A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.48

c12.48

Hereditary monarchy was the prevailing form of government. Disputed successions and civil wars were not unknown, as we have seen, and sometimes caused grave misery to the people. The king was in all essential respects an autocrat whose autocracy, however, was tempered by the maxims of the wise and the occasional intercession of a minister, a poet or a friend. The sphere of the state's activity was, however, limited, and in a society where respect for custom was deep-rooted, even the most perverse of autocrats could not have done much harm; indeed it must be said that the general impression left on the mind by the literature of the age is one of contentment on the part of the people who were proud of their kings and loyal to them. As the people took the king for their model, it was his duty to set up a high moral standard by his personal conduct; in many poems he was exhorted to keep a strict mastery over his passions in order to rule successfully. He was to be liberal in his patronage of religion, arts and letters. He was to show paternal care for his subjects and to be impartial as among different sections of them. He held a daily durbar (nāḷavai) at which he heard and set right all complaints. The onerous character of the royal task is emphasized by a poet who compares a king to a strong bull which drags a cart laden with salt from the plains to the uplands; another affirms that the king, much more than rice or water, is the life of the people. To brahmins was assigned an important role in the state; they were the foremost among those (*surram*) on whose assistance the king relied in his daily work; and the highest praise of a monarch was to say that he did nothing which pained the brahmins. Agriculture was the mainstay of polity and the basis of war; and a good king was believed to be able to command the course of the seasons. The ideal of the ‘conquering king’ (*vijigīshu*) was accepted and acted on. Victory against seven kings meant a superior status, which the victor marked by wearing a garland made out of the crowns of the seven vanquished rulers. The most powerful kings were expected to undertake a *digvijaya*, which was a conquering expedition in clockwise direction over the whole of India. The idea of a *chakravarti*, ‘wheel-king’, whose *digvijaya* was led by the march of a mysterious wheel of gold and gems through the air is mentioned in one of the poems in the *Puranānūru*. Another poem in the same collection mentions the companions of a king who committed suicide when the king died—an early anticipation of what later became a widespread institution under such names as Companions of Honour (Abu Zayd), *vēlaikkārar*, *garuḍas*, *sahavāsis*, *āpattudavigal* and so on.