Temple Urbanism in Medieval South India Author(s): James Heitzman Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.

46, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 791-826 Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057102 Accessed: 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

Tamil country of South India experienced a flowering of political, economic, and cultural forces during the Chola period (849-1279). The environments supporting 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 portraythe 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 areasand 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 phenomena (Wheeler 1968; Fairservis 1975:217-311; Possehl 1979). The second phase
James Heitzman is a South Asia research analyst 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 diacritical marks. Only the first three occurrences of a Tamil or Sanskrit term appearwith diacritics and in italicized form. For diacritics on place names, see the maps.

the

791

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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 urbanrevolution 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 Economic Delhi in c. 1200 (The Cambridge Historyof 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 Mediterraneanworld) 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 Pallavaperiod came to fruition during the subsequent reigns of the Chola kings, when many areasof 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; Pandarathar195861; Spencer 1983). Although earlier scholars tended to stress the centralized, bureaucratic 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 researchhas 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 manifestation of more parochial authority, depended on displays of piety through religious
' The urban character and economic importance of Pumpuhar and Madurai appear in Danielou (1969:8-22, 94-98) and the Maturaikkd,nci, summarized in Kanakasabhai([19041 1956:13337). For early Kanchipuram, see Indian Archaeol-

ogy-A Review (1969-70:34-35; 1970-71: 3233; 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 areasa political and economic integration begun under the Pallavakings (Stein 1960; Hall and Spencer 1980:140-45; Hall 1984). Corporategroups 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 agrarianzone based often on common irrigation facilities. The ndttdrwere local powerholders responsible for administrative decisions or even for tax collection (Subbarayalu 1973:19-49; Subbarayalu1982:273-74, 298-99; Stein 1980:90-109, 118-26; Stein 1985a:61-64). Paralleling the ndttdr,who relied on their control over the dominant agrariansystem, were extended systems of interregional trade carriedon 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 In the neighborhood of growing temples, the assemblies of all meetings of the hurdr. 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-nciduassemblies (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 primaryhistorical sourcesfor the Chola period arevast numbersof inscriptions engraved on the stone walls of temple structures recording donations of land, money, agrarianproduce, 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 landmarksin its vicinity. Often the boundariesinclude permanentphysical features such as hills and rivers or relatively stable man-made featuressuch as temples or village habitation sites. A substantial percentage of the boundaries are irrigation facilities including rivers, lakes, and canals, which probablychanged 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 Vijayanagaraperiod (fourteenthsixteenth centuries) in South India, see Raghotham

(1983). For medieval Orissa, see Kulke (1979:1719, 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 portrayaland 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 Tiruvidaimarudurnear 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 differencesin 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 agrarianeconomy. Temple Lands at Vadakadu: The Frontiers of Cultivation The village of Vadakadu4lies 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 nearbyMuthupet and Tirutturaippundi towns. Although the village site of Vadakaduoccupies a fairly extensive area, there are no large-scaleconstructions 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 MantrapuresvaraSwamy, 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 courtyardsat 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 riversthat originally receive the runofffrom the Kaveri River through major canals. A great deal of effort has been expended recently in Tirutturaippundi taluk to strengthen and extend the irrigation canalsfeeding 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 Vadakaduthe 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 KandappirichchanRiver and subsidiarychannels, and East Nammankurichchi, supplied through channels paralleling the Bamiyan River. Presently all cultivable lands in these and in surroundingvillages 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 longtime inhabitants and local accountants, and a comparison 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 Komoguchi (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.

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

795

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<)

~~~TIRUKKOYIU

UMPUHAR

t~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VADAKADU U.

100

MADURAI
20 20' 780 0 s 40 =i40miles
800

80 km.

