Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c15.s3.t2.16

v1.c15.s3.t2.16

These observations of Paes and Nuniz definitely suggest that there was a centralized military department in Vijayanagara with its rules and customs, its gradation of officers and a large staff of persons whose services were indispensable during a campaign. Duarte Barbosa's remarks about the order and arrangement which prevailed in the kitchen section of the *kandāchāra* department already mentioned in an earlier page may be recounted here. His evidence is specially valuable in this connection, since it confirms our supposition that the Hindu rulers had a centralized military system. According to Barbosa, "if the knight to whom the king has given a horse cares for it and treats it well, they take away that one and give him another and a better one; and if he is negligent, they take his away and give him another that is worse. And thus all the king's horses and elephants are well fed and cared for, at his cost: and the grandees, to whom he gives a great quantity of them, act in the same manner with their knights".³