A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India c21.s2.34

c21.s2.34

These Brahmans are like friars with us, and they count them as holy men—I speak of the Brahman priests and the lettered men of the pagodas—because although the king has many Brahmans, they are officers of the towns and cities and belong to the government of them; others are merchants, and others live by their own property and cultivation, and the fruits which grow in their inherited grounds. Those who have charge of the temples are learned men, and eat nothing which suffers death, neither flesh nor fish, nor anything which makes broth red, for they say that it is blood. Some of the other Brahmans whom I mentioned, who seek to serve God, and to do penance, and to live a life like that of the priests, do not eat flesh or fish or any other thing that suffers death, but only vegetables¹ and butter and other things which they make of fruit,² with their rice.