Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.t1.15

v2.c18.t1.15

We go to many of the foreign travellers in vain for details about the numerous communal subdivisions in the Empire. To the foreigners, unacquainted with the customs of the people, it sometimes appeared that the land was made up only of one class; and at other times, of three great divisions. In addition to the vague notices of the Hindu subjects which we find in the writings of most of the foreign travellers, there is another consideration which depreciates the value of their accounts in this particular connection. It is that their narratives contain conflicting statements, especially as regards the character of the people. Varthema in about A.D. 1500 observed the following: "The people are of a tawny colour; they go naked and bare-footed, and wear nothing on the head."² Linschoten in A.D. 1583 is more vehement in his wholesale condemnation of the people of the Karṇāṭaka: "They are so miserable, that for a Penie they would indure to be whipped, and they eate so little, that it seemeth they live by the Aire, they are likewise most of them leane, and weake of limbes, of little strength and very Cowards, where by the Portuguals doe them great outrage and villanie, using them like Dogs and Beasts"³. A still more pronounced view of the people, this time of the eastern coast, is from the pen of John Nieuhof, who writes thus about Madura in A. D. 1662: "The Inhabitants of those places are very black and strong; they are deceitful and cunning, make little account of their Wives, but generally keep two or three Harlots, by whom they have sometimes sixteen or eighteen children".¹