Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c8.s1: Section 1. Description of the Land

Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c8.s1

Language: English

Section 1. Description of the Land

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THE Empire which thus arose on the soil of Karṇāṭaka gradually extended its sway over the whole of the peninsula south of the river Kṛishṇā. It was not an empty boast which the engravers recorded on stone when they said that "Sangama of the Yaduvamśa enabled Lakshmī the Karṇāṭaka Deśa to wear permanently her ear-rings".¹ The sons of Sangama had reason indeed to infuse new life into the old country. Known by the name of Punnaṭa (or Punnaḍ) in early history, it had withered till it rose under the general appellation of Gaṅgavāḍi 96,000; and when the warring peoples from the time of the Mauryas till those of the Hoysalas had pained it with their politics and soothed it with their songs, it reappeared again as Karṇāṭa of the Vijayanagara age.² According to an inscription dated in A.D. 1565, it was 126,000 yōjanas in extent, situated in the middle of the Jambūdvipa.³ With the roll of ages, Karṇāṭaka had not changed in its fertility and fame. Centuries before the rise of the Kurubas, the land of Karṇāṭaka had sheltered the Jaina sages of the north; and the nature of the country where the founders of the Vijayanagara Empire first made their appearance is thus described in an inscription of about A.D. 600. Bhadrabāhu, after having foretold in Ujjaini a period of twelve years of dire calamity, took his way to the south where his saṅgha made their abode. ". . .The whole of the saṅgha, leaving the northern regions, took their way to the south. And the ṛishi company arrived at a country counting many hundreds of villages, completely filled with the increase of people, money, gold, grain, cows, buffaloes, and goats.

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⁶ S. K. Aiyangar, Some Contributions, p. 298.

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¹ E.C., VIII, Tl. 206, p. 209, op. cit.

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² Rice, I.A., XII, p. 13. The identification of Maisūru with Mahishamandala, though no doubt very attractive to a Kannaḍiga, is untenable. See Fleet, J.R.A.S., 1910, p. 425, seq.; Pargiter, ibid., p. 867; Rice, J.R.A.S., 1911, p. 809, seq.; Fleet, ibid., p. 816, seq.; Rice, J.R.A.S., 1912, p. 241, seq.; Fleet, ibid., p. 245, seq.; Narasimhachar, Q.J.M.S., X, p. 249, seq. A Sinda king Gaṇḍarādityarasa is called the lord of Māhishamatipura in Saka 969. He ruled over the Sindavāḍi 1,000, Beṇṇevūru 12, and Nuṛuguṇḍa. 711 of 1919; E. Report for 1920, p. 100. Buchanan speaks of a celebrated temple named after Mahishi supposed to have been built by Hanumaṅta, on the banks of the Tuṅgabhadrā near Maluru. Travels through Malabar, III, p. 286. Mr. Sēsha Ayyar would convert Erumaināḍu into Eruvai-nāḍu=Land of Elephants, Q.J.M.S., XI, p. 76. For Mahishavishaya, see Ep. Ind., IV, p. 58, n. 2. See also Munshi, I.A. LI, p. 219.

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³ E.C., VII, Ci. 62, p. 189.

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"Whereupon at a mountain with lofty peaks, whose name was Kaṭavapra,—an ornament to the earth; the ground around which was variegated with the brilliant hues of the clusters of gay flowers fallen from the beautiful trees; the rocks on which were dark as the great rain clouds filled with water; abounding with wild boars, panthers, tigers, bears, hyænas, serpents, and deer; filled with caves caverns, large ravines, and forests . . . .",¹ the *sangha* fixed its quarters.

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¹ E.C., 11, No. 1, p. 1. (1st. ed.); pp. 1-2, (2nd. ed.) Rice, Mys. Ins., p. 302.

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That the people loved to praise Karṇāṭaka in the later ages as well can be seen from the following description of it by the poet Nañjuṇḍa (A.D. 1525) who in his *Kumāra Rāmana Kathe* says:²

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² *Karṇāṭaka Kavicharite*, II, p. 205. Evidently Nañjuṇḍa had Nṛpatuṅga's verses in mind. Read *Kavirājamārgga*, I. 36, p. 6. (text).

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ಕಾವೇರಿಯಿಂದಂ ಗೋದಾವರಿವರೆಗಮು |
ದಾರ್ವಸುಧಾತಳ ವಲಯ ||
ಭಾವಿಸಿ ಕರ್ಣಾಟಕಜನಪದವದ |
ನಾವೆನೊಲಿದು ಬಣ್ಣಿಸುವನು ||
ನಡಿವಂಜಿ ನುಡಿವರಗಳ ನಲಿದಾಡುವ |
ಬೆಡಗಿನ ನವಿಲು ಕೂಗಿದುವ ||
ಪಡಿಯುವಕ್ಕಿ ಮೊರೆವ ಪರಮೆಗಳದೇ |
ಗೆದಿಪುವು ಪಥಿಕರನಲ್ಲಿ ||
ಮಡಿಯೆಂಬ ಮಾತು ಸಂಖ್ಯಾವಾಚಗಳ ಕಟ್ಟು |
ಕಡೆಯೊಳು ಶಾಕವಾಟಿಯೆಗಳ ||
ತಡೆಯುದೊರಜಕರುಳಲ್ಲದಾಜನಪದ |
ದೆಡೆಯೊಳಲ್ಲಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಿದನಂ ||

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In order to estimate adequately the remarks of foreigners about the land, and the zeal with which princes and peoples made it wealthy and famous, we may go beyond the bounds of brevity and listen to the well known Sarvajña about the nature of the country. This poet, who may have lived about A.D. 1700 or earlier,³ compares Karṇāṭaka with the adjacent countries in the following lines:

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³ The date of this poet is however disputed. See infra.