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

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 inscriptions6from the temple describe the initial stages of temple land control around Vadakadu. The earliest record dates from 1123 and presupposes an already viable agricultural community called Cattanam, also known as Keralakulacanicaturvedimankalam.' 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 Cattanamwere basically the same as the modern locations. West of the village site lay agricultural fields called Vikkiramacolanallur,probably including some lands of brahmanasand definitely including, in the southern sections, lands allocated for village service personnel such as carpenters (taccar)and goldsmiths (tattdn;TK 181, 198). West of Vikkiramacolanallur 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 Vikkiramacolanallurinto 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 IrajakampiraColiyavaraiyan, 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. Murugesa 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. Rajagopal, 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 Tondaimandalam (TK 214). A village called Paiyur lies in North Arcot in Arni taluk. A village called Payyur lies in North Arcot in Cheyyar taluk (Kirdmankalinakarravaricaippatti 1972:3,8). See further a Payjyurkottam 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 indications that administrations altered the recorded sizes of a veli according to official whims (Subbarayalu 1981:97-105). In this article I have attempted to draw land extents approximately to a scale of 6.74 acres per veli.

TEMPLE

URBANISM

IN MEDIEVAL

SOUTH

INDIA

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See the text for descriptions of the numbered lands.

Temple Lands at Vadakadu During the Chola Period

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 Coliyavain charge of local raiyanas a "ruler"(vanniyar)here, with a subordinate (akampatiyar) = TK 203,208}). Notables in Nampankuricci security (kdval kuli; ARE 1908:192 C transferredproperty (kdni)there to the temple and defrayedtaxes 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 resourcesfor the deity there. The prominence of local commerce, probably based on the exploitation of salt marshes along the coast, appearsin 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 brahmanaassembly of Keralakulacanicaturvedimankalamwas deprived of the official enjoyment of the expanding temple lands, the brahmanafamilies 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 brahmanasor 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, unmentioned in earlierrecords, comprised brahmanalands in the early thirteenth century (Map 2, no. 2; TK 182, 183, 198, 209, 224). The settlement of Kalyanapurankontacolanallur, several kilometers to the west, was also a brahmanaenclave.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 Karnataka state) took place during the eleventh century, the naming (and perhaps the foundation) of Kalyanapurankontacolanallur("the temple village of the Chola who took Kalyanapuram")probably occurred during that time.

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

799

donations by brahmanasbounded irrigation facilities north of Vadakadu corresponding to the modern Kandappirichchanand 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 Cattanamvillage were cultivable, probably under brahmana control, in the early thirteenth century. Several features of these inscriptional referencesto 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, irrigating 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 to a "gift for the god" (devadinam)infrom a "gift for brahmanas"(brahmadeyam) corporated the original brahmanatitles 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 Tondaimandalamto 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 headquartersof a taluk with the same name on the southern bank of the Pennai River. The place has a very long recordedhistory; it was the scene

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JAMES HEITZMAN

of legendary exploits recorded in Sangam literature from the early Christian era (Srinivasan 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 "easternvillage," in lists of inscriptions) centers on a Siva temple that in Chola times was the abode of Tiruvirattanattu udaiyar. The Vishnu temple has receivednumerousdonations from devotees since the Chola period, and its original Chola-period architecture is surrounded by massive and impressive 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 monasteryadministers the temple's affairsfrom 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 (periyaeri) or a small lake (cirreri)south and west of Tirukkoyilur town (see Map 3). In accordancewith 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. of the Vishnu temple describes TirukThe legendary history (sthala purdynam) koyilur (then called Tirukkovalur, the name retained for the rest of this study) as originally a brahmanacommunity in which the main activities were the performances of sacrifices, worship, and austerities by brahmanas and religious mendicants. Although the Vishnu temple and bathing sites (tirtham)on the Pennai River were important in this early community, the presenceof the brahmanasappearsas antecedent. Surrounding the community was a wilderness full of ferocious beasts (Tirukkivalgr sthalapuronam1978:10-12). Despite the ratherformulaicportrayalof the settlement, which is simply a localized version of the forest hermitage (Granyam) appearing in classical literature, the legendary history here may preservea memory of some original that grew up in the early history of settled agriculture along the Pennai. brahmadeyam The wilderness around the settlement correspondsto 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 ampalamduring the Chola period. This is a

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

ASIA SOUTH IN MEDIEVAL TEMPLE URBANISM

801

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Lands

at Tirukkoyilur

. SUbPeriO 1...9-85.SbPrOd2..95-07;SUPeiO eXt fr the Se 178-129. = 4 P. .TrUkY1r.SI7.3,.3,1914;E 31,38,32.32.3-4,35,38.49.5;.943525 .... 7:863, 1905:11,~ <2 ~~~........

