Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c10.36

c10.36

Commerce on a large scale beyond the limits of the country was carried on by what may be styled merchant princes, who generally had the title *mahā-vaḍḍa-byavahāri* (Ml 56, Sk 247, Ak 108). In the last is an account of a family of Maleyāla merchants, experts in goods and conveyance. One of them was skilled in testing all manner of gems. "He was so liked both by the Hoysala emperor in the south and Ballaha himself in the north, that he was able to form an alliance between the two kings. The wants of the great Mālava king, of the Kaḷinga, Choḷa, and Pāṇḍya rulers, he at once supplied. No Śeṭṭi was equal to him throughout the Hoysala kingdom—just, honoured, of kind speech, full of common sense, delighting in truth." But some great merchants were of Brāhman descent, such as those in Ak 22. One of these imported horses, elephants, and pearls in ships by sea and sold them to the kings. Another transported goods from the east to the west, and those that were suitable from the west to the east; also products from the north to the south, and those of the south to the north. The mercantile and trading classes are mostly included in the term vīra-Bananju-dharmma, at the head of which were the Five Hundred svāmis of Āryyāvale or Ayyāvale (Aihole in Kaḷādgi District—Arasikere is called the southern Ayyāvale in Ak 77). In inscriptions recording their agreements to pay certain dues on specified articles of merchandise, in order to provide for the support of local objects in which they were interested, they are described in long strings of somewhat amusing ironical or quasi-royal epithets (see Sk 118, Hg 17, Bl 117, DB 31, Hk 137). Their formal assembly was generally accompanied with setting up the diamond *vaisanige* or *baysanige*, as the symbol of their guild (Bl 75, Dg 59). A more sober account of them in 1181 (Sk 119) represents them as honoured residents of Ayyāvale and many other chief *grāmas, nagaras, kheḍas, kharvaḍas, madambas, dronāmukhas, puras,* and *pattanas* of Lāla, Gaula, Karṇṇāṭa, Bangāla, Kāśmīra, and other countries (the conventional number being fifty-six) at all points of the compass. With them are often associated, as here, the two sects of Nānā-Dēśis. The Panchālas or five guilds of artisans also describe themselves in a similar strain of ironical epithets, which are not without interest (Gu 34).