

Most of the lands coming under temple control after 1100 came from the previous holdings of brahmana communities and, in a number of cases, from lands on the borders of brahmana communities. The pattern of converting earlier brahmadeyam lands into temple lands, seen especially at Tiruvidaimarudur itself, became widespread in the later transfers of land for that temple and for neighboring temples. Out of twenty-six places yielding lands for the temples after 1100, twenty-one were brahmadeyam villages. The lands thus transferred to the temples were usually compact blocks that were often given their own names as new devaddnam for the temples, but they originated as pieces of lands within two or more different villages (nos. 7, 9, 18, 22, 29; SII 23:289, 301, 386, 392, 393). It is therefore likely that the objects of the land transactions were lands on the outer edges of these brahmana villages, cut away to form new estates under temple management.

Several characteristics of the land donations indicate that the formation of new temple lands from former villages, usually brahmadeyam, was associated with expanding cultivation. The later formation of temple lands in the areas south of Ti- ruvidaimarudur and Maruttuvakkudi is particularly instructive. Although the villages lay approximately eight kilometers south of the temples, the wording of earlier inscriptions suggests that the southern sites adjoined the temple villages. This unusually

34 (Vannakkuti) SIl 23:272, 273; (Vilankuti) SII 5:716, 718; 23:249, 264; (Ceynnalur) SII

23:220; (Peravur) SII 19:162; (Vaiykal) SlI 19:18 1.


large extent of settlement boundaries was probably an administrative convenience that labeled wide spaces undergoing limited exploitation, in the same way that Ku- tamukku officially stretched as far as lands belonging to Tirukkutamukku brahmadeyam in the area south of Tiruvidaimarudur (SII 23:387). Viewed in this light, the rather extensive lands between Maruttuvakkudi and the brahmadeyam villages on the south, bordered by the lands of Kutamukku on the west, appear as a development zone within which new temple estates were forming as new villages. In addition, the boundaries among the southern villages (nos. 27, 29) are relatively undefined and seem fluid in earlier records (SII 23:307, 309, 386, 389). The implication is that there was uncultivated space lying between Maruttuvakkudi and the southern group, and between the villages within that group. This situation resembles the condition of the early temple lands at Vadakadu, where poorly defined boundaries were the sign of uncultivated areas. We have already witnessed, in the later appearance of Panriyur on the borders of the brahmadeyam at Tirukkovalur, a similar suggestion of the administrative creation of temple lands on the peripheries of earlier brahmana lands.

The phenomenon of the border location applies equally to many of the contrib- uting brahmana villages. The entire southern group and the two distant groups of villages to the east lie on the borders of two or more nadu (nos. 17-19, 20-23, 27- 33; SII 23:289, 301, 386, 389; Subbarayalu 1973: maps 6, 7). Thus the earlier brahmadeyam settlements existed on the borders of the integrated irrigation networks and agrarian economy, in the same way that the later temple lands existed on the boundaries of the stabilized brahmadeyam settlements.

The Chola kings played a large part in the creation of the earlier brahmana communities and their subsequent contributions to growing temple landholding networks. The foundations of these brahmadeyam, usually lost in obscurity, necessitated the alienation by the royal government of at least the land tax income, requiring the active donation of the king or at least his consent. Similarly, the cooperation of the land revenue department and/or the granting of a royal order accompanied the later transfers of brahmadeyam and other village lands into devadanam lands in the later Chola period.35 In several instances the Chola king and his queen initiated rituals at the Mankalakkuti temple (no. 14) and authorized the transfer of lands for the provision of the god there (SII 5:703; 23:302).