During.the.
deSriPtinS

Chola.......
Ofthe

311,~~~~~~~~~........

~ ~

. 3,9 ................,8

00-17;.UberO .3=. nmbere ...... 6;.AR.190:2;.92.1309 142-4;. STI. .46.5; 2,44 IT 2 ; , ,91 3,91 ........

Klr
4 ; R

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 surroundingwall, an additidnalwall 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 coveredwith flowergardens (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 referdirectly to the easternstreet. 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 Maturantakacaturvedimankalam,the name bestowed on the brahmanacommunity here in the early Chola period. 14 Much of the space in the area of the ampalamwas 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 areanorth of the ampalam, near the major canals, contained minor temples of Pillaiyar and Subrahmanyamand 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 nagaramat 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 nagaramwas 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 Tirukkovalurparalleled the presence of naduwide 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 sabhaicomes from the 21st regnal year of the Rashthe twelfth century exist on the walls of the second trakuta king Krishna III (SII 7:897 [= El 7, pp. surrounding wall (prdkdram).The earliest record 142-43). The Rashtrakutas, based in what is now on these walls comes from A.D. 1133 (ARE Maharashtra state, overran the northern areas of 1921:349). Tamil Nadu for about thirty years in the mid-tenth 14 The earliest reference to the Tirukkovalur century.

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

803

Two inscriptions describe the boundaries of Tirukkovaluraround the year 1000. Kannattampativillage 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 Venmaruvillage, 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 Maturantakacaturvedimankalammay 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 kiranurand 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 configurations 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 (periyaeri; ARE 1921:211, 322, 341, 345). The large lake, never specificallymentioned 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 Cholaperiod 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" (cirrerivdykkdl), 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 15 The lands of the Siva temple lay around during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
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 Tirukkovalurtown and to the west (Map 3, nos. 15, 16, 21-30). Landsof 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 caturvedimankalam.Earliertransactionsinvolved brahmanaassembly of Maturantaka sales of land by the brahmanaassembly 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 brahmanaassembly 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 interspersedamong 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 8 Other lands mentioned as boundaries refer to ensecurity personnel (kaikkolar). dowments 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 appearin 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 referencesto urarfrom Tirukkovalur. There was, then, a bifurcation of roles between the ritual personnel of the two temples and agriculturalgroups tilling the land. Most of Tirukkovalur was a separateritual 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 .2 its immediate environs 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 defrayedtax 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 brahmanacommunity, mixed with

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; SII7:139, 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

16

1921:318, 349. For the Jain monastery (palliccantam), see SII 7:890, ARE 1905:2 (= SITI 42). For the temple of cuppiramaniyapillaiydr, see ARE 1905:2. 20 Lands outside the immediate area of Tirukkovalur 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 Heitzman (1985a:210-11).

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

805

Table 1. Donors at Tirukkovalur During the Chola Period 2 Subperiod Subperiod1 Subperiod 4 3 Subperiod
(849-985)a (985-1070)a (1070-1178)a ( 1 178-1279)a

Type of Donor Individualbrahmanas Brahmana assemblies (sabhai) Shepherds Merchants Local leaders Persons with high honorific titles Miladu or Malaiyaman rulers Chola kings/queens
TOTAL:

Number% Number % Number % Number % 5 1 6 4 4

5b

11 9 9
11

4 1
fc

6 6 13 19 56

1 5 10 1

6 28 56 6

8d

17 20 20 4

7 2 17

26 7 63

2 3 9

9 9 2

18 100 46 100 16 100 27 100 The four-part in Sitaraman, chronology usedherefirstappeared andSubbarayalu Karashima, (1976:89); Karashima, andMatsui Subbarayalu, (1978:xlv).
a
b

onedonation c Includes by nagarattdr.

