South Indian Kingdoms: Cholas and their administration

NCERT states that the Chola inscriptions refer to more than 400 terms for taxes; the most frequently mentioned is vetti, taken not in cash but in the form of forced labour, and kadamai, or land revenue. Other levies fell on thatching houses, using a ladder to climb palm trees, succession to family property and so on.

NCERT (Class VI) explains that muvendar means 'three chiefs' and refers to the heads of the Chola, Chera and Pandya families, who became powerful in south India about 2,300 years ago. Each had two centres, an inland one and a coastal one; of these six, Puhar (Chola) and Madurai (Pandya) were the most important. The chiefs received gifts and tribute rather than regular taxes and shared their wealth with kin, soldiers and poets, who were rewarded with gems, gold, horses, elephants, chariots and cloth.

Our Pasts II explains that settlements of peasants (ur) became prosperous and groups of them formed larger units called nadu. In brahmadeyas, the land was looked after by an assembly of prominent Brahmana landholders, the sabha, while associations of traders, the nagaram, also did administrative work in towns. Statement 1 gives the sabha's role to the ur.

Our Pasts II says that a minor chiefly family, the Muttaraiyar, held power in the Kaveri delta as subordinates of the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram. Vijayalaya, of the ancient Chola family from Uraiyur, captured the delta from them, built the town of Thanjavur and a temple for the goddess Nishumbhasudini there.

Rajaraja I, whom NCERT calls the most powerful Chola ruler, conquered the northern part of Sri Lanka and, according to his inscriptions, the 'old islands of the sea numbering 12,000', identified with the Maldives. Statement 3 is wrong: Gangaikondacholapuram was founded by his son Rajendra I to commemorate the northern campaign that reached the Ganga.

Kulottunga I (Rajendra Chalukya) was the son of the Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja Narendra of Vengi and of a Chola princess, a daughter of Rajendra I. When the main Chola line failed in 1070 he took the throne at Gangaikondacholapuram, beginning the Chalukya-Chola line; he is also remembered by the title 'he who abolished tolls'.

Nilakanta Sastri describes the Chola empire as divided into provinces called mandalams, each split into valanadus, which in turn grouped several nadus of villages; Rajaraja I is credited with reorganising the valanadus. The valanadu was thus an intermediate territorial unit, not an institution or an endowment.

All three are correct. The Larger Leiden plates record the Chudamani vihara at Nagapattinam built by the Shailendra king Maravijayottungavarman and a village granted to it in Rajaraja I's time, showing that relations were at first friendly. Rajendra I's raid on Srivijaya and Kadaram (c. 1025) is usually explained as a move to remove obstacles to Indian trade with China, and Chola missions reached the Song court in the eleventh century.