Even when the kings were involved, the driving forces behind the newer temple endowments were other powerful, local donors. The combination of lands just south of Maruttuvakkudi occurred after a royal order that in turn responded to an official request (vinnappam) of Centamankalam udaiyan (SII 23:393). The grant of lands at Veppattur originated in the official request by a certain Brahmarayan (ARE 1910:5 1). The references to these notables even in the issuance of royal edicts, combined with the numerous references to their activities in many of the land deals described in the inscriptions, implies that they were behind most of the transactions that progressively built up complexes of temple lands in the Kaveri River delta.36

" The land revenue department (puravu vari tinaik kalam) appeared increasingly in the Chola inscriptions after c. 1000 A.D. See Subbarayalu (1976:143-52; 1982:291-95)y; Heitzman (1985a:352-64). For the royal order (vinnappam or vijiapta), see Stein (1978:136, 144-46). The high percentage of records from this temple complex featuring the king or his agents includes all records from Maruttuvakkudi; ARE 1910:51 from Vep- pattur; and the following inscriptions from Ti-

ruvidaimarudur: SI1 5:702, 708; 19:181; 23:257, 272, 276, 288, 289, 301, 305, 307, 309, 310.

36 Six out of eight records at Maruttuvakkudi that feature the agents of the king are really official recognitions of private donations. At Tiruvidai- marudur, other requestors are Kalappalarayan (SII 5:708), Cirukulattur utaiyan (SII 23:257), Kata- varayan (SII 23:272), and Vanadhirajan (SII 23:288, 289).

814 JAMES HEITZMAN

Table 2. Donors at Tiruvidaimaradur During the Chola Period

Subperiod 1 Subperiod 2 Subperiod 3 Subperiod 4

(849-985) (985-1070)a (1070-1 178)a (1 178-1279)3

Type of Donor Number% Number % Number % Number %

Individual brahmanas 1 2 - 3 8 1 10

Brahmana assemblies (sabhai) 2 4 - 1 3

Shepherds 6 11 - - -

Merchants 7b 13 - 3 8c

Local leaders 16d 30 3 25 8 22

Persons with high honorific 9 17 2 17 10 28 4 40 titles

Agents of kings 4 7 4 33 6 16 2 20

Chola kings/queens 9 17 3 25 5 14 3 30

TOTAL: 54 100 12 100 36 100 10 100 a The four-part chronology used here first appeared in Sitaraman, Karashima, and Subbarayalu

(1976:89); Karashima, Subbarayalu, and Matsui (1978:xlv). b Includes three donations by corporate bodies of merchants (nagarattdr).

Includes one donation by nagarattdr. d Includes one donation by a village assembly of agriculturists (z7rdr) and one donation by nddu assembly

(ndttdr).

Table 2 presents the number of donations to the temple at Tiruvidaimarudur by different categories of donors during the Chola period. Several features of these data are reminiscent of the patterns visible already at Tirukkovalur. Brahmanas (as individuals or in assembly), shepherds, and merchants appear as relatively peripheral to the process of resource allocation for the growing temple network. The several categories of leaders in charge of the agrarian economy, identified by titles of local possession or by high honorific titles, contributed a much larger share-an average of 45 percent of the donations going to the temple. The more influential donors with high titles appear increasingly to supplant more local leadership. As at Tirukkovalur, a high percentage of gifts officially came through the agency of the dominant political overlords, here the Chola lineage and their agents in the royal tax department, responsible for an average of 41 percent of donated resources. Note that the interference of the Cholas was through their official intermediaries, unlike the situation at Ti- rukkovalur where Miladu and Malaiyaman rulers appeared more often in person. Whereas in Tirukkovalur the Malaiyaman lords were directly responsible for half of the donations, in the central Kaveri Delta there was typically a greater role for other local leaders, especially persons with high titles.

A model for understanding agrarian expansion through religious foundations now presents itself: the kings or other high-ranking personages would give wastelands or underutilized lands to communities of brahmanas and encourage them to supervise cultivation there by tax incentives and perhaps by coordinating the construction of new irrigation facilities. The foundation of the brahmadeyam was a technique for expanding cultivation on the borders of the nadu, the zone of settled rice cultivation.


Later, the uncultivated borders of the brahmadeyam were subjected to more modern techniques of expansion by integration into networks of temple lands. In this way the areas coming under irrigation and cultivation in the neighborhoods of religious foundations continually expanded through official donations of land ownership and taxes on lands that were, at the time of the donation, underproductive. This model confirms the pattern seen already at Vadakadu and Tirukkovalur, where the early association of the local agrarian economy with the brahmadeyam slowly gave way to a framework of temple control, as irrigation agriculture in the vicinity of sacred shrines expanded in two stages.

