Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s5.t3: C. Rate of Taxation

Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s5.t3

Language: English

C. Rate of Taxation

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A tax has been thus defined by Manu in one of his regulations already cited above: "Let the king make the common inhabitants of his realm who live by traffic, pay annually some trifle, which is called a tax".² He has also mentioned the relationship between taxation and protection in the following passages: "The highest duty of a Kshatriya is to protect his subjects, for the king who enjoys the rewards, just mentioned, is bound to (discharge that) duty".³ "That king, indeed, is ever worthy of honour who ensures the safety (of his subjects); for the sacrificial session (sattra, which he, as it were, performs thereby) ever grows in length, the safety (of his subjects) representing the successful fee. A king who (duly) protects (his subjects) receives from each and all the sixth part of their spiritual merit: if he does not protect them, the sixth part of their demerit also (will fall on him). Whatever (merit a man gains by) reading the Veda, by sacrificing, by charitable gifts, (or by) worshipping (gurus and gods), the king obtains a sixth part of that in consequence of his duly protecting (his kingdom). . . . A king who does not afford protection (yet) takes his share in kind, his taxes, tolls, and duties, daily presents, and fines, will (after death) soon sink into hell. They declare that a king who affords no protection (yet) receives the sixth part of the produce, takes upon himself all the foulness of his whole people".¹ Further, "His (i.e., a Kshatriya's) peculiar duty is conquest, and he must not turn back in danger, having protected the Vaisyas by his weapons, he may cause the legal tax to be collected, (viz.) from Vaisyas one-eighth as the tax on grain, one-twentieth (on the profits of gold and cattle) which amount at least to one Kārshāpaṇa : Sudras, artisans, and mechanics (shall) benefit (the king) by (doing) work (for him)".²

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² Manu, VII, 137, p. 237, op. cit.

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³ Ibid., VII, 144, p.238. Cf. Śānti Parva. "Protection of the subject is the highest duty of the king, since compassion to all creatures and protecting them from injury has been said to be the highest merit." LXX, p. 235. See also LXXV, p. 243 (Roy); see also Gautama X, 28, p. 230.

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¹ Manu, VIII, 303-5, 307-8, pp. 307-8. See also 309, p. 309.

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² Ibid., X, 119-20, pp. 427-8.

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The principle of levying taxes from the people by the king only on condition that he assures them protection, which is thus enunciated by Manu, is also found in the codes of the later lawgivers. "Let the king," we are told in the Institutes of Baudhayana, "protect (his) subjects, receiving as his pay a sixth part (of their income or spiritual merit.)"³ The right of levying one-sixth of the produce sanctioned by Manu is seen in the Mahābhārata as well as in the code of Nārada. In the former the revenue which the king receives is in direct relation to the protection afforded by him to the people. "With a sixth part, upon fair calculation, of the yield of the soil, as his tribute, with fines and forfeitures levied upon offenders, with the imports, according to the scriptures, upon merchants and traders in return for the protection granted to them, a king should fill his treasury".⁴ Nārada merely repeats the injunction of Manu in the following words: "Both the other customary receipts of a king and what is called the sixth part of the produce of the soil, form the royal revenue, the reward (of a king), for the protection of his subjects".⁵ Kauṭilya has laid down the following rule: "People. . . allotted one-sixth of the grains and one-tenth of merchandise as sovereign dues. Fed by this payment, kings took upon themselves the responsibility of maintaining the safety and security of their subjects. . . .¹ The famous Mādhavācārya Vidyāraṇya is also inclined to follow Kauṭilya in this matter. In his work Parāśara-smṛiti (also known as Vidyāraṇya-smṛiti), he assigns the usual one-sixth as the royal share of the crop.²

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³ Baudhayana, I, 10, 18, v. 1, p. 199.

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⁴ Santi Parva, LXXI, p. 233. (Roy). Cf. I.H.Q., I, p. 701.

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⁵ Nārada, XVIII, 48, p. 221; I.H.Q., I, p. 702.

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¹ Arthaśāstra, Bk. I, Ch. XIII, 23, p. 24.

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² Parāśara-Mādhavīya-dharmāśāstra, Āchāra khaṇḍa, Adhy. I, p. 270. (1890).

