A Locality that Reaps the Bounty of Palar
INTRODUCTION
The Tamil University of Thanjavur holds about 200 bundles of palmleaf records, which were transferred there about 40 years ago from the office of the Collector of Chengalpattu district at Kancheepuram, where they had been lying for more than two hundred years. Each of these bundles contains about 800 uncut and untreated palmleaves, about a metre long and 3-4 centimetres wide, with writing on both sides in an older Tamil script. These manuscripts comprise 18th and early 19th century accounts of the localities of the Chengalpattu region that forms a part of the cultural and geographical area traditionally known as Thondaimandalam.
Of the 200 bundles of palmleaves, about 20 contain accounts compiled between 1767 to 1774 at the instance of a British military engineer, Thomas Barnard, and Raja Chengalvaraya Mudaliar, a Dubash employed by the British. These accounts of about 1,500 localities are part of the original data that formed the basis for an extensive survey of more than 2,000 localities of Chengalpattu, undertaken by Barnard on instructions from his superiors in the British administration. The survey was one of the very first efforts that the British made to understand the ways of the Indian people, before devising modes of effectively subjugating and administering them.
The records of that survey present an exquisitely detailed picture of the functioning of Indian society, economy and polity at its most basic level, before it was disrupted and transformed by the alien British administrators. Early British administrators, like Lionel Place, the first British Collector of Chengalpattu, got their ideas about the functioning of Indian society from such locality-level data. From their reports, ideas about the indigenous village economy and polity got incorporated into the Fifth Report presented to the House of Commons in 1813. That Report then became the basis for the misleading and perverted images of insular village republics of India that needed to be smashed before India could join the ranks of the progressive nations of the world. Such images were evoked and perpetuated by administrators and scholars like Charles Metcalfe, Karl Marx, Henry Maine, etc., and have become the main source of our understanding of the indigenous Indian polity.
A preliminary study of these 20 bundles of Tamil Palmleaf Accounts, along with the summary English records of the Barnard survey that are preserved in the Tamil Nadu State Archives, has been carried out by us at the Centre for Policy Studies. The detailed features of Tamil society of the 18th century that emerge from these accounts are indeed startling.
The palmleaf manuscripts record the amount of cultivated land under different crops and the actual produce of a village for each of the five years between 1762 and 1766. The accounts show that there were localities in this region that produced above 10 tons of paddy per hectare of cultivation per year. The manuscripts also provide a graphic picture of the layout of the localities of that time. They record the location and extent of every temple, pond, tank, well, Eri (irrigation tank), channel, garden, grove and forest in the locality. They give details of the streets, paddy-threshing grounds, cattle-grounds and burial grounds. They even give the name of every householder with the size of his house and backyard. The localities that the accounts describe were well laid-out with wide streets, large houses, and larger backyards. Often the habitation was surrounded by gardens, groves, forests, and Eris. And all the houses, including those in the Harijan section of the village, were fairly big.
The information recorded in these palmleaf manuscripts is extraordinarily important. It forces us to revise all our ideas about life and society in India towards the latter half of 18th century, immediately before the establishment of the British administration. We have so far been led to believe, on the basis of rather tenuous historical evidence, that India of that time was a poor, scientifically and technological backward, and socially and politically dysfunctional nation. The accounts presented in these palmleaf manuscripts, however, present a picture of an Indian society and polity that were the exact opposite of the images of poverty and dysfunction that have been presented to us.
The accounts describe a society that is unimaginably affluent compared to the India of today: The affluence is seen most strikingly in the per capita availability of foodgrains, which at around one ton per person per year was nearly five times the amount of grain that an average Indian had access to for the last more than 200 years. Only in the recent five years, annual per capita availability of food in India has begun to rise above 200 kg. The affluence of the eighteenth-century society of Chengalpattu is also visible in the range of cultural, economic, artisanal and administrative services that it supported. According to the records, less than half of the people of Chengalpattu of that time were involved exclusively in agriculture. The other half were engaged in manufacture, trade or the varied services that the localities supported through a share of their produce. The affluence of the society that these accounts describe is also visible in the layout, landscaping and dimensions of the habitations of the people, and the multiplicity and grandeur of the public spaces, especially the temples, of the region.