Temples, Urbanism, and Political Economy in Medieval South India

The study of temple landholding reveals that temples in central Tamil Nadu grew from small bodies into larger ritual centers integrating within their administrative frameworks the major religious institutions of the later Chola period and the agrarian resources from local and even distant lands. The expansion of the ritual centers coincided with a "temple urbanism" focused within adjacent settlements. Urban developments remained closely bound to the agrarian interests of temples and temple donors-interests concerned especially with the expansion of cultivation in peripheral zones.

There were several stages in the evolution of the Chola-period temples studied here. The first stage was often the establishment of a brahmana endowment (brahmadeyam) either on virgin land or on top of a preexisting agricultural community. The presence of the brahmanas placed a superior, nonlaboring class above the tenants and/or agricultural workers within a largely agrarian setting. Over time, the resources of the brahmadeyam tended to move slowly into the hands of deities in important local temples. This process occurred through the progressive alienation of shares by individual brahmanas as personal acts of piety or, more typically, through sales to secular donors who then bestowed the lands on the temple. In some cases the slow change of the brahmadeyam was accelerated by administrative decisions sanctioned by the kings, converting previous brahmana endowments or cultivators' villages directly into estates for deities. During the centuries after the year 1000, secular donors, brahmanas, and the king added to the growing networks of temple administration and land control by more gifts of land in places within the temple villages and outside the boundaries of temple villages in more extended networks of temple estates. The intensification of temple control within the bounds of the local village created ritual centers dedicated to the support of worship with larger temple staffs. In the central Kaveri River delta, the load of donations created a complex of temples with extensive landholdings in a large number of villages.

The expansion of local temples occurred alongside, and interacted with, the growth of commercial networks focused on the mercantile communities (nagaram) scattered amid the numerous agrarian zones of central Tamil Nadu. Early nagaram were the heart of the small-scale exchange networks in some basic commodities (e.g., metals, salt, oil), manufactured articles (e.g., cloth), and luxury goods, which pen- etrated, if only in small amounts, even to the village level. The growth of the ritual endowments of the Chola period coincided with, and must have stimulated, the growth of commercial networks on the local and regional level, with an associated growth of artisanal activity. Temple rituals demanded a wide assortment of foodstuffs and precious goods, many of which required the services of merchants for procure-

816 JAMES HEITZMAN

ments and artisans or specialized workers for fabrication into elaborate offerings and cult objects. Specialists in commerce and manufacturing lived alongside the brahmana ritual specialists, the cultivating groups, and the agricultural laborers who congre- gated in larger numbers around the lands of the religious institutions (Nagaswamy 1978:135-40).

Despite the growing concentration of specialization and population around the temples, spatially the settlements of the Chola period show little differentiation between "town" and "country. " The village of Cattanam exhibits a spatial configuration that may resemble closely the patterns prevalent in villages of the Chola period. The habitations in this village congregate in one general area in a pattern that has not shifted appreciably during the last eight hundred years, the houses falling into discrete blocks with wide spaces between them, corresponding generally to divisions of occupation and caste. These habitations continue to lie for the most part to the east of the main temple, similar to the scene at Tirukkovalur; only more massive urbanization in modern times tends to obscure this basic medieval settlement pattern. The system of streets revolves around the holy street (tiruvTti) that surrounds the main temple on its four sides. Subsidiary roads link the different neighborhoods within the village and lead to nearby bodies of water and to nearby villages. Gardens, tanks, and cultivable fields are contiguous to, and intermingle with, blocks of housing.