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Before we proceed with the discussion of the question of the classical and mediaeval rate of taxation, we may note to what extent the Vijayanagara people understood the ancient idea of the relationship between taxation and protection. Kṛiṣhṇa Dēva Rāya in his well known work writes: "Be always intent upon protecting your subjects. Whenever you hear complaints from people in distress, hear them and redress their sufferings. Do not entrust your affairs to mean persons".³ The inscriptions throw better light on this point. An epigraph dated A.D. 1382 thus gives the classical principle: "His (i.e. Bukka's) son Harihara. . .Maintaining the customs of the various castes, he protected all the subjects as if his own children. Rejoicing in his protection, which was like that of Bharata, the farmers and merchants resolved to pay him certain taxes on account of his protection".⁴

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³ Amuktamālyada, v, 205; J.I.H., IV, P. III, p. 64. We shall see that Mādhava, in his commentary on Parāśarasamhita, has also to say something on this subject. Adhyāya, I, vv. 61-2, p. 259. Infra, Ch. V, Administration, Central Government.

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⁴ E.C., V, Bl. 75, pp. 62-3.

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We continue now the subject of the rate of taxation. The ancient tradition of the sixth part of the produce being the legitimate share of the government lingered on till the days of the East India Company. Thus Wilks writes in his Sketches: "Of the produce of land a sixth is the largest share which can be taken in ordinary circumstances, and a fourth in times of urgent distress; but the whole tenor of the institutes and the digest shew that the sixth part of the crop is the king's share, which is constantly in the contemplation of all Hindoo lawyers. This share is confirmed by the elegant Hindu drama of Sacontala. . .in one word, I have never met with a Hindoo farmer of ordinary capacity that was ignorant of the fact, and as we shall hereafter find that it was promulgated as the law of the south of India in the sixteenth century".¹

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¹ Wilks, *Sketches*, I, pp. 126-27 (1810); I, p. 78 (1869).

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The source from which this may have originated in the sixteenth century can be traced only to the Vijayanagara monarchs, who, as remarked elsewhere, were undoubtedly influenced by the life and achievements of Mādhavāchārya Vidyāraṇya. But it may reasonably be doubted on the strength of the details enumerated above, whether the precept of that great scholar, based as it was on the older institutes, really guided the actions of the mediaeval Hindu rulers as regards this vital point in revenue administration. We may even venture to question whether the precedent set by one or two Tamil kings of the pre-Vijayanagara days was ever followed by the Vijayanagara kings. It seems, therefore, that the Hindu rulers of Vijayanagara not only discarded the example set by their predecessors but also set at naught the ancient principle of levying one-sixth of the produce as the authorized share of the government. But here we may observe that behind the apparent indifference of the Vijayanagara rulers to classical precept, there lie claims to legality which are by no means invalid. We have to exchange the regulations of the early canonists for those of Śukrāchārya to understand this point. And, moreover, we have to recall the nature of the times which made it possible for the Hindus to bring order out of the chaos which followed the Muhammadan invasions of southern India. The stability of their State, in the face of a very powerful league of Muhammadan kingdoms, was guaranteed only when it had solved successfully the fundamental question of men and money. The rulers realized that the needs of the times demanded a revision of the classical rate of levying taxes; and they, therefore, promulgated a new system of differential taxation which was not altogether without the support of the lawgivers of the classical and mediaeval times. For, in the *Arthaśāstra*² as well as in *Sukraniti* provision is made for a maximum rate of taxation on a differential basis; and we may presume that Sukra's mediaeval code may have had its influence on the minds of the Hindu financiers of the south. It must be confessed that this is only a conjecture, since no positive proof can be adduced for maintaining that the Vijayanagara monarchs actually made use of the freedom given in the Sukraniti. We may nevertheless note the injunctions pertaining to the point in question as given in the same work. The rates are different for different kinds of soil. From lands irrigated by canals, wells or tanks, the government demand is one-third; from those irrigated by rain it is one-fourth; and those by rivers, it is one-half; while from the arrant rocky soils, it is to be low as one-sixth.¹ This has been explained by Prof. Benoy Kumar Sarkar thus: "The principle is obvious. The highest rate, viz. 50 per cent. is demanded of those lands where cultivation is certain, e.g. under river irrigation. Where rain or 'monsoons' is the source of moisture, agriculture is precarious and uncertain. Hence the very low rate of government demand, viz. 25 per cent. But, where the tanks and other artificial water supplies irrigate the soils, cultivation is difficult and expensive, although certain. The rate in this instance is, therefore, midway between the two, i.e., 33⅓ per cent".²

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² *Arthaśāstra*, Book II, Ch. XXIV, 117, p. 140; Bk. V, Ch. II, 242, p. 291.

