A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c18.8

c18.8

The king and his court led an extravagant and luxurious life in striking contrast to the modest living standard of the rest of the population. The pomp and ceremony of the court became more and more dazzling in the course of centuries and may be said to have reached its culmination under the Rāyas of Vijayanagar. The palace always had a large establishment attached to it; in theory there were seventy-two departments (niyōgas) in a palace as in a temple. On the establishment there were large numbers of women, specially chosen for their youth and beauty. Some were imported from abroad while others were captured in war and enslaved. Many, needless to say, were courtesans, skilled in the arts of music and dancing, while others were the concubines of princes, nobles and courtiers. A mistress of the Chālukya king Vijayāditya of Bādāmi, Vināpōṭigaḷ by name (notice the honorific plural), performed the *hiraṇyagarbha* at Mahākūta and presented to the deity a pedestal (*pīṭha*), set with rubies, with a silver umbrella over it. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa Amoghavarsha regularly employed courtesans as his emissaries and his feudatories had to receive batches of them from the emperor and entertain them in their courts.