The greater concentration of different occupational and caste groups in the larger medieval settlements like Tirukkovalur or Tiruvidaimarudur does not seem to have brought with it an alteration of the basic settlement patterns of the village during the Chola period. Houses may have lined the streets of the different neighborhoods within the habitation areas, but the built-up areas were interspersed with spaces given over to cultivation and gardens. This pattern is visible at Tirukkovalur, where donations within the ampalam east of the temple reveal cultivable fields in the center of the brahmana houses (ARE 1921:311, 348), and at Tiruvidaimarudur, where cultivated areas existed adjacent to the temple and palace grounds in the center of the settlement.37 The islands of houses lying amid the gardens in the larger settlements tended to belong to the different occupational/caste groups that controlled them- the brahmanas, the cultivating castes, the merchants, the artisans. Separate from these neighborhoods and fields lived the laboring populations essential for production processes.

The large agrarian component in the local economies of the ritual centers deter- mined the villagelike character of places that experienced larger concentrations of population and occupational specialization in the Chola period. Originally small settlements of brahmanas, merchants, and artisans, clustered around holy sites, received large capital inputs from the donations flowing into the temples, while employment within the temple ritual and administrative networks brought larger numbers of nonlaborers into the vicinity of the temples. The expansion of habitation areas, although centered on the streets adjacent to the new temple walls, followed the patterns of preexisting settlements with their spatial segregation in separate neighborhoods of subcastes or subspecialties among cultivating and mercantile groups. The arrangements for the support of expanding temple personnel, often connected to the earlier brahmadeyam endowments, preserved an agrarian economy in the heart of the mul-

37 In the sixteenth year of his reign, Kulot- tunga Chola III proclaimed that lands east of the Tiruvidaimarudur temple be realigned to allow construction of a new processional route. Part of

these lands belonged to a royal palace (nam vfttu) and was converted to the route of the road and to gardens (nantavanam, toppu; SII 23:288).


tiplying neighborhoods (cf. Hilton 1966:185; Hilton 1975:80-87; Reynolds 1977:194-95).

The more concentrated settlement patterns of this "temple urbanism," based on the developing religious institutions, allowed the integration of wider agrarian zones within the larger complexes seen around Tiruvidaimarudur. Administrative termi- nology, sanctioned by the Chola kings, at times gave official recognition to these wider areas of integration, and names like Kutamukku or Palaiyaru came to apply to large territories. The "urban" character of these larger administrative units rested, however, on the integration of a number of individual settlements, grouped around ritual centers, that preserved in themselves the characteristics of the village. Surviving information from Palaiyaru, the Chola capital, suggests that the boundaries of the "city" were temples generally oriented toward the cardinal directions. There is little indication that habitation sites were densely packed within the area demarcated by the temples; instead, there were a number of discrete, compact sites grouped around temples, with large spaces devoted to cultivated fields or pastures (Minakshisundarar and Pandarathar 1951:28-30). But the administrative recognition of this extended area as one place, the extensive and integrated commercial or manufacturing networks, and especially the ritual interactions of the many temples formed the complex in- frastructure of a major central place. In the absence of defensive walls, the settlement patterns and intense regional interactions of the capital shaded into the local networks preserved at peripheral centers like Tiruvidaimarudur.

The vast majority of the resources tapped by the growing temple networks involved the produce from cultivated lands allocated to religious institutions. The descriptions of these lands in the temple inscriptions provide several clues concerning the extent of cultivation and the temples' roles in agrarian expansion during the Chola period, when subsidiary channels and cultivable tracts were progressively added to preexisting irrigation systems. In Vadakadu the entire area north of the village was probably added during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries after the construction of a major new feeder canal. In Tirukkovalur lands in the far west and south of the small lake were the sites of agrarian expansion contingent on the construction of irrigation facilities. Around Tiruvidaimarudur the wide extent of reclamation projects appears in the concentration of donated lands on the borders of villages that in turn bordered on more ancient cultivated zones. The continuing expansion of arable tracts indicates that new irrigation works were opening up new areas of settlement. The temple records demonstrate that religious institutions were important foci for inputs of capital allowing agrarian expansion in their vicinity. The expansion preserved in surviving records may represent only a fraction of the development occurring throughout Tamil Nadu, perhaps mostly outside temple auspices, but there is no doubt that the strategic central locations of development around the temples were of great importance to the political and economic leaders who provided donations.

