Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c21.s3.t6.1

v2.c21.s3.t6.1

In the observance of fasts and feasts, too, we have evidence of the devoutness with which monarchs as well as people clung to classical precepts. To foreigners this was familiar. Thus Paes relates: "You should know that among these heathen there are days when they celebrate their feasts as with us; and they have their days of fasting, where all day they eat nothing and eat only at midnight."³ We can gather more details from epigraphical records on this subject. The Vijayanagara monarchs certainly did not introduce any innovation in this matter. In earlier times as well it was not uncommon for high officials to be strictly orthodox in their daily avocations. Thus, according to an epigraph dated A.D. 1218, in the times of the Hoysala king Ballāḷa II, "the Sāvāsi official, great master of the robes, (with praise) bathing and sacrificing at dawn and observing both ēkādaśis, worshipper of the feet of Brahmans and gurus, worshipper of the divine lotus-plant of the god Jaitanātha,—Jaya-Bhaṭṭayya Nāyaka having set up the god Jaita-Nārāyaṇa", received from the Hoysala king Ballāḷa Dēva a grant of forty gadyāṇa.¹