Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s1.10

v2.c18.s1.10

One reason which may explain to a certain extent the absence of the name Kshatriya in the history of Vijayanagara is that the vitality of the Hindu Empire was due to the activities of the commercial and agricultural classes. These, as will be evident from the observations we shall make in connection with the corporate life of the people, vindicated their rights and privileges in the numerous grants they made to the provincial rulers; and helped to increase the material prosperity of the country upon which, among other things, depended the success of the Vijayanagara arms. Our assumption that the middle classes were mainly responsible for the greatness of Vijayanagara is in a way borne out by the praise given to the generals in terms of their achievements rather than in those of their Kshatriya descent. From the very beginning of Vijayanagara history the tendency was to ignore the Kshatriya claims of generals, and to describe them with the usual titles of *Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara* and the like, and with an account of their brave deeds. It is true that for the present we are unable to prove the veracity of the documents which give us these details. We are told in A. D. 1355, for example, that the great general Mallinātha who, as we remarked in an earlier connection, acquired greatness on the Turuka, Seuna, Telunga, Pāṇḍya, and Hoysala armies, was also honoured by the "Suratāla King" (the Bāhmani Sultan) "as the brave of a foreign army".¹ We have to remember in this connection the solid contributions to the State by the Jaina generals like Irugappa Daṇḍanāyaka and others in order to know that, from the infancy of the Empire, the privilege and honour of defending the country had already been monopolized by people who never belonged to the Kshatriya caste.