The Chola kings played a large part in agrarian development when they initiated or sanctioned the donation of peripheral lands to brahmadeyam or devadanam endowments. The kings provided tax relief and/or ownership of lands to overarching organizations that then mobilized men and resources for cultivation. Locally dominant brahmana communities also played a large part, by the supervision of cultivators, tenants, and laborers on their brahmadeyam grants, or by projects organized under the auspices of temples. The later concentration of a variety of land rights in the name of the gods prompted temple staffs to guarantee the cultivation of marginal lands through a variety of arrangements with cultivating groups. In the final analysis, it was these cultivators who were the prime motivators of land reclamation. Most of

818 JAMES HEITZMAN

the work fell on small-scale cultivators, hungry for land, who entered into contracts with the brahmanas and the temples to supervise agricultural labor in return for several levels of cultivating rights. But these humble peasants appear rarely in the surviving records; the secular personages who do appear often possessed high titles and alienated their own extensive rights to large amounts of land. They belonged to the group that organized the construction of irrigation works and controlled property in land (kdni). They formed a nobility above the average cultivator but still based their position on a personal supervision of local production and resource distribution.

There were several motivations for participation by powerful local personages in agrarian expansion through the temples. A primary practical concern may have been the allocation of cultivating rights to the new lands. The Chola country after the year 1000 witnessed a greater concern for the delineation of property and tenurial rights, especially in the area around the Kaveri River. Within the context of temple land ownership, cultivating groups appeared more often as possessors of "cultivators' rights" (kuti kdni) assuring permanency of tenure on lands officially controlled by higher agencies like religious institutions. The control of the cultivators' shares of agrarian produce entailed an equally important control over the labor of subtenants and agricultural laborers. The persons who initiated the expansion of temple lands had a large say, officially or unofficially, in the allocation of cultivation rights along with their appended control over men. Agrarian expansion was in this way a method of increasing bases of clientage that were undoubtedly closely allied to kinship links (Tirumalai 1981:233-44; Heitzman 1985a:163-73; Derrett 1977:263-64). In addition, the initiators of temple endowments were in a position to influence the allocation of ritual or administrative positions connected with larger amounts of ritual events and incoming produce, and perhaps they even had access to highly prized sacralized food that possessed an exchange value of its own (Appadurai 1977). These practical advantages accompanied the social prestige of participating in the donation systems officially sanctioned by the Chola kings and thus reinforced the political purposes that motivated temple donations.

Conclusion

The three case studies from South India presented here portray the physical layout and the social processes involved in the evolution of early urban sites. The existence of numerous inscriptions describing central events in the formation of temple endowments allows an in-depth view of pristine cities that in many other world areas are accessible primarily through archaeological remains. We are fortunate to have contemporaneous written records in the South Indian cases that support conclusions useful for comparative study with urbanism elsewhere.

The central places of the Pallava-Chola periods were relatively independent, indigenous developments that were quite new in South India. In Paul Wheatley's terms, they exhibited characteristics of "primary" rather than "secondary" urbanism, that is, their developmental patterns were subject to few external influences (Wheatley 1971:225-56). This remains true despite the legacy of ancient North Indian civilization, which did bequeath to South India a wide variety of linguistic and cultural forms, and despite the existence of early cities such as Madurai, which knew con- tinuous occupation for over two thousand years. The dislocations of the fifth century caused major discontinuities in the early networks of trade, polity,and cultural tra- ditions that marked southern India as a major outpost of ancient Indian urban tra-


ditions. Whereas western Europe retained the outlines of Roman urbanism in the survival of the walled cite and its ecclesia (Fevrier et al. 1980:123-26, 423-49; Latouche 1961:103-12), the ancient Indian pattern of concentrated settlements and suburban monastic sites does not appear in the Chola-period settlements.

