Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c23.s1.20

v2.c23.s1.20

The houses of the ordinary people seem to have been of course modest in their appearance. The few details we have about them in the inscriptions are supplemented by the remarks of foreign travellers. Hindu tradition has always associated a house with a garden around it.³ In southern India there is good reason to believe that people lived in early times in houses built of bricks and burnt tiles.⁴ From an inscription dated A. D. 1372 we can make out that houses in Karṇāṭaka,—and we may as well presume, also in the Tamil land,—were built according to standard rules. The record narrates, as we have already seen, the activities of the Pañchāḷas, and speaks of the "Five foundations, . . . domes, pinnacles, crests and the sixteen signs of the original house, the signs of the sacrificial hall, the sign of the pit for consecrated fire, the sign of slopes, etc., according to standard rules, for these and all other signs."⁵