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¹ *Sukraniti*, IV, ii, ll, 227-30, p. 148.

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² *Sarkar*, *Pos. Back.*, Bk. II, P. I, p. 118.

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This principle of Sukra, viz., of levying a tax according to the relative fertility of the plots of land, as must have been evident to the reader from the remarks made in a preceding connection about the Revenue Settlement, guided the financial policy of the Vijayanagara monarchs. That they were aware of the differences in soil has been seen in the description of the wet and dry lands given above; and that they were not ignorant of an equity of assessment on different lands,—the yield of which was based on the nature of water supply,—will be made clear when we shall examine the rate of taxation under their government together with that which prevailed in the Tamil lands from the eleventh to the thirteenth century of the Christian era.

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In the third year of the reign of Kōv-Irāja-Kēsari-panmar, *alias* Sri-Rājādhirāja Dēvar (i.e., in A.D. 1050) his commander (*sēnāpati*), Jayaṅgoṇḍa Sōḷa-Vāṇa-Kōvaraiyan, agreed to receive as the landlord's share two-fifths of the wet crops and one-quarter of the dry crops in the Maṇṇai-nāḍu, of Vikkirama-Sōḷamaṇḍala.³ An inscription of A.D. 1046, however, enables us to fix the rate of taxation in the reign of that king. For the inscription states that it was one-sixth that was levied by the State.¹

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³ E.C., IX, Nl. 25, p. 33.

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¹ E.C., IX, Dv. 75, p. 84.

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The idea of differential taxation was also in the minds of the Tamil kings. In the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rājādhirāja I, a military officer called Sōḷan Kumāraṇ Parāntaka Mārāyaṇ alias Rājādhirāja Nilagaṅgaraiyar, of the Chōḷa country, bought certain uncultivated lands belonging to the temple of Tiruvorriyūr at the hands of the officers of the king. The military officer then brought them under cultivation with a view to provide the necessary paddy for the offerings of the god Ādipuranātha on festive occasions. It was agreed to supply annually, as temple share, twenty-eight *kalams* of paddy on each *vēli* of land, while another class (perhaps inferior) supplied only nineteen.² An inscription of the eleventh year of an unidentified Sundara Pāṇḍya enables us to note that discrimination was made by the State in levying rates from lands that yielded and those that did not yield crops. The inscription which was found in the Sundarēśvara temple at Aruppukōṭṭai, Ramnad district, states that the rate at which the taxes were paid was fixed at three *kalam* on each *mā* of land or one-half of what prevailed among the *dēvadāna* lands. In doing this, crops of full yield alone were taken into consideration. Those that had suffered damage or had failed altogether were excluded from the assessment to tax.³

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² Ep. Report for 1913, p. 99.

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³ 400 of 1904; Ep. Report for 1915, p. 103.

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The principle of differential taxation, common over many parts of the country, is best seen in the history of the Tamil lands. The *māhēśvaras*, *sri-rudras*, *dēva-kanmis*, and the temple accounts of the Kaikōḷanātha temple at Tiruk-kaḷākkuḍi, Ramnad district, in the nineteenth year (?A.D. 1296) of the reign of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya, granted certain temple lands as the *kāṇippiḍipāḍu* to one Sundara Pāṇḍya Narasingadēvaṇ, stipulating that he should enjoy them after repairing the tanks in disuse and bringing under cultivation such of the lands as were covered with jungle; and that while the lands were being enjoyed in this manner, he should pay to the temple for the *pasāṉ*, a *mēlvāram*⁴ of one in three : for the cultivation of திணை, வரகு etc., as well as the trees பலா, மாவு . . . etc., one in five should be given; for cocoanut and areca palms, one in seven, and for dry crops according to the yield, one in seven. In the case of lands which were brought under cultivation by clearing the jungle, he should have to pay one-tenth in the first year, one-ninth in the second year, one-eighth in the third year, one-seventh in the fourth year; and that for all subsequent years a permanent mēlvāram of one in three should be paid.¹ We are also told, in an inscription of the eleventh year of his reign, (A.D. 1287), that the kuḍumi assessment, which the Naṭarāja temple at Chidambaram was to receive, was 100 kāśu in money, and that the vīrabhōga was six kalams of paddy on each vēli of land.² The fixed rate in the Karṇāṭaka about the same time, according to an inscription of A.D. 1284, was one-seventh.³

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⁴ "The total annual produce of the cultivated lands of a village is called Uda-vāram; the share received by Government after the deductions above noticed is the Mēl-vāram; and that allowed to the cultivator is the Cudi-vāram, which is now generally commuted for a money payment". Ellis, Mirasi Right, p. 43, n. (25), (1818).