The sites that grew up around temples during the Chola period exhibit a variety of traits that classify them as cities, from the standpoints of either the Childe tradition38 or the central-place approach.39 Monumental architecture existed in the large and ornate stone temples that stood at the hearts of the settlements. Occupational specialization was mirrored in the separate assemblies that handled local affairs, dominated by elite groups of brahmanas, merchants, and leaders of agrarian society. Ar- tisans and long-distance merchants interacted through the nagaram, stimulated by the concentrations of ritual specialists and luxury goods demanded for temple cults. The centrality of the temple sites for interactions with a wider hinterland occurred on several levels: economic interaction took place through trade in metals, salt, and specialized ritual items (e.g., camphor) for temples but was probably overshadowed by transactions in agrarian produce from temple landholding networks. The temple sites were foci for political legitimation manifested in donations by leaders from outside the ceremonial centers (cf. Ludden 1985:29). Extended networks of com- munication existed in the brahmana communities, with many of their members trac- ing ancestry to rather distant locations and with a hoary religious tradition that always remained pan-Indian in scope.40

Density of population remains elusive in Chola-period urbanism. Although population statistics are unavailable, it is doubtful that figures approached one thousand at a small site like Vadakadu or exceeded several thousands at Tirukkovalur or Ti- ruvidaimarudur. Even within the rather nucleated habitation areas there were gardens and fields that broke up housing concentrations and separated different occupational communities. Agglomeration into larger administrative units was probably an official grouping of many individual sites without large-scale topographical changes. Walls, for example, existed only around the temples. The centrality of irrigation agriculture to the riverine economies of the early sites undoubtedly encouraged the relatively nucleated habitation sites and their rather even spread in small centers throughout alluvial regions, allowing each ceremonial center access to its own fields and the products of satellite villages. But the physical difference between village and urban life was not abrupt; it was marked perhaps by larger sizes or numbers of neighborhoods or by the temple towers seen from afar. The pattern of village and central places stands midway between the walled cities of early northern China or western Europe and the decentralized sites of the classic Maya, perhaps approximating more closely the pattern of Sumeria in the third millennium B.C. (see Adams 1981:61-81; Michell and Filliozat 1982; Fritz, Michell, and Nagaraja Rao 1985).

3 V. Gordon Childe's presentation (1950) of the characteristics of urban sites included dense population, monumental architecture, occupational specialization, dominant elite groups, long- distance trade, and artisanal residence. For a discussion of the "trait-complex" approach and its relationships to other approaches, see Wheatley (1972). For the applicability of Childe's tradition, see Robert Adams (1966:9-14; 1972:735).

3 The central-place approach concentrates on networks of trade, administration, and commu- nication. The main terminals for the most "effi- cient" operations of networks are cities, tending

to exhibit some or all of the characteristics developed by trait-complex approaches. See Blanton (1976; 1981:392-400); Hammond (1974); Robert Adams (1981); Hohenberg and Lees (1985:47- 73).

40 Numerous personal names of brahmanas in Chola-period records include place-names connected at some point with the ancestors of those persons. The brahmanas may have retained contact with those places through kinship links or intel- lectual lineages. At some major sites, such as Chi- dambaram, brahmanas from the north came on the invitation of the kings. See Kulke (1969:419-21).

820 JAMES HEITZMAN

The continuum of changes in the three case studies exemplifies the dynamics of development in ceremonial centers. It must be stressed first that all the social in- gredients of urban society-priests, merchants, agrarian political leaders-predate the formation of temple endowments. The question of first causes is therefore un- answerable here; the original stimulus for settlement could depend equally on a pri- mordial agricultural community, the sacred site, or commercial advantage. Donation records indicate that urban characteristics occurred when indigenous political and economic infrastructures, evolving slowly over perhaps four centuries, achieved a level of interactive complexity that produced regional political integration. The overarching political authority of the Chola dynasty stimulated the ostentatious displays of religious largesse that supported early brahmana communities and later temples. The kings created systems of endowments that were remarkably uniform and encouraged the construction of monuments and cults that similarly exhibited stylistic uniformity throughout Tamil Nadu. But the direct actions of the Chola rulers usually remained limited to the official recognition of tax-free status or the alienation of land titles to areas that in many cases may have been relatively undeveloped or limited in extent. The kings attempted to establish templates of ritualized integration through grants to religious institutions that would provide models for political legitimacy with the kings themselves at the top. Nevertheless, the bulk of donations were public displays initiated by subordinate political actors who demonstrated their own piety (and power) over more limited realms-the Malaiyaman or Coliyavaraiyan rulers, the several levels of entitled leadership. The donations of the many local rulers toward local deities inexorably transformed the independent brahmana settlements into temple endowments staffed by brahmanas. The necessary role of commercial networks in providing goods for growing populations of nonproducers and for temples stimulated the nagaram and artisan groups, but the world of mercantile capital occupied a subordinate position in the ritual centers.

