Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s5.t3.11

v2.c18.s5.t3.11

This description of the position of slaves is useful inasmuch as it depicts the state of affairs in those parts of southern India which (excepting Malabar) formed the provinces of Vijayanagara; and it might have been taken to represent similar conditions under Vijayanagara but for the fact that it contains a significant detail which deserves to be examined. Ellis relates that one of the main privileges enjoyed by the slaves—by which term we are to understand agrestic slaves as distinct from personal slaves about whom weare unable to make out anything—was that relating to their houses and homesteads which were universally exempted evidently in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from all imposts whatsoever. Now, if this was the custom which was handed down to our own days from the mediaeval ages, it is difficult to reconcile it with the information we have already given in connection with the financial administration of the Vijayanagara monarchs. We know that during and before the Vijayanagara times, the Holeyas—between whom and the Paraiyans, as is well known, there was no difference,—were taxed; and that, as an inscription of A. D. 1430 narrates, they had to pay tolls from which they were exempted,² obviously in certain parts of the Vijayanagara Empire. It may be argued that the remission which was granted to the Holeyas in A. D. 1430 came to stay as a sort of a privilege, and that the freedom which they have claimed, as regards their having been exempt from tolls, may be dated precisely to that year. But here we have to note that along with the Holeyas the blacksmiths, carpenters, goldsmiths, washermen and barbers were also shown the same consideration in the same year, in the province called Mūḷbāgal-Tēkal-nāḍu. If it is true that the Holeyas could date their freedom from tolls to A. D. 1430, all the other communities as well could lay similar pretensions in the later ages. But we have discussed the questions of the barbers in the previous pages. And a glance at the dues and imports we have enumerated in connection with the sources of revenue under Vijayanagara, may enable us to understand that such a privilege was not enjoined by the others after A.D. 1430. The inscription dated in that year along with others we have already cited, leads us to the conclusion that at least, the Holeyas, during the early ages of Vijayanagara history, were the dependents of the Sālu-Mules and Vira Baṇajigas in certain localities of the Karṇātaka. Whether this could be said of the Paraiyas of the Tamil land as well is a point which we are unable to explain.