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¹ 66 of 1916; Ep. Report for 1916, p. 123. ² 294 of 1913. ³ E.C., IV, Ng. 38, p. 123. ⁴ E.C., IX, Mg. 49, p. 58. ⁵ Sewell, For. Emp., p.

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When we reach the Vijayanagara times, we meet with a rise in the rate of assessment. In A.D. 1370 it was one-half of the produce. Virappa formed a new village called Srigirisamudra in that year, and out of its revenue one-half being assigned to the king, fifty honnu were reserved for the god (of the village), and the balance was remitted as uttār.⁴ One is inclined to surmise that this was the common rate throughout the Vijayanagara Empire, especially when one relies on the statement of the Portuguese traveller Nuniz. While describing the court and the nobles, he says: "The lands, they say, yield a hundred and twenty lakhs of which they must pay sixty to the King, and the rest they retain for the pay of the soldiers and the expenses of the elephants which they are obliged to maintain".⁵ It is not possible to assert, however, that this was the recognized rate of taxation under Vijayanagara. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the Hindu monarchs were not unaware of differential taxation. Namassivāya Nāyaka, who received as a gift the village of Senbiya-maṅgalam as a ulavu-kāniyākshi, in the Saka year 1436 (A.D. 1514-15) in the reign of Krishna Dēva Rāya, was required to pay ten paṇam and ten kalams of paddy in the first year, but in the fifth year fifty paṇam and fifty kalams of paddy had to be paid.¹ Aubaḷarāya, in Saka 1477 (A.D. 1555-6), in the reign of Sadāśiva Rāya, is said to have enjoyed two-thirds of the produce for himself, while the remaining portion was evidently given as mēlvāram to the temple from which he purchased lands at Ālamūru.²

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³⁷³ A defaced inscription dated only in the cyclic year Dundubhi, which cannot be assigned to any age with certainty, and which mentions the name of a chief Jagadēva, informs us that cultivators of lands below the tanks in the Kaḍagattūr country must give śarivāram (i.e., equal share of the produce) to the owner, and pay a specified fee for strengthening the tank bunds with stones and earth. 197 of 1910.

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¹ 389 of 1912.

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² 66 of 1915.

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It has to be admitted that these instances do not invalidate the statement that the incidence of taxation was heavy in some parts of the Empire. There are inscriptions which refer in unmistakable terms to the heavy taxation and the consequent migration of people from their own province to the neighbouring districts because of their inability to pay the taxes. But it may here be noted that we have evidence at the same time of the prompt measures which the State took to redress the grievances of the people, and to make adequate provision for the discontented. The threats which the people sometimes made on such occasions, of calling a sort of general strike or of deserting their homes, were followed by a revenue enquiry by the State, the results of which were generally accepted by the subjects with satisfaction. The earliest mention of dissatisfaction of the people on a large scale is in an inscription dated only in the cyclic year Vibhava, but assignable to the reign of Harihara II. The epigraph relates that the Kaikkōlars residing in that quarter of Olakkūru, South Arcot district, which was directly under the temple jurisdiction, migrated in a body and "without paying to the temple deserted the premises and left it in ruins". In consequence of which "the worship in the temple had to be stopped and the doors closed". Subsequently the Kaikkōlars were pacified and persuaded to return to their homes, and to pay the assessment decided upon by the State.³

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³ 354 of 1909; Ep. Report for 1910, p. 112.