The royal decentralization implicit in Chola-period urbanism may offer instructive parallels for other world areas. Mayan ceremonial centers, for example, exhibit many of the characteristics seen in South India: relatively dispersed settlement patterns, large numbers of small sites, "segmentary" political orders (Hammond 1975; Sanders and Price 1968:45-46, 140-45; Coe 1984a:83-84; Coe 1984b:89-102; Bray 1972:913-15). In both areas, the primacy of local lineage leaders in an agrarian setting is consistent with a mercantile component and with political authority that encouraged styles of ritual elaboration and largesse constituting primary vehicles for its own expansion. In medieval Europe, the policies of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings similarly concentrated on the patronage of Gallic ecclesiastical institutions, encour- aging the growth of the cite and its suburbs within a politically decentralized system (Pirenne 1956; Ennen 1979; Reynolds 1977). For Sumeria, we may posit the existence of numerous agrarian leaders who manifested their influence in ceremonial centers that grew on sites of preexisting commercial or cultic significance and supported expanding dynastic pretensions. Underlying these political factors in urban growth were movements toward agrarian expansion that certainly encouraged population growth. I would suggest that a model of multiple subordinate actors and the importance of agrarian elites could profitably inform the study of urban origins even in those areas (such as Mexico or Egypt) where data support a strong centrist bias (Adams 1966:118-19, 154-65; Adams 1977).

Several writers have portrayed the ceremonial center as a stage in evolution toward a more militaristic society dominated by imperial polities (Adams 1966:133-54, 172-73; Wheatley 1971:308-21; Wheatley 1978: 145-58; Wheatley 1983:303-5,


325-27). South India offers some remarkable parallels here, for the Chola polity, relatively more bureaucratized and unstable in its later stages, gave way eventually to the Vijayanagara polity that united all southern India under a single administration geared for warfare with the north. The growth of this larger and more intrusive political force coincided with a continued expansion of temple endowments into dominant local interests in their own right and with growing social stratification and conflict within the commercial and artisan communities of the temple cities (Stein 1980:400-405, 427-34; Stein 1985b:395-400; Palat 1986; Karashima and Sub- barayalu 1983). The Chola-period origins of the ceremonial centers thus initiated an expanding process of economic and political integration culminating in constant warfare and later, in the seventeenth century, in the collapse of the indigenous system and conquest from without. This scenario, familiar from earlier urban evolutions, led in the South Indian case to incorporation within the British Empire.

List of References

Abbreviations

ARE Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy.

El Epigraphia Indica.

KK Kutantai kalvettukkal. Ed. N. Marxiyagandhi. Madras: Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, 1980.

SII South Indian Inscriptions.

SITI South Indian Temple Inscriptions. Ed. T. N. Subrahmaniam. Madras Gov- ernment Oriental Series no. 157. Madras: Government Oriental Manu- scripts Library, 1953-57.

TK Tirutturaipp7nti kalvettukkal. Ed. R. Nagaswami. Madras: Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, 1978.

All citations of ARE in this article refer to estampages or transcripts viewed at the Indian Epigraphy Office in Mysore. My thanks to Dr. K. V. Ramesh and his staff there for their assistance in reading unpublished records.

Works Cited

Adams, Richard E., ed. 1977. The Origins of Maya Civilization. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Adams, Robert McC. 1966. The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

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