d

Includestwo donations by corporate bodiesor merchants (nagarattdr).

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 cultivate 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 The cultivators and associated laborers, groups of agricultural laborers (paraiyar).22 invisible in the recordedtransactionsof 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 recordsand the numbers of donations given by donors during four separatesubperiods within the Chola period. These data demonstrate that significant persons and groups within the ritual center and economy of Tirukkovalurcontributed relatively little to the expansion of the temple networks. Noteworthy among those individuals not appearing are brahmanasand merchants, who acted more often as

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

22

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

administratorsof the temple or receiversof 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. Shepherdsprovided as many donations as brahmanas or merchants, testifying to the close interpenetrationof 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 leadershipbased primarily on control of the agrarianeconomy outside Tirukkovalur. The categories of leadership are suggested by a hierarchy of titles attached to personal names in the inscriptions. At the lowest level were persons whose names appearwithout 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 appearsin the names of persons associatedwith high honorific titles, typically containing epithets of kings, who in addition were often "possessors" in one or more places. These persons accounted for an averageof 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 Maharashtrastate to the northwest, who overran the northern reaches of Tamil Nadu for a period of about thirty years.25The 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 intermarriagewith the Cholas (Srinivasan1980:120-31; Trautmann, 1981:391). After 1070 a new lineage calling itself Malaiyaman, harking back to ancient rulers of this area, took control of Tirukkovalurand 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 paradeof subordinate little kings who ruled the area. These noble donors were responsible for by far the largest amount of resourcesdonated 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 brahmanasand temple administrations.
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 representing the dynasties of the ancient Cheras, Pan23

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).

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

807

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 separatefrom the temple, probably cultivated by small peasants either independently or in subordination to largerlandowners. 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 brahmadeyamprogressively alienated their lands. Simultaneously, the donations of secular notables gave the temples greater access to the agrarianresourcesfrom more and more lands within the boundariesof 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 Tirukkovalur nevertheless contains several hints of local agrarianexpansion. 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 referenceto Panriyur
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 perpetuates 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 accountant of Tirukkovalur, and a number of instructors at a local high school. My thanks to all of these people and to L. Thyagarajanand to Ram Anirai Kavalan for arranging the interviews with
26

them.
27 One inscription from the Siva temple refers to the "lamp shepherd of this god" (inndyandrtiruvilakku 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 gartoday. dens near the river remain dry lands (puncey)

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 Tirukkovalur, renderedmore 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 flourishedduring the later Chola period, revealsmore clearly the role of seculardonors in temple landholdings and the continuing role of temples in agrariandevelopment. 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 Tiruvidaimarudur 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 Kumbakonam taluk (see Map 4). The central place in this area in medieval times, as today, was the town of Kumbakonam (medieval Kutamukku), located about ten kilometers west of these four formed by the branching of several major efmzikku) places in the "corner"(ko.nam, 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. Palaiyaruand Kutamukku contained a number of important brahmanasettlements, temples, royal palaces, and military encampments and were the scenes of major political and diplomatic events throughout the Chola and Pandarathar195 1). The period (Champakalakshmi1979:6-19; Minakshisundarar wide official boundaries of Kutamukku stretched in the east to include the temple (Map 4, no. village of Tirunagesvaramand lands as far as Karampaitillainayakanallur 10; Champakalakshmi 1979:9-10). Any discussion of Chola-period developments around Tiruvidaimarudurproceeds in the context of a large and active royal presence centered in nearby Kutamukku.29

29 Kulottunga Chola III (1178-1218) constructed the great Kampaharesvaratemple only a few kilometers west of Tiruvidaimarudur. This was

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

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

809

The configuration of settlements and activities within the immediate vicinity of Tiruvidaimarudurresembles 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 surroundedthe temple walls and other streets branchedoff 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),perhapscomprising 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 separatefrom Tiruvidaimarudurbut in fact functioned as the most important assembly monitoring temple affairs.The early formation that is, a simultaneous endowment of lands at Tiraimur into a devaddna-brahmadeyam, 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 Tiruvidaimarudur 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 referencesto 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 uninformative referencesto 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 reasonfor 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 agrarianproduce directly into the temple. As at Vadakadu, the early control of these large expansesby 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). Inscriptions from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries appeared on the first and second prdkdramand, in one doubtful case (SII 23:310), on the east tower of the second prd am. References to the temple entrances (tiruvacal) on the south and east appear in SII 23:2&8. 31 The tirumanicana peruvali in Tiruvidaimarudur (SII 23:291) headed north. References to a "big road"at Tiruvidaimarudur (SII 5:722) and at Adudurai 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.