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"On each road are thorns of the Shabby Ocymum; all those who are born speak indistinctly. The road to the East is not to be taken. Roasted corn is cheap; for an obeisance you get some butter-milk; there are small Solanum fruits to suck (instead of mangoes). Can one declare the East to be rich?

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"Whithersoever you look, you see thorns of the miserable Ocymum. All the people, even when grown up, speak indistinctly. The North is not beautiful. The villages are far from each other; water is met every ten miles; there is no shade to stand under. The road to the North is not to be taken.

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"With your dish of great millet you have many varieties of split pulse and the milk of well-fed buffaloes. Look at the riches of the Middle Country—the Land of Growth (Karṇāṭaka)! With your dish of Panicum you have suitable split pulse and a lump of butter as big as a sling-stone. Look at the means of the Middle Country! You have your cake of wheaten flour and the milk of the lusty buffaloes and the love of a modest female! I have not seen the like! May cake dust (that does not satiate) fall into the mouth of him who says that the country, where the Bengal gram and wheat are sown and grown, should be burnt!

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"The forest (of the West) is full of immature fruit; the country is full of huge trees; promises are not kept. I have had quite enough of the Hill Country (i.e., Male-nāḍu). The climate is damp, bellies are swollen; ah! why should one go to a country where sinners stir and eat their food with wooden ladles? There are green ginger and turmeric: there are jaggery and betel; there are good jack-fruits to eat. Can one declare the Hill Country to be a good one? There is rice water, there is mud, there are not dwellings, there are wives that are gratifying. Oh! Look at the relieving features of the Hill Country!

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"But in this Southern direction Asuras have been born as men. Daśasīra's (Rāvaṇa's) enemy has given them their name and rejected the region of the Tigulas. There are the kālakūṭa poison and such malice as you might experience if you trusted a scorpion... How shall I tell the self-conceit of the country where reasoning has been born!"

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Making due allowance for the provincialism which has made the poet speak in disparaging terms about the great people of the south, we may, nevertheless, note that he speaks of the ancient Gaṅgavāḍi in words the truth of which has been amply borne out by foreign travellers. Duarte Barbosa, who was for sixteen years in the Indian seas, and who visited Vijayanagara in A.D. 1504-1515,¹ confirms the opinion of Sarvajña as regards the richness of the soil of the centre of the Empire. "This kingdom of Narsinga," says Duarte Barbosa, "is very rich and well supplied with provisions, and is very full of cities and large townships; and all the country is very fertile and brought under cultivation".²

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¹ Sarvajña, translated by Kittel, I.A., II., pp. 23-4.

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¹ Barbosa, *A Description of the Coasts of E. Africa and Malabar*, Preface, p. vii. (Trans. by Stanley); Burgess, *Chronology of Modern India*, p. 13.

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² Barbosa, ibid., p. 79.

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Paes, who was in the city of Vijayanagara in about A.D. 1520,³ in his *Chronicle* writes: "Now to tell of the aforesaid kingdom (of Vijayanagara). It is a country sparsely wooded except along this serra on the east (i.e., on the west of the territory of Vijayanagara), but in places you walk for two or three leagues under groves of trees; and behind cities and towns and villages they have plantations of mangoes and jackfruit trees, and tamarinds and other very large trees, which form resting-places where merchants halt with their merchandise. . . These domains are very well cultivated and very fertile, and are provided with quantities of cattle, such as cows, buffaloes, and sheep; also of birds, both those belonging to the hills and those reared at home, and in this in greater abundance than in our tracts. The land has plenty of rice and Indian-corn, grains, beans and other kind of crops which are not sown in our parts; also an infinity of cotton".⁴

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³ Sewell, *For. Emp.*, p. vi.

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⁴ Ibid., p. 237.

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About the eastern parts of the Vijayanagara Empire we have the following from the writings of Nicholas Pimenta, who went from Tanjore to Mailāpūr in A.D. 1559: "From hence (i.e., Tanjore) we went by land to Saint Thomas, travelling twelve days in a pleasant Country beautified with Groves and Streams, enriched with a fertile soil and wholesome eyre".⁵

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⁵ Nicholas Pimenta, *Purchas, Pilgrims*, X, p. 207.

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This fertile region over which the Vijayanagara monarchs ruled was bounded on three sides by the ocean and on the northern side by an almost impenetrable belt of forest. The justification of the title of *pūrva-paśchima-dakshina-samudrādhipati* (Lord of the Eastern, Western and Southern Oceans) which the Hindu rulers assumed, is to be found in these words of 'Abdur Razzāq, the ambassador from the court of Sultan Shāh Rukh,¹ who stayed in the great capital from the end of April A.D. 1443 till the 5th of December A.D. 1443.² "His dominions (i.e. those of Dēva Rāya II) extended from the frontier of Serendib to the extremities of the country of Kalbergah (i.e., from the Kṛṣṇā river to Cape Comorin)".³ "Inland, his cities and provinces extended over a journey of three months".⁴ As regards the northern frontier, Paes relates thus: "On the extreme east of these two kingdoms (i.e., the kingdom of the Hindus and that of ‘Ādil Shāh) you must know that the country is all covered with scrub, the densest possible to be seen, in which there are great beasts; and (this) forms so strong a fortress for it that it protects both sides; it has its entrances by which they pass from one kingdom to the other".⁵

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