Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c10.s9.44

v1.c10.s9.44

The above instance of a high government official remitting taxes "in the presence of all the cultivators" brings us to an interesting feature of Vijayanagara polity. This was the voice which the common people had in the matter of granting, and, in some instances, of fixing, the dues in their locality. The rate of dues on weavers, for example, was fixed by the officers of the government as well as by the people themselves. An inscription dated only in the cyclic year Sarvajit, Kārttigai, 3, found at Mānampāḍi, Chingleput district, records an order of Tirumalai-Nambi, the Agent of Tirumalai Kumbhakōṇam Tātāchārya, Tirumāliruñjōlai Ayyaṇ, the trustees of the temple of Pērarulāḷap-Perumāḷ, the citizens and accountants of the temple, fixing the rate of the tax on looms and the paḍiñjakāṇikkai to be paid to the temple treasury by the weavers of Vāṇavanmādēvi during the régime of Kṛṣṇayyaṅgārayan.¹