Hall (1982:397-403) states that the name of the nagaram at Tiruvidaimarudur was Kumaramattantapuram, coming down from Pallava times, although the single Chola-period reference to this name provides no clues to its location (SII 23:227). Manaparanapuramseems 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 placenames. My thanks to Ella Shum of the DRL Computer 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.

32

810

JAMES HEITZMAN

0~~~~~~~~~~
zz

ui

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cn . 0.

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<~

UJ

LU

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C-4

T~*l@0

Map~~~~~ 4.. TepeLnsi

etrlKvr

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et

C,~~~ICI

Arrows indicate the direction of resource flow from lands in villages. Enclosed areas indicate resource flow from groups of villages combining lands for temples. 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.
NOTE:

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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 resembledthe 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 arenaof the Tiruvidaimarudurtemple 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 Tiruvidaimarudurtemple 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 brahmanacommunities 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 Tiruvidaimaruduritself, 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 transferredto the temples were usually compact for the temples, but blocks that were often given their own names as new devaddnam 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 Tiruvidaimarudurand Maruttuvakkudiis particularlyinstructive. 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

SII 5:716, 718; 23:249, 264; (Ceynnalur)SII

(Vannakkuti) SIl 23:272, 273; (Vilankuti)

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

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

813

large extent of settlement boundaries was probably an administrative convenience that labeled wide spaces undergoing limited exploitation, in the same way that Kutamukku 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 Maruttuvakkudiand the brahmadeyamvillages 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 Maruttuvakkudiand 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 brahmadeyamat 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 contributing brahmana villages. The entire southern group and the two distant groups of villages to the east lie on the bordersof two or more nadu (nos. 17-19, 20-23, 2733; SII 23:289, 301, 386, 389; Subbarayalu 1973: maps 6, 7). Thus the earlier brahmadeyamsettlements existed on the bordersof the integrated irrigation networks and agrarian economy, in the same way that the later temple lands existed on the boundaries of the stabilized brahmadeyamsettlements. The Chola kings played a large part in the creation of the earlier brahmanacommunities 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 brahmadeyamand other village lands into devadanam lands in the later Chola period.35In several instances the Chola king and his queen initiated rituals at the Mankalakkutitemple (no. 14) and authorizedthe transferof 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 Centamankalamudaiyan (SII 23:393). The grant of lands at Veppattur originated in the official request by a certain Brahmarayan (ARE 1910:5 1). The referencesto these notables even in the issuance of royal edicts, combined with the numerous referencesto their activities in many of the land deals described in the inscriptions, implies that they were behind most of the transactionsthat 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; Heitzman 1982:291-95)y; (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 Veppattur; 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 Tiruvidaimarudur, other requestors are Kalappalarayan(SII 5:708), Cirukulattur utaiyan (SII 23:257), Katavarayan (SII 23:272), and Vanadhirajan (SII 23:288, 289).

