Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c24.s1.64

v2.c24.s1.64

The public works of the same general, who is called Perumāḷe Dēva Daṇṇāyaka in A. D. 1270, are also mentioned in connection with the activities of the Brahmans of many agrahāras. This record informs us that "of the land which (with the usual titles) Vira Narasimha Dēvarasa had granted to the great minister Perumāḷe Dēva Daṇṇāyaka, all the Brahmans of Śrīraṅgam and of the all-honoured agrahāra Udbhava-Viśvanāthapura, which was Bāḷugu, and of four other neighbouring villages (named), made an agreement as follows with all the Brahmans of the all-honoured *agrahāra* Udbhava-Narasimhapura, which was Beḷḷūr :—In our Śrīraṅgapura, leaving the land to which water comes from the Allāḷasamudra tank, we have cultivated the rest. And Perumāḷe Dēva Daṇṇāyaka having spent much money and caused that Allāḷasamudra to be rebuilt so as to endure, we have taken from the land under that tank certain land (specified), west from the old breach which Perumāḷe Dēva Daṇṇāyaka has repaired, measuring forty-eight *kamba* according to the pole of thirty-two paces, for which we will pay to the Brahmans of Beḷḷūr a sum total of twelve *gadyāṇa* a year". The concluding lines of the same epigraph clearly indicate that the joint-activity of the people, as is proved by some of the inscriptions we have cited above, had royal sanction behind it, at least in the times of the Hoysala rulers. The epigraph in question ends thus : "Whoso transgresses this settlement falls under the order of the Pratāpa Chakravarti Hoysala Vira Narasimha Dēvarasa."¹