A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c18.27

Language: English

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The vast majority of the population lived in villages and agriculture was their main occupation. Great prestige attached to ownership of land, and everyone, whatever his occupation, aimed at having a small plot he could call his own. The village was thus primarily a settlement of peasants, and its assembly an association of landlords. A periodical redistribution of the arable land of a village among its inhabitants prevailed in many parts of the country till comparatively recent times. Besides the landowners, great and small, there was a fairly large class of landless labourers, an agrarian proletariat, who assisted in the operations and shared the proceeds of agriculture; some of them were in a condition of serfdom, and all of them had less to do with the management of local affairs than the landowners. The artisans of the village had shares from the common land of the village, which were of the nature of retainers or inducements to them to stay in the village, ready to take up work as it came to them, the wage of each engagement forming the subject of separate negotiation between the parties. There was also a staff of menial servants from the outcaste who were likewise rewarded by shares in the common land. Day labour was usually paid for in grain, and even the small peasant was ready to hire himself out in his spare time.

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Tenancy cultivation was quite common, especially on lands belonging to temples and other corporate institutions, the terms of the tenancy being fixed either by the terms of the original endowment or by separate negotiation in each case. Very often such tenants had rights which made them more or less part-owners of the land they cultivated. The distinction between garden land, including flower-gardens and orchards, in the neighbourhood of capital cities, land under wet cultivation and that under dry cultivation, and forest land was carefully maintained for taxation and other purposes, wet lands being further divided into several grades according to their natural fertility. Besides cultivating food grains and pulses on both wet and dry land, intensive flower and vegetable growing and the raising of commercial crops like cotton and sugar-cane were also widely practised. Black land and red land are particularly mentioned in Chālukya records besides the usual wet land, garden land and waste land. Betel and arecanuts, ginger and turmeric, fresh fruits and flowers, were the chief items of garden produce. Abdur Razzak noticed the number of rose merchants in Vijayanagar and added that roses seemed as necessary as food to the people of that city. The importance of irrigation was well understood from early times; dams were erected across streams and channels taken off from them wherever possible.

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Large tanks were made to serve areas where there were no natural streams, and the proper maintenance of these tanks was regularly provided for. The extension of agriculture was encouraged at all times by granting special facilities and tax concessions for specified periods to people who reclaimed land and brought it under cultivation for the first time. The prosperity of the cultivator depended to some extent on the seasons, but to a larger measure on the conditions of his tenure and on the tax-collecting agency. Tenant conditions were probably easier on lands set apart for religious and charitable uses and of which temples, *mathas* and Brahmins were the landlords. But where rights were assigned to high officials and nobles, or where, as often happened, the collection of the land tax was farmed, both the rate of tax and the manner of collecting it might have pressed hard on the cultivator. Even in the heyday of liberal and efficient administration—under the imperial Cholas—there were complaints of the tax-gatherer's oppressive methods; and after the weakening of Vijayanagar, under the Nāyaks, the ryots were generally compelled to purchase the state's share of the grain at prices arbitrarily fixed by the tax-gatherer. Closely allied to agriculture was cattle-raising and dairy farming, and land was set apart for pasture;

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this industry must have been widespread at all times, but in the inscriptions we hear more of the cattle belonging to temples and eating-houses, of the cowherds in charge of them, and of the obligations they owed to the temple or other owner. Ghee was not only an important item of food among the upper classes, but was used in considerable quantities for burning in lamps in the larger temples.