814

JAMES HEITZMAN

Table 2. Donors at Tiruvidaimaradur During the Chola Period 2 Subperiod 4 Subperiod1 Subperiod 3 Subperiod
(849-985) (985-1070)a (1070-1 178)a (1 178-1279)3

Type of Donor Individualbrahmanas Brahmana assemblies (sabhai) Shepherds

Number% Number % Number % Number % 1 2 4 11 13 30 17 7 17

100
-

3 1
-

8 3
-

10

2
6
7b

Merchants
Local leaders Persons with high honorific titles Agents of kings Chola kings/queens
TOTAL:
a

3 3 2 4 3 25 17 33 25
100

8c 4 2 3 40 20 30

16d

8 22 10 28 6 5 16 14

9 4 9 54

12

36 100

10 100

The four-partchronologyused here first appearedin Sitaraman,Karashima,and Subbarayalu and Matsui(1978:xlv). (1976:89); Karashima, Subbarayalu, b Includesthreedonations by corporate bodiesof merchants (nagarattdr).
Includes one donation by nagarattdr.
d

onedonation Includes of agriculturists andonedonation by a villageassembly (z7rdr) by nddu assembly

(ndttdr).

Table 2 presents the number of donations to the temple at Tiruvidaimarudurby 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 agrarianeconomy, 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 appearincreasingly 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 averageof 41 percent of donated resources. Note that the interference of the Cholas was through their official intermediaries, unlike the situation at Tirukkovalur where Miladu and Malaiyaman rulers appeared more often in person. Whereas in Tirukkovalur the Malaiyamanlords 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 agrarianexpansion through religious foundations now presents itself: the kings or other high-ranking personages would give wastelands or underutilized lands to communities of brahmanasand 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 bordersof the nadu, the zone of settled rice cultivation.

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

815

Later, the uncultivated borders of the brahmadeyamwere 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 agrarianeconomy with the brahmadeyamslowly gave way to a frameworkof temple control, as irrigation agriculture in the vicinity of sacredshrines expanded in two stages. Temples, Urbanism, and Political Economy in Medieval South India The study of temple landholding revealsthat temples in central Tamil Nadu grew from small bodies into larger ritual centers integrating within their administrative frameworksthe 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 agrarianinterests of temples and temple donors-interests concernedespecially 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 brahmanaendowment (brahmadeyam) either on virgin land or on top of a preexisting agricultural community. The presence of the brahmanasplaced a superior, nonlaboring class above the tenants and/or agriculturalworkerswithin a largely agrariansetting. 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 brahmadeyamwas accelerated by administrative decisions sanctioned by the kings, converting previous brahmanaendowments or cultivators' villages directly into estates for deities. During the centuries after the year 1000, seculardonors, 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 agrarianzones of central Tamil Nadu. Early nagaram were the heart of the small-scale exchange networks in some basic commodities (e.g., metals, salt, oil), manufacturedarticles (e.g., cloth), and luxury goods, which penetrated, 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 artisanalactivity. 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 manufacturinglived alongside the brahmana ritual specialists, the cultivating groups, and the agricultural laborers who congregated 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 Cattanamexhibits 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 appreciablyduring 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 that surroundsthe main temple on of streets revolves around the holy street (tiruvTti) 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 Tiruvidaimarudurdoes 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 areaswere interspersedwith 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 brahmanahouses (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 themthe brahmanas, the cultivating castes, the merchants, the artisans. Separate from these neighborhoods and fields lived the laboring populations essential for production processes. The large agrariancomponent in the local economies of the ritual centers determined 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 adjacentto 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 brahmadeyamendowments, preserved an agrarianeconomy in the heart of the mul37 In the sixteenth year of his reign, Kulottunga 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).

