Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s5.t2.1

v1.c10.s5.t2.1

The Vijayanagara monarchs followed the Karṇāṭaka method of naming the measuring rod after one of the titles of the king. This accounts for the *rājavibhāḍan-kōl* and the *gaṇḍara-gaṇḍān-kōl*, which for the sake of publicity were cut on stone.⁴ The former appears in Śaka 1360 (A.D. 1438-39) under Dēva Rāya II.⁵ The standard rod was thirty-four feet in length.⁶ The existence of a standard rod presupposes that there was uniformity in the measurement of land.⁷ Land was divided into two or three kinds. In the Karṇāṭaka dry and wet lands were called *gadde* and *beddalu*.⁸ But the more universal classification of land was after the Tamilian method of dividing it into *nañsey* or wet land, *puñsey* or dry land, and *toppa* or groves, orchards and woods. This threefold division has survived to our days.⁹ When land was thus classified into different kinds, and the fields demarcated, the boundaries were shown generally by means of stones bearing the sign of a dwarf, (*Vāmana*), and somtimes by what were called *Lōkēśvara* stones.¹⁰ A newly formed plot of ground thus marked was divided into shares which were generally bestowed on persons of conspicuous merit. Thus Śrigiribhūpāla, or Śrigirindra, the brother of Dēva Rāya II, in A.D. 1424, while ruling from his provincial capital of Maraṭakapuri, gave the village of Nipaṭaṭūka alias Vijayarāyapuram (mod.