The society described in these palmleaf accounts must have been scientifically and technologically efficient. It is hardly possible for a locality to obtain agricultural production of the level of 10 tons per hectare without high scientific and technological skills. The system of eris that formed the backbone of the flourishing economy of the region is indeed known to be a marvel of technological sophistication.
The palmleaf accounts also present a picture of a society with very high level of corporate functioning. The localities maintained and provided for an extensive establishment of cultural, economic and administrative services, which often involved around 30 separate functions or functionaries and accounted for around one-third of the produce of the locality. In addition to such extensive local establishments, the localities maintained and provided for the larger regional functions and institutions. There were several high militia leaders, administrators, scholars, musicians, dancers and many cultural and religious institutions that had a share in the produce of hundreds of localities. As many as 1,200 localities gave a share of their produce for the maintenance of the great temple of Varadaraja Perumal at Kancheepuram. Thus, though the localities were largely self-sufficient in terms of their economic, cultural and administrative needs, they were certainly not insular. They seem to have functioned like the innermost circle of the oceanic polity of Mahatma Gandhi.
The society described in these accounts was highly equitable in its functioning. Almost every household and institution had a share in the produce and the polity. Preliminary calculations indicate that the average share of, say, the barber was not much lower than the average produce per household of the locality, or the average share of, say, the kanakkappillai, the locality registrar. The share in polity that this system ensured for every household in the region was perhaps even more important than the relative economic equality that flowed from it. The sharing arrangements of the region in a way provided to every household and every institution of the region a share in the sovereignty.
The arrangements described in the palmleaf manuscripts, and the ideas of sharing of the produce of the land and sovereignty in the polity, on which these arrangements were based, are derived from the classical Indian thought about the proper way of organising society and polity. These arrangements are similar to what is described in the Indian civilisational texts, and what is known to have prevailed in India during the reign of the great righteous kings of Indian antiquity and history. The fact that
Tamil society of late 18th century manifested such structures and ideas so elaborately, ought to invoke great pride in and respect for our heritage and the great contribution the Tamil region has made to it.
The organisation and functioning of the eighteenth-century Chengalpattu society are indicative of the way the people of India organised their affairs when they had the freedom to do so according to their own genius. Documenting and comprehending the society, economy and polity of the eighteenth-century Chengalpattu is of obvious value in working out a polity for today that would be in consonance with the genius and preferences of the Indian people and shall help us rebuild a strong and resurgent India, proud of herself and her place in the world of today.
In this monograph, we describe one of the localities of Chengalpattu for which we have both the archival data and the Tamil Palmleaf Manuscript Accounts of the Barnard Survey: Ullavur. It is one of the intensely agricultural and highly productive localities of Chengalpattu of that time. It is located on the northern bank of Palar in the neighbourhood of Thirumukkudal, the sacred confluence of the Palar, Cheyyar and Vegavathi. It also lies near and receives waters from Thenneri, an ancient and one of the largest Eris of the region.
According to the data compiled by us, the people of Ullavur, during the five year of 1762 to 1766, planted 6 distinct kinds of Paddy spread over the three sowing seasons prevalent in this part of India. In addition, they brought some dry land under a variety of millets and oilseeds. On the average, they harvested nearly a thousand tons of foodgrains per year with an average yield of 4.1 tons/ha for Paddy and 2.7 tons/ha for the Dry Grains. These are strikingly high yields even from the perspective of today.
Ullavur of that time was a small locality with only 83 households. Annual production of 1,000 tons amounted to 12.5 tons of foodgrains per household. This indeed represents great abundance. India, since the arrival of the British, has been able to produce no more than 1 ton of grains per household per year. That number has begun to move somewhat upwards only in the recent years.
Like other localities of the Chengalpattu Jaghire, Ullavur allocated a significant share of its abundant produce towards a large number of public services, functionaries and institutions. Notably, it allocated as much as 3 percent of its produce for the maintenance of four major temples of the region.