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We have another instance of how the Government redressed the grievances of the people. This inscription is also dated only in the cyclic year Plavaṅga, but refers us to the reign of Dēva Rāya II. It registers the command of the king (rāyasam)

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and the orders of the officers (?) of Arirāya Daṇṇāyaka and Bhikṣāvṛtti-Appa, and of the Prince Dēva Rāya Uḍaiyar, ruling over Chandragiri-rājya, to the authorities of the Ādipurīśvara temple at Tiruvorriyūr, Chingleput district, under the following circumstances. The māhēśvaras of that temple complained to the king that the tenants, servants, and other residents of the village owned by the temple, had been much distressed by the imposition of taxes such as jōḍi, mugampārvai, aṅśalai, sambaḍam, and viśēṣādāyam, and also, by the lease system introduced by Government for adoption by the trustees. For the same reason the worship in the temple too was not conducted as usual. Thereupon it was ordered that the above taxes, together with ariśi-kāṇam, good bull, good cow, veṭṭi, and kaṭṭāyam, be thereafter collected by the māhēśvaras of the temple; that the leased lands already paid for, be redeemed (by money received from the royal treasury); and that the worship in the temple be revived as before. In connection with the above revenue terms, it may be worth while to note also that the residents of the district (nāṭṭār and tantirimār) of Viṭṭa-paṟṟu, evidently with the desire of co-operating with the State on a similar occasion, assigned to the temple of Āḍutuṟai the following taxes in the village of Ādiśūḍamaṅgalam—assessments on wet land, dry land, houses and house-sites, peṟkaḍamai, tarikaḍamai, aṭṭaikāṇikai, nāṭṭuviniyogam, paḷḷirai, pādāvari, āl-mañji, ariśi-kāṇam, kōṇigai, virimuḷḷu, and vaṇṇiya-vāri.¹

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¹ 223 of 1912; 30 of 1913; *Ep. Report* for 1913, p. 120.

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In cases of heavy taxation where the State realized that taxes could not be remitted, it effected a compromise by ordering a consolidated amount to be paid by the people. We infer this from an inscription, already cited above, dated Saka 1326 (A.D. 1414-15) during the viceroyalty of Vīra Bhūpati Rāya, son of Dēva Rāya Oḍeyar, which informs us that the State ordered the fixing of the amount of consolidated taxes from the weavers, oil-mongers, and the other commercial classes, in return for their burning a perpetual lamp in the temple of Brahmapurīśvara at Perunagar, Chingleput district.² Thus did the people colour a purely governmental affair with the sanctity of a religious obligation.

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² 367 of 1923. See *supra* p. 182.

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When the State found that the people proposed to desert their occupancies because of heavy taxation, it conciliated them by a reduction in the rate of taxation. The weavers of Perunagar, who seem to have suffered a great deal from heavy taxation, for unknown reasons, according to an inscription dated only in the cyclic year Vibhava, Ādi, 7 of the times of Virūpaṇṇa Oḍeyar (Virūpāksha), received a concession from the State, which reduced certain taxes of theirs and persuaded them to resettle in their original possession, which they had left without paying the government dues.¹ Certain parts of the Ramnad district, too, seem to have been heavily taxed. The Maṟava inhabitants of Veḷaṅguḍi sold land in the last days of the Sāḷuva usurpation under very distressing circumstances. They had no means of discharging their revenue dues to Government, the reason being that it was the period of occupation by the Kaṇṇaḍigas (i.e., the Karṇāṭakas).² What exactly were the circumstances which precluded them from "discharging their revenues dues to Government" cannot be made out, although it is not improbable that there might have lurked unauthorized taxation in some parts of the Empire. The hard times under the Sāḷuva government have been depicted in some of the epigraphs, one of which we have just noticed above. Another inscription dated Śaka 1426 (A.D. 1504-5) speaks of the revision of the rates by Triṇetranātha Kachchirāyar, son of Palligoṇḍa-Perumāḷ Kachchirāyar, as they had become exorbitant in the time when the country was in the hands of the Kaṇṇaḍigas. The cultivators owing to the oppression had dispersed and the svarūpa (?) scattered.³ The chief ordered that the lands (i.e., those in the Padi-nēḷuppaṟṟu district) might be measured year after year with the standard rod of thirty-four feet; that fifteen paṇam (including all items of taxation) be levied on one mā of dry land, and twenty paṇam on one mā of wet land; that towards arasūpēṟu one-eighth paṇam be levied on each tenant, three paṇam on each loom of Seṭṭis, two paṇam on Kammāḷa agriculturists, three paṇam on Kaikkōḷa weavers; and that towards iḍaiturai one-fourth paṇam on each cow, half a paṇam on each buffalo, and one-quarter paṇam on eight sheep be collected.⁴

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¹ 370 of 1923.

