Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c12.s2.t2.63

v1.c12.s2.t2.63

Those who conducted the administration of the village were sometimes faced with civil questions. These were in connection with the settlement of boundaries between villages and fields, and the regulation of water for irrigation purposes. We shall see how in A.D. 1363 in the times of Virūpaṇṇa Oḍeyar, the great minister Nāgaṇṇa and other arasus (named) settled a complicated question between the people of Hedḍūr-sime and the temple ācāryas on the one hand and the Jaina sūris on the other. The presence of the nāḍ people was necessary during such occasions.¹ An effaced epigraph dated about A.D. 1400 relates that a śāsana was given for the Mahant of. . . . by all the people of the (Ma)ndu-nāḍ Thirty in connection with a dispute as regards boundary stones. It says: "Kolahalli Tammaḍi Nāgaya not joining with him, set up (other) boundary stones. The Mahant and the nāḍ making inquiry, decided that the stones had been unjustly put up and could not be allowed, and restored the dharma".² The question of boundary disputes seems to have been solved thus in A.D. 1518-19: ". . . the temple trustees (samsthānakulu) of Kailāsanātha and Bhīma (Chilamakuru, Nellore district) granted one kucchala of dry land on the boundary and ten kuṇṭas of wet lands as a sarvamānya to Mēdarameṭṭa Siṅgirināyaḍu, who walked over the boundary line of Chilamakuru (settled the boundary dispute)".³ The epigraph does not contain any more details about this procedure of walking over the boundary line.