The agricultural abundance of Ullavur is reflected also in the palpably rich habitation that the people of the locality had created for themselves. According to the eighteenth-century records, this small locality had 14 temples and 22 pools and ponds, in addition to 6 groves of areca-palm, mahua, amla and mango trees and 2 flower-gardens. All of the temples and most of the pools and ponds can still be identified. A small temple, dedicated to Theeppanjal, the Sati women who entered the fire, is in ruins. One of the temples dedicated to Perumal, Sri Vishnu, located in the subsidiary habitation of Atthippattu, is now just a platform under a tree with a few stones placed worshipfully on it. The great Perumal temple that defined the centre of the habitation is left with only the garbha griha, the dhvaja stambha and vast foundations of the several halls that comprised the temple complex. Other temples survive. The people of Ullavur continue to care for and offer worship at even the ruined temples. The surviving temples are well-maintained. They get a fresh coat of paint every so often. And, there is much activity in and around them. The Pillaiyar temple forming the main square of the habitation, the Isvaran temple in the northwest and many of the Amman temples remain especially active.
There are still 12 pools and ponds, kulams and kuttais, in Ullavur. These are of different shapes and sizes. Most are associated with the temples. A couple are associated with the cremation and burial grounds. Some are in the open fields. All have some water in them. Many seem always full to the brim.
The records also mention four irrigational water-bodies in Ullavur: two Maduvus, channels, that bring water from the neighbouring Seepuram and Thenneri Eris, and two Thangals, large tanks,
named Sittheri and Periya Eri. These large water-bodies are still functional and continue to irrigate vast streches of fertile fields, where the people of Ullavur seem still engaged in fairly intense agriculture.
In a couple of ancient temples in Thenneri there are a number of inscriptions of the Chola period. Chronologically, the inscriptions run from the middle of the tenth century to the end of the thirteenth. These tell much about the history, society and polity of this region. Thenneri, in these inscriptions, is referred to as the “Thiraiyan Eri”, alluding to Ilanthiraiyan, the founder of Pallava dynasty who ruled Thondaimandalam from Kancheepuram around the 2nd century. An inscription of the Pallava Era, the Kasakudi Copperplates of Nandivarman II (r. 731-795 AD) records the grant of a revenue-free village at almost the same location as Ullavur along with the rights to dig channels to carry waters from Thenneri and the nearby Cheyyar river.
The records of the Barnard Survey of the eighteenth century, the beautiful and rich geography of the area where Ullavur is located, the temples, pools, ponds and tanks that still survive in the Ullavur of today, the large complement of public services and institutions that got a share from the high produce of Ullavur, and the inscriptional evidence of the Pallava and Chola periods—all of these paint a compelling picture of an ancient locality of great affluence and high civilisation anchored in the practice of intense agriculture in a remarkably fertile area.
Ullavur has engaged in intense high agriculture since at least the beginning of the common era. As we show in this monograph, the people of Ullavur remain deeply interested in agriculture even now. But modern urbanisation and industry are fast enveloping them from all sides. Many of the equally fertile and rich lands nearby and some of the fields within Ullavur have now been enclosed and fenced in by real-estate developers and industrial entrepreneurs. From almost anywhere in Ullavur you can see smokestacks rising and spewing smoke on the horizon. Even modern high-rise buildings have begun appearing in the neighbourhood. All this leaves one with the apprehension that the high agriculture and high civilisation that has endured in this area for ages may not last much longer.
We have compiled this monograph with the hope that this rigorous, detailed and graphic documen tation of the geography, economy, history and civilisation of this locality may induce us to avert the looming denouement. The land, the waters and the civilisational history of this region of the Palar, and of many other similarly ancient and rich parts of India, are too precious to be lost. We pray that we may find our way to preserve such regions and such localities, celebrate their rich geography and history, and regenerate both the intensity of their agriculture and the beauty and grace of their habitats.
This is the second in a series of monographs that we are writing on the localities that are described in the Barnard survey of the eighteenth-century. We are thankful to the Indira Gandhi National Centre, its President, Sri Rambahadur Rai and Member-Secretary, Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi for a grant that has made this monograph possible. We are also thankful to Shri Sudhir Lall and his colleagues in the Kalakosha Division of IGNCA for facilitating this work.
We thank our colleague in the Centre for Policy Studies, Sri T. M. Mukundan, for accompanying us on many of our field visits and carefully going through several drafts of this monograph. The writing of this monograph, as indeed of all of our works, has been possible because of the constant support of our wives, Kusum Bajaj and Vijayalakshmi Srinivas. JKB gratefully acknowledges the companionship of his son, Anjaneya Bajaj, in all his endeavours.
JKB & MDS
Chennai
Vasanta Panchami, Vikrama 2080, Kali 5125
February 14, 2024