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² 50 of 1916; Ep. Report for 1916, p. 141.

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³ 247 of 1906; ibid.

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⁴ Ep. Report for 1916, ibid. If "one pon or varāham = 10 paṇam is accepted, and one mā is, as at present, 1/20th of a vēli, the assessment fixed by Triṇetranātha Kachchirāyar can in no sense be considered as mild". Krishna Sastri, Ep. Report for 1916, ibid.

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Even in the reign of the greatest Vijayanagara ruler Kṛṣṇa Dēva Rāya, whose benevolence as an administrator was equalled by his bravery as a soldier, instances are not wanting to show that there was some heavy taxation which called forth prompt action by the government. Excessive taxation, according to an inscription found in the Nityēśvara temple at Srimuṣṇam, Chidambaram tāluka, South Arcot district, dated in Śaka 1435 (A.D. 1513-14), led to the desertion of ryots; but Sinnappa Nāyaka, brother of Vāśal Ādiyappa Nāyaka, at once investigated the matter and fixed favourable rates.¹ The nirūpa which he granted to the agriculturists of seventeen paṟṟu district contained the following: The permanent settlement of kaḍamai, kāṇikkai, kuḍi, māḍu-kaṇikkai puravarai, and viniyōgam now introduced by Sinnappa Nāyaka who fixed twenty-eight paṇam on wet lands and twenty-two on dry lands for such residents as resided in the districts, twenty paṇam on wet lands and fifteen paṇam on dry lands, for those who were going and coming, and again fifteen paṇam on wet lands and ten paṇam on dry lands for those that lived outside.² Kṛṣṇa Dēva Rāya the Great sometimes personally investigated such cases of oppressive taxation. We shall deal with this in detail in a subsequent connection.³

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¹ 246 of 1916.

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² Ep. Report for 1916, p. 143.

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³ See below.

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This privilege of representing cases personally to the king was a noteworthy feature of Vijayanagara history. The Mahāmaṇḍalēśara Salakayya Dēva Chikka Tirumalayya Dēva Mahā-arasu, the powerful minister and brother-in-law of the Emperor Achyuta Rāya, came to Ādōni in the Śaka year 1454 (A.D. 1532-3) to examine personally the causes of disturbances in the Kavaṭālada sīme in the Ādavāni district. The people of this sīme on being thratened by the injustice of Government officers had obstinately migrated to the Māsaveya-sīme. Salakayya Dēva enquired into their grievances, pacified the people and induced them to reoccupy the Kavaṭāla district by offering them favourable terms of cultivation and occupation. These rights were granted to them in charters called kavulu.⁴ In Śaka 1455 (A.D. 1533-4) the artisan classes migrated from Kanagānipalle-sīme to Pākāla and Kundiripi-sīmes, on account of heavy taxation, but, as we shall see, the State immediately set matters right by remitting their taxes.¹ The migration of people from province to province suggests that the incidence of taxation must have varied from locality to locality.²

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⁴ Ep. Report for 1916, pp. 144-5.

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¹ 340 of 1926. *Infra*. ² *Ep. Report* for 1926, pp. 112-13. ³ Sewell, *For. Emp.*, p.

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That Achyuta Rāya had recourse to oppressive means of raising revenue, and that he sometimes exacted "payments from his captains and people so ruthlessly,"³ is not strange, if we remember that the costly wars and unprecedented liberality of his illustrious predecessor, Kṛṣṇa Dēva Rāya the Great, coupled with his own campaigns in the south, especially in Travancore, the huge indemnity he had to pay to ‘Ādil Shāh, and his benevolence to the people, particularly to the Brahmans, must have had the inevitable result of emptying the royal treasury, driving the monarch to enact measures which proved financially burdensome to the people. What strikes one however is not that Achyuta Rāya should have resorted to the usual stringent means of raising revenue but that he should have continued the tradition of allowing the people the right of direct appeal to the government in times of need.