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

817

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 agrarianzones within the larger complexes seen around Tiruvidaimarudur. Administrative terminology, 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"characterof these larger administrative units rested, however, on the integration of a number of individual settlements, grouped around ritual centers, that preservedin themselves the characteristicsof 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 areaas one place, the extensive and integrated commercial or manufacturingnetworks, and especially the ritual interactions of the many temples formed the complex infrastructureof 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 agrarianexpansion 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 Tirukkovalurlands in the far west and south of the small lake were the sites of agrarianexpansion contingent on the construction of irrigation facilities. Around Tiruvidaimarudurthe 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 recordsmay representonly 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 agrariandevelopment 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 resourcesfor cultivation. Locally dominant brahmana communities also played a large part, by the supervision of cultivators, tenants, and laborers on their brahmadeyamgrants, 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 arrangementswith 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 resourcedistribution. There were several motivations for participation by powerful local personages in agrarianexpansion 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 agrarianproduce 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. Agrarianexpansion 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 portraythe 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 characteristicsof "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 continuous occupation for over two thousand years. The dislocations of the fifth century caused major discontinuities in the early networks of trade, polity,and cultural traditions that marked southern India as a major outpost of ancient Indian urban tra-

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

819

ditions. Whereas western Europe retained the outlines of Roman urbanism in the survivalof the walled cite and its ecclesia(Fevrieret 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 tradition38or the central-place approach.39Monumental architecture existed in the large and ornate stone temples that stood at the heartsof the settlements. Occupational specialization was mirroredin the separateassemblies that handled local affairs, dominated by elite groups of brahmanas, merchants, and leaders of agrariansociety. Artisans 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 agrarianproduce 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 communication existed in the brahmanacommunities, with many of their members tracing ancestry to ratherdistant locations and with a hoaryreligious 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 approachedone thousand at a small site like Vadakadu or exceeded several thousands at Tirukkovalur or Tiruvidaimarudur.Even within the rathernucleated habitation areasthere were gardens and fields that broke up housing concentrations and separateddifferent 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 markedperhapsby largersizes or numbersof 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, longdistance 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 communication. The main terminals for the most "efficient" 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 (1985:4773). 40 Numerous personal names of brahmanas in Chola-period records include place-names connected at some point with the ancestors of those persons. The brahmanasmay have retained contact with those places through kinship links or intellectual lineages. At some major sites, such as Chidambaram, brahmanasfrom 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 ingredients of urban society-priests, merchants, agrarianpolitical leaders-predate the formation of temple endowments. The question of first causes is therefore unanswerable here; the original stimulus for settlement could depend equally on a primordial agricultural community, the sacredsite, or commercial advantage. Donation records indicate that urban characteristicsoccurred when indigenous political and economic infrastructures,evolving slowly over perhapsfour centuries, achieved a level of interactive complexity that producedregional political integration. The overarching political authority of the Chola dynasty stimulated the ostentatious displays of religious largesse that supported early brahmanacommunities and later temples. The kings created systems of endowments that were remarkablyuniform 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 subordinatepolitical actorswho demonstratedtheir own piety (and power) over more limited realms-the Malaiyamanor Coliyavaraiyan rulers, the severallevels of entitled leadership. The donations of the many local rulers toward local deities inexorably transformed the independent brahmanasettlements into temple endowments staffed by brahmanas.The necessaryrole of commercial networks in providing goods for growing populations of nonproducersand for temples stimulated the nagaram and artisan groups, but the world of mercantile capital occupied a subordinate position in the ritual centers. The royal decentralizationimplicit in Chola-periodurbanismmay 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 primacyof local lineage leadersin an agrariansetting is consistent with a mercantile component and with political authority that encouraged styles of ritual elaborationand largesse constituting primary vehicles for its own expansion. In medieval Europe, the policies of the Merovingianand Carolingiankings similarly concentrated on the patronage of Gallic ecclesiastical institutions, encouraging 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 agrarianelites 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). Severalwriters have portrayedthe ceremonialcenter 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,

TEMPLE URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA

821

325-27). South India offers some remarkableparallels here, for the Chola polity, relatively more bureaucratizedand 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 Subbarayalu 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 El KK SII SITI Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy. EpigraphiaIndica. Kutantai kalvettukkal.Ed. N. Marxiyagandhi. Madras:Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, 1980. SouthIndian Inscriptions. SouthIndian Temple Ed. T. N. Subrahmaniam. Madras GovInscriptions. ernment Oriental Series no. 157. Madras:Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, 1953-57. kalvettukkal.Ed. R. Nagaswami. Madras:Tamil Nadu Tirutturaipp7nti State Department of Archaeology, 1978.

TK

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.

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