Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c10.s2.95

c10.s2.95

It may not be out of place here to examine the merits and defects of the *nāyaṅkara* system. Large tracts of land till then covered with thick forests and rocky hills were occupied by the enterprising *nāyakas*, cities were founded, villages were formed and the torch of civilization was carried into those regions. Great irrigation facilities were afforded and everything good in Hindu culture and civilization was fostered and encouraged by them. But such services as these rendered by the *nāyakas* cannot blind us to certain defects in the system. Speaking about the *Pāḷaiyagārs* of Madura, Caldwell observes: "It can hardly be said that the idea of governing the country by means of an order of rude, rapacious, feudal nobles, such as poligars generally were, turned out to be a happy one, for down to the period of their final subjection and submission to British authority in 1801, whenever they were not at war with the central authority, they were at war with one another, and it was rarely possible to collect tribute from them or revenue due to the central authority without a display of military force which added greatly both to the unpopularity and expense of the collection”.¹²⁹ But Stuart defends the Pāḷaiyagār system and says: “This remark would however apply with equal force to feudal institutions in Europe in the middle ages, and as these served their purpose in the age of the world in which they flourished, it is perhaps reasonable to suppose that protection from foreign foes and internal order and progress though frequently accompanied by oppression and misrule was secured by this means to an extent to which it would otherwise have been impossible.”¹³⁰ But his European feudal analogy cannot be pressed far, for this system was not complete feudalism, and his arguments look like special pleading. There were certain defects in the system which cannot be made light of. The independence they enjoyed within their territories gave them opportunities for engaging themselves in local wars and mutual feuds. At times they even defied the central authority when it became weak under inefficient kings. Further the chief nāyakas who distributed their lands among their tenants in the same way as they themselves received them from the king exacted tributes and military service from them to their own advantage. Hence the nāyakas who held their land from a bigger nāyaka were not answerable to the king. Thus if the nāyaka directly answerable to the king chose to defy the central authority he had the following of a large number of dependents while the king himself was left helpless. This was a weak point in the European feudal organisation also. Heras while describing the Pāḷaiyagār organisation at Madura remarks: “Moreover, the fact that the Tamil and Telugu chiefs were indiscriminately appointed pāḷaiyakārans, was supposed to foster the necessary union of establishing a lasting peace between both the subjects and their foreign rulers. This was by far the most important political event of the time, in spite of the fact that it fomented ambitions in these petty chiefs and weakened the royal authority of Madura, of which they were too independent from the very beginning. Had they been more systematically attached to, and dependent on, the central power, Madura might have been saved from many of the troubles caused by the Pāḷaiyakārans.”¹³¹ The same remarks can be made on the Vijayanagar nāyaṅkara organisation as well. The way in which the nāyakas conducted themselves towards the central government on certain momentous occasions in the history of Vijayanagar, like disputed successions or foreign invasions, brings into light the weakness of the organisation.