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This feature of Vijayanagara times is also seen in the days of Emperor Sadāśiva Rāya. Complaints from the villagers of Yelahahñji, Sōmalāpura, and Untakalu, in the Bellary district, about illegal taxation reached the ears of the Government in Saka 1478 (A.D. 1556-7) in the reign of Sadāśiva Rāya. The *Mahamaṇḍalēśvara* Rāmarāju Viṭṭhalarāja Tirumalarājayya Dēva Mahārāja heard their grievances and stopped the illegal collections of money in these villages, and directed that the fines collected in the villages should be utilized for repairing temple tanks, etc.⁴ The same viceroy in the same year heard from the Brahmans of Rāyadurga-sime, over which he was governing, that a certain Hasāṇi-Hasu, was collecting by force certain taxes which they were not obliged to pay. After due investigation into accounts, he ordered that these taxes were illegal, that they need not be collected any more, and that fines from people accruing in these agrahāra villages may thenceforward be utilized for repairing temples, tanks, ponds and irrigation channels.¹

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³⁶⁸ *A.S.R.*, for 1908-9, p.

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¹⁹¹ But this evidence of Nuniz, it must be remembered, refers not, as the late Mr. Krishna Sastri seemed to suggest, to the ordinary times but to those times when the king was hard pressed for funds. Nuniz is here relating the events that followed the war with ‘Ādil Shāh and the huge indemnity the Vijayanagara court had to pay to the Sultan. B.A.S. ⁴ 473 of 1923.

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¹ 104 of 1913; Ep. Report for 1914, p. 101. The late Mr. Krishna Sastri said about him—"Evidently a Muhammadan chief". I think he was one of the Muhammadan officers under the Vijayanagara Government. See infra, Chapter IX. The Army. B.A.S.

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These instances of heavy taxation, which are at once a proof of the frequently oppressive rule of the Emperors as well as of their readiness to put an end to such burdensome measures, are not to be confounded with their alleged extortion in Tuluva or with the worse actions of the later rulers, who, on the eve of the break-up of the Vijayanagara Empire, governed as independent Nāyakas and Pāleyagāras in the south and west. The imposition of unbearable tax in kind to the extent of 12,000 muṭas of rice on the Brahmans of Tuluva by Harihara I, which was increased afterwards to 2,578 pagodas is recorded only in later tradition,² and is not corroborated by any contemporary evidence. The deplorable condition of the country under the later Nāyakas has been pictured to us in tradition as well as in the accounts of eye-witnesses.³ Posterity, however, can hardly be justified in condemning the rule of the Vijayanagara monarchs for errors committed by the later rulers. Opinion has been expressed in some quarters that the Hindu kings of Vijayanagara "ground down" their subjects. "Other passages in both these chronicles (i.e., of Paes and Nuniz), each of which was written quite independently of the other, confirm the assertion here made as to the mass of the people being ground down and living in the greatest poverty and distress".⁴ This remark has been made on the strength of the following statement of Nuniz: "They (i.e., the nobles) make it over to the husbandmen who pay nine-tenths to their lord, and they have no land of their own, for the kingdom belongs entirely to the King".⁵ It must be admitted that there is sufficient evidence, as the reader has already noticed, to pass an unfavourable judgment on the Hindu nobles of Vijayanagara. But we may be permitted to observe that a government which lived on a systematic policy of extortion could not have held its own for a period of two and a half centuries against immense odds; and further, that if the people were drained to such an extent as Nuniz would have us believe, the Hindus would never have been able to lead a life of intense social and intellectual activity. While it may certainly be granted that the nobles were rapacious in many instances—perhaps owing to a system of government about which we shall speak in great detail in a subsequent section—, it must not be forgotten at the same time that in no age of the history of southern India has oppression been so largely counterbalanced by liberal remissions of taxes to all kinds of people, as was done during all periods of Vijayanagara history. The account of Nuniz is eloquent about the great extortion by the nobles, and consequently about the oppression by the Government; but it is silent about the organized activities of prosperous groups of commercial classes that voted for their over-lords the dues of the country, about the prompt measures the monarchs took to remedy the evils of their government, and, finally, about the irrefutable evidence of innumerable epigraphs which deal with the unparalleled charities of both private and public bodies of men.

Cites (10)

Mahābhārata — Sanskrit
Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
Mānava Dharmaśāstra — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit
Baudhāyanadharmasūtra — Baudhāyana, Sanskrit
Āmuktamālyada — Kṛṣṇadevarāya 1515, Telugu
Gautamadharmasūtra — Gautama (dharmasūtrakāra), Sanskrit
Nāradasmṛti — Nārada, Sanskrit
Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Epigraphia Carnatica
Śukranīti (Śukrācārya) — Śukrācārya, Sanskrit