War in Ancient India c8.51

c8.51

One item of expenditure on the military side was war relief to the relatives of deceased soldiers and their dependents. An undated *viragal* belonging to the 9th century in the Durga temple at Hosaholalu near Bayakura records the giving of such relief to the relatives of dead soldiers.²⁹ In the Kanarese inscriptions, again, the term *kalnaṭṭu* (also *kalnāḍ*) stands for some such war relief.³⁰ We meet with a significant term in the Vijayanagar inscriptions, *Raktakoḍage*, which proves that war relief generally took the form of assignment of lands by the State to the family of soldiers who died in the service of the king.