Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s5.t3.7

v2.c18.s5.t3.7

Ellis has some interesting observations to make in this connection; and we may be permitted to cite the observations of this writer, especially because they throw some light on the concluding scenes of Vijayanagara history. While dealing with the question of the sale of *Mirāsī* and the villeins attached to the soil, he says: "...this state of Villanage exists wherever landed Mirāsī is known, and nowhere where it is unknown, and extends to certain casts which, though all the individuals are not actually slaves, may be called slave casts. In addition to the Villans in whom the whole village hold joint property, the Mirāsīdars have separate property in families and individuals of the same casts, who, as this and the following writing, drawn up in the strictest forms of a bill of sale, demonstrate, have been purchased and transferred independently of the land; to the cultivation of which, however, they are invariably confined, individuals of their casts never being employed as domestic slaves: domestic slavery among the Hindus exists at present only in the families of the principal Zemindars of the country. The agricultural slave casts are the Pallis, the Paller, and the Pareiyer; and their condition either of villenage or direct slavery depends greatly on the prevalent landed tenures of the district they inhabit"*.