Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c8.s3.36

v1.c8.s3.36

This brings us to the question of roads in Vijayanagara. But here again our knowledge is meagre. How far they followed the precepts of the mediaeval Hindu writers like Sukra in the matter of the construction of roads cannot be made out. The assumption is that there must have been good roads, if we are to believe contemporary foreign opinion. Roads are of different width in the Nitisāra of Sukra. The footpaths of a grāma and the mārga or narrow streets of the capital, the rural lanes and the king's highway or rājamārga—all these have been dealt with by that great Hindu writer.⁶ From the accounts of travellers and epigraphical records we are able to gather a little about the existence of these in Vijayanagara. The Russian traveller Nikitin speaks of a road going straight through the town.⁷ Barbosa, as we shall see later on, definitely tells us that the streets and squares were very wide.¹ Paes informs us of "a broad and beautiful street",² while dealing with the outer circles of the capital. Then again while describing the citadels, he writes, that he saw "a very beautiful street of very beautiful houses".³ And he further says that there were thirty-four streets between the House of Victory and the Palace.⁴ One of the roads mentioned by Śukra is the mārga. An inscription dated A.D. 1399 speaks of a mārga.⁵ The streets were named, and in this respect the Vijayanagara monarchs were guided by ancient usage. Thus in the days of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya, according to an inscription dated in the seventeenth year of his reign, a street was called Buvanamuḷudupperunderuvu in the village of Madurāntaka-caturvēdi-maṅgalam.⁶ An equally formidable name of a street in the times of Ariyaṇṇa Uḍaiyar (i.e., Harihara Rāya II) was that of the street Nāṛpatteṇṇāyiraperunderuvu in agaram Tirumaliśai.⁷