Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s2.t2.1

v2.c18.s2.t2.1

Although we know little about these classes themselves, their antiquity is proved beyond doubt by literature and inscriptions.¹ We shall very briefly allude to these two sources. The earliest reference, if it could be accepted,—and if we are justified in assuming that the eighteen castes were in some manner related to the two divisions,—is that contained in a copper-plate grant dated A. D. 459 of the reign of the Gaṅga king Koṅgaṇi Rāja. This inscription records the gift of ten khaṇḍuga of paddy land below the Mēlūr tank (in the Siḍlaghaṭṭa tāluka), to Kādasvāmiśva, a Taitiriya Brāhmaṇa, by the king "free from all eighteen castes".² Somewhere in the fifth century A. D., therefore, the two divisions may have originated.