Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c8.s1.22

v1.c8.s1.22

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