sub-system of control evolved by the Cholas. To a limited extent, the
taniyur occurs even within the Chola heartland. The taniyur
developed out of major brahmadeyas and temple settlements and
came to include several hamlets and revenue villages and even craft
centres under its jurisdiction. Tax settlements between taniyur and the
king’s government were direct. A new type of nadu called the
perilamai-nadu evolved around taniyurs integrating the villages
attached to them. The taniyurs also became foci of urban
concentration, creating different levels of an urban hierarchy and
performing crucial functions. The valanadu, perilamai-nadu and
taniyur exemplify the defining and redefining of agrarian regions and
revenue organisation by the will of a political authority, that is, by the
Cholas.
• Another mechanism of control was the stationing of nilaippadai
(army camps) in strategic locations. Units of the army were also
stationed in big trading centres to protect the temple endowments, as
in the Kongumandalam. The concept of the mandalam itself was an
innovation by which the traditional politico-geographical territories
were redesignated and which points to a reorganisation of the entire
territory. Thus, a Chola-Pandya was appointed to rule over the Pandya
region and mandala-mudalis over the other sub-regions. The
distribution of tax terms and their frequency provides additional
supportive evidence to the existence of different administrative
procedures and economic control in the mandalams.
Recognition of Lesser Chieftains as Intermediaries Lesser chieftains in
Chola polity signify another distinct level of intermediate strata, whose role
was considerable in the development of Chola power, particularly in their
early period. Arrangements made under different terms with some of the
powerful chiefs allowed a certain amount of local autonomy in revenues in
return for military support or for expansion of trade networks. Some were
reinstalled after conquest and others were newly created dominant lineages,
supporting the king in return for local control. Many of them were assigned
civil and military service tenures or policing rights called padikaval. In the
conventional view, they were feudatories, that is, samanta, and in the
segmentary state perspective,