Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c13.s3.24

v1.c13.s3.24

The presence of a royal officer in legal proceedings seems to have been a feature of this system. A legal dispute arose between the karaṇams and the agrahārikas of Avadūru, in the matter of an inconvenient situation of inām-lands. The question was equitably settled in Saka 1508 (A.D. 1586-7) by Anugoṇḍa Veṅgaḷappa, obviously an officer of the king, who classified the lands into good, bad and medium, and redistributed them.² This delicate question of redistribution of inām-lands or lands given as gifts, sometimes necessitated the intervention of the king himself. It is interesting to observe that we have in this connection the instance of the Emperor Achyuta Rāya about whose alleged injustice Nuniz waxes eloquent in his Chronicle. Achyuta Rāya personally investigated the following case. Whether he intended to inaugurate his reign which afterwards, if the solitary evidence of Nuniz deserves credence, proved unfortunately to be an era of unparalleled oppression, by an impartial attitude towards his people, cannot be determined. But it is certain that in the year Virōdhi on the day of Kārtika-Bahula-Pañchami, Saka 145(2) (Thursday, 21st October, A.D. 1529) on the occasion of his coronation, according to a record dated Saka 1454 (A.D. 1532), the Emperor directed Sāḷuva Nāyaka to assign villages equally, "neither more or less", to the temples of Varadarāja and Ekāmbaranātha. And when Sāḷuva Nāyaka gave more to the former and less to the latter, Achyuta Rāya personally went to Conjeeveram and effected an equal distribution of villages between the two temples by casting lots.³