Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s1.6

v1.c10.s1.6

The inviolability of the Brahmans which is expressed here and elsewhere,² was, however, not so strictly adhered to by the Vijayanagara monarchs, who, as we shall see presently, while they allowed the Brahmans many privileges and granted them great gifts of land and money, subjected them to the ordinary financial rules of the State. For to these Hindu rulers the fundamental items of State consumption were the Army, the Rāshtra or the Land, and the preservation of the Hindu Dharma—the threefold items almost identical with those enumerated in the treatise of Sukra.³ Vijayanagara came into being, as we have already remarked, in the throes of the Muhammadan invasions, and it could only be maintained against foreign aggression by the strength of its arms. The Vijayanagara army, among other things, rested on the economic and social prosperity of the country. The preservation of Hindu Dharma, in its theoretical aspect of stimulating Hindu thought and literature, and in its practical shape of protecting the interests of the different classes of people, was impossible without the security which seemed naturally to follow in the wake of the Hindu soldiers, and without the immense wealth which the rulers could in most instances command in a country that was economically prosperous.