Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

MERCHANT ASSOCIATIONS AND MEDIEVAL TRADE IN SOUTH INDIA

Merchant associations or guilds were features common to many medieval
economies.

The major Asian trade boom of the tenth to thirteenth centuries
appears to have stimulated a significant restructuring of the
administration of trade in most major economies of Asia, North Africa
and Europe.

The Middle Eastern commenda-type investment contract (qirad, etc.),
which had become such an important tool of commercial activity in the
Middle East by the tenth century, was introduced into Italian
seaports by the early eleventh century, thus providing a major
impetus for the expansion of trade in medieval Europe.

(1) In China, the hang developed from a trading quarter into a nearly
autonomous trade association, and the organization of collective
financing and management of overseas shipping ventures became
increasingly complex.(2) And in southern India a series of merchant
associations developed powerful networks and vertical monopolies that
included not only tied manufacturers but also private armies. These
associations received a good deal of local political encouragement.

Southern India, because its tracts of cultivated land were more
dispersed and limited than those of north India, was never the locus
of large agrarian states. For much of the region's history, power was
fairly evenly balanced between three or more medium-sized states with
different linguistic characters: Tamil on the southeast (Coromandel
or Cholamandala) coast; Malayalam along the southwest (Malabar)
coast; Telegu on the eastern (Andhra) coast north of the Tamil
heartland; and Kanarese on the western (now Konkan) coast to the
north of the Malabar region. Many of these states relied upon
overseas trade to enhance their limited agricultural income. The
Pallavas were the first Tamil rulers of real consequence.

They grew in power from the mid-sixth to the mid-eighth centuries,
and their contacts with Southeast Asia are reflected in many of the
early Hindu remains of the maritime region.

Pallava power began to decline in the later eighth century, and by
the later ninth century they had been replaced as the leading power
in the southeast by the Cholas.

The Cholas built upon the economic networks developed by the
Pallavas, and expanded their links with merchant associations.

Much of southern India's sea trade during the late first and early
second millennia was controlled by these merchant associations, the
most important of which appear to have first formed in southwest
India.


During the eighth and ninth centuries much of southwest India's
trade had been directed towards the west, and a number of Muslim,
Jewish, Zoroastrian and Christian merchant groups from western Asia
and the Middle East had established trading enclaves on the Malabar
coast.


It was in this context that at least some of the early Indian
merchant associations began to form. The Manigramam, one of the
earliest of the south Indian merchant associations to appear in local
records, was mentioned in the late ninth century Kottayam (Sthanu
Ravi) copper plate inscriptions found near Quilon on the Malabar
coast. These record a contract between the local authority and a
group of resident Christians from the Persian Gulf allowing them
access, free of certain taxes, to the fort which protected the port
market, apparently operated by the merchant group.(3) This merchant
association appears to have extended its influence to the east coast
shortly afterwards, probably with political encouragement, since the
Pallava rulers of the southeast had maintained close relations with
the Chera state of the Malabar coast.

During the same period another merchant association had begun to form
further to the north in the western Deccan, at Aihole (called
Ayyavole in Kannada and Aryapura in Sanskrit) in the Chalukya
heartland behind the Konkan coast.(4) They were known either as the
Ayyavole/Aryapura association (after their eighth or ninth century
place of origin), or more generally as the Ainnurruvar ("The Five
Hundred"). This group rapidly became the most powerful of the
merchant associations. A number of other merchant groups are known to
have affiliated themselves with the Ayyavole, those most prominent in
sea trade being the Manigramam and the Nanadesi. In addition, at its
height, the Ayyavole appears to have occupied a dominant position in
relation to at least forty-six other professional bodies, including
major associations of artisans and mercenaries.(5)

The trend in southern India towards merchant domination of certain
crafts appears to have accelerated after the turn of the millennium,
under Chola rule, with the effective creation of vertical artisan-
merchant monopolies. Knock-on effects of the Asian trade boom that
were experienced in India included such developments in the weaving
and dyeing industries as the introduction - possibly by the eleventh
century - of the draw loom, and of the spinning wheel by the
thirteenth century.(6) Block-printed textiles, resist-dyed with
indigo or mordant-dyed with madder or morinda, were exported in large
quantities to both the Middle East and Southeast Asia by the
thirteenth century.(7) On the back of this expanding manufacturing
and trading base, merchant groups gained a large degree of control
over the non-agrarian economy in southern India, assuming the role of
major patrons of religious establishments, and being drawn into the
collection of certain tolls and taxes on behalf of the state.(8)

Under Chola rule merchant associations appear to have dominated the
internal and external trade of south India and parts of Sri Lanka
from the late ninth century to the late thirteenth century. The
general Sanskrit term for such corporate trading communities was
vanigrama ("community of merchants"), and more than one association
appears to have used this term or a local variant in their titles:
Vanigrama was taken as their title by a group of merchants mentioned
in a tenth-century Sri Lankan inscription,(9) and the term Manigramam
was a local variant.

The slow decline of the Chola state had already begun before the end
of the twelfth century. During the thirteenth century, this decline
accelerated into a collapse, as the Pandyans in the far south, the
Hoysalas in Karnataka, and local chiefs in northern T