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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

What were the salient features of the bureaucratic machinery of the Cholas?

  • UPSC 1985
  • Early Medieval India, 750-1200

The Chola state, at its height under Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, developed an administrative apparatus that went well beyond the personal rule of an itinerant warrior-king — it possessed a differentiated hierarchy of paid or land-endowed officials, a specialised revenue department, a standing military-cum-administrative cadre, and a systematic habit of recording its own transactions…

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What the full answer covers

  • The King and the Central Council
  • A Graded Official Hierarchy: Perundaram and Sirudaram
  • The Military-Administrative Cadre
  • The Revenue Department: Puravuvari-tinaikkalam
  • Provincial Hierarchy: Mandalam, Valanadu, Nadu
  • The Inscriptional Culture as an Administrative Feature in Itself

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