Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c24.s2.98

v2.c24.s2.98

The good feelings that existed between the Sthānikas or temple priests on the one hand and the Brahmans on the other, are clearly proved by the following two records. One of them is dated A. D. 1416. In that year "in the great minister Nāgaṇṇa Daṇṇāyaka's Muḷuvāgil kingdom, Annadāni Oḍeyar was maintaining the proper *dharmas*". Kēsava Perumāḷe's sons Balepa, Maṇiya and Mārapa, and his younger brother Āvāmbaḷa, the temple priests (*sthānikaru*), "by order of the original chief goddess of Muḷuvāgil, Muḷuvāyi Nāchi, Dēvi," agreeing among themselves, gave to Śivarātri-Viṭhannai Mallaṇṇa and other Brahmans a *śāsana* as follows: "The, Araḷi dam in the Pālāru river in the Katariyahalli-sime belonging to our Muḷuvāyi Nāchi Dēvi having been breached from time immemorial and ruined down to the level of the ground, in order that you may expend much money and restore the dam so as to form a tank, and build there a village named Muḷuvāyi-Nāchipura, we grant to you the tract of land bounded as follows,—(here come the boundaires)—in which you may cut down the jungle and form fields. And the rice lands under and in the area of the tank which you construct, dividing them into four parts, one part will belong to the treasury of our Muḷuvāyi Nāchi Dēvi, and in consideration of your having expended much money of your own and constructed the tank, the remaining three parts we grant, with the land (before-mentioned), to your Brahmans as an *agrahāra*, free of all imposts, from our Muḷuvāyi Nāchi Dēvi. All the usual rights of the village named Muḷuvāyi Nāchipura which you build we also grant. If any damage arise to your tank, it belongs to your Brahmans to repair". The agreement on tablets (*patra-śāsana*) was inscribed in a stone sasana (*śilā-śāsana*) in front of the goddess Muḷuvāyi Nāchi Dēvi, and was granted by the donors of their own freewill "with the consent of our wives sons, relatives, dependants and claimants, and also with the consent of the king."¹ This important epigraph enables us to assert that the Sthānikas or temple priests were owners of temple lands, that they contracted deeds in the name of the deity, and that an agreement of the nature given above was declared valid only when it had received the consent of all relatives, dependants and claimants concerned, and also of the State. The concord between the Sthānikas and the Brahmans, as indicated clearly in the Muḷuvāyi epigraph, is also proved by another inscription dated A. D. 1520. This relates that the Brahmans of Vōlu-Narasimhapura and the Sthānikaru gave to Dyāpa-Kedurappa specified land and a house, the object of the grant being not stated in the inscription.²