Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c13.s5.7

v1.c13.s5.7

Even in the reign of Achyuta Rāya, therefore, the royal officials could be humane and benevolent. It is not surprising that they should have been so, especially when we remember that that monarch himself had set a good example in his equitable division of the village between the Ekāmbaranātha and Varadarāja temples. The general tendency among the officials of the Government may not have been towards continued oppression at all, since during the earlier period we have ample evidence of their having put an end to distasteful and harmful customs. This may explain why in Saka 1445 (A.D. 1523-4) Vademalluna evidently a (Muhammadan ?) servant of Kṛṣṇa Dēva Rāya the Great, prohibited the custom of supplying leaves to the circar people, and cloaked his action in a religious garb by arranging for the *abhishēka* of the god . . .with the water of the Chiranadi river.²