Previous Year Question

Both ‘Mahattara’ and ‘Pattakila’ were designations associated with village-level leadership and administration in medieval India. Therefore, among the given alternatives, they are correctly associated with village headmen.

Mahattara literally conveys the sense of a ‘greater’ or ‘elder/prominent person’. Epigraphic evidence uses the term for a leading person of a village or town, a village headman, or an influential member of a village council. Historian R. S. Sharma also describes the mahattaras of early medieval northern India as village elders and headmen, who had to be informed about land grants and land transactions and played a role in village administration.

Pattakila is likewise used in inscriptions for a village headman. D. C. Sircar's Indian Epigraphical Glossary explicitly defines Pattakila as a village headman and connects the designation with the later forms Patel/Patil. Studies of older inscriptions similarly record names such as Gramadhipa, Gramani, Gramakuta, Gramapati and Pattakila for village chiefs.

Thus, these were neither designations of military officers, nor specialists in Vedic rituals, nor chiefs of craft guilds.