Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s10.t2: B. Revenue from Voluntary Contributions
Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s10.t2
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B. Revenue from Voluntary Contributions
v1.c10.s10.t2.1
It also derived some revenue from voluntary contributions from the people. We are unable, it must be admitted, to determine whether these voluntary contributions were in all instances the outcome of the generosity of the people. It is quite possible that often they gave to the Government, out of their own free-will, sums of money for some specified purpose. In A.D. 1368 the great lords (kōvas and kommes) of Tagdūr led by Rāmarasa, the governor of Tagdūr, determined that in lieu of the 120 hon which were paid for the perpetual lamp and for the livelihood of the servant and flower-man of that god Mūlasthāna (ā-mūlasthāna-dēvaringe) from the temple endowments received by the tammaḍi (i.e., the resident priest), they would themselves pay 120 hon (for the purpose) to the palace every year without fail.¹ From the ending of a grant by the members of the Toṭṭigan caste, as related elsewhere, it seems that much coercion was not used by the officers of the Government to make the people give voluntary contributions to the State. For, as already remarked in this treatise, we are told in that grant of about A.D. 1369 that the Toṭṭigan caste in Puliyūr-nāḍu came to the conclusion that everyone who did "not pay shall be an outcaste from the nāḍu, the assembly, the pañchālan, the parai, and the eighteen nāḍus".²
v1.c10.s10.t2.2
¹ E.C., III, Nj. 117, p.