Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c10.s2.32

c10.s2.32

The provincial viceroys were given the right to issue their own coins independently of the central government. Cæsar Frederick was very much struck by this system and he remarks: "When we came into a new governor's territory as every day we did, although they were all tributarie to the king of Bizeneger, yet everyone of them stamped a small coyne of copper, so that the money we took this day would not serve the next day."⁸⁵ Inscriptional evidence corroborates this statement of the foreign observer. A few *gadyāṇas* were issued from the provincial seats of Bārakūr and Maṅgaḷūr; and Krishna Sāstri concluded from this fact that the provincial viceroys were empowered to issue coins in their own names.⁸⁶ Similarly we have evidence of Lakkaṇṇa Daṇḍanāyaka, the viceroy under Dēva Rāya II, issuing coins in his own name. A copper coin of his has an elephant on the reverse and a letter ‘L’ above it, and the obverse bears the legend ‘maṇa’, ‘daṇāya’, ‘karu’ which probably stands for the name of Lakṣmaṇa Daṇḍanāyaka.⁸⁷ The provincial governors themselves had the power to grant to private individuals the right of issuing coins and owning private mints (taṅka).⁸⁸ The governors enjoyed the right to impose new taxes or remit old ones. Since they were generally held responsible only for a fixed contribution of money to the imperial house they were not interfered with in the minuter details of the incidence of taxation and the manner of collection of the taxes. Thus Cikka Kampaṇa Uḍaiyār gave a charter to the officials and Kaikkōḷas of Haṭṭalakōṭe making certain regulations with regard to the payment of taxes and remitting the fines imposed on the Kaikkōḷas.⁸⁹ But it appears that the provincial ministers could not make grants or remit or impose taxes except with the permission of the governor of the province. Thus Viṭṭappar, an officer under Vīra Kampaṇa Uḍaiyār, made a gift of the village of Māḍambākkam to the local temple after getting the sanction of the governor.90 But there are a few inscriptions which indicate that certain officers of government remitted the taxes without getting the necessary permission from the governor. Gōppaṇaṅgaḷ, an officer under Kampaṇa Uḍaiyār, remitted the taxes on the lands of Kulōttuṅgaśōḷanallūr alias Brahmīśvara which was a unit village.91 The Mahāpradhāni Sōmappa Uḍaiyār and the treasurer Viṭṭappayan, the two officers under the same Kampaṇa, issued an order to Mēydēvar who was in charge of the taxes of Pulināḍ to assign certain duties imposed in kind on all the articles that passed through his district for the benefit of the Viṣṇu temple at Kumari.92 But from the above two cases it would appear that these officers made the grants not by any inherent right they enjoyed by virtue of the office they held under the government, but they were themselves in charge of certain districts under the provincial government, the income from which were assigned to them by the provincial governor as remuneration for the office they held under him. It was in the capacity of district chiefs that the ministers of the provincial governors remitted taxes or made gifts independently. Their grants, unless they were made with the permission of the governor, could not have applied to the whole province. The benefit of such grants was restricted to the district which they held under the provincial governor.