Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c11.16

c11.16

It is hard to explain the right of these village assemblies to sell away or make gift of the lands in the villages under their jurisdiction unless we associate the institution of the sabhā and its inherent proprietory right on the lands under its jurisdiction with the question of land tenures. As we said earlier every brahmadēya village had a sabhā which was its representative body, and as such was vested with the right of acting on behalf of the villagers. Further it is as a joint body that the assembly made the grants, and this right of acting as the joint body representing the villagers was acquired by it by reason of the joint tenure under which the villagers held the land. In such villages the proprietors held the lands jointly and could sell or make gifts of their lands only jointly and not individually. Here the terms gaṇabhōgam and ēkabhōgam deserve some examination. Gaṇabhōgam indicates that lands held under that system were jointly held by the people, and hence under a joint tenure. But under the ēkabhōgam system the lands seem to have been held by only one person, and hence he had absolute and unlimited right over the soil. In some other cases the village granted was divided into a number of vṛttis each of which or a certain number of which was granted to a particular individual. According to a copper-plate record of Harihara II for instance a grant of twenty-two villages was made by the king on Agrahāra terms to a few Brahmans to be held by them jointly (gaṇabhōgam).⁹ This would indicate that the villages were to be joint villages, and hence any sale or gift of the lands in the said twenty-two villages was to be made only jointy by the donees. No single member among them could deal with the property independently of the others. But the case of an ēkabhōgam village was quite different, for the donee in this case was not bound to act jointly with others in regard to the sale or gift of the property of which he was in full and unlimited possession. In Ś. 1451 Acyuta Rāya made a grant of the village of Kaḍalāḍi in the Paḍaiviḍu mahārājya to one Rāmacandra Dīkṣita as a sarvamānya to be enjoyed by him and his descendants on ēkabhōgam tenure, which implies the exclusive ownership of the property and the rights over it by a single individual. When however a sarvamānya village held under such ēkabhōgam tenure was distributed among a number of persons, it simply meant that they were granted the right of enjoyment of the income from the village unless it was clearly stated by the donor that he was making a sarvamānya grant of the lands in question. In the absence of such a specific statement we have to understand that the donor reserved the right to the property to himself, but granted only the right of enjoyment to the persons in question. According to the inscriptions under reference Rāmacandra Dīkṣita, the original donee of the sarvamānya grant, appears to have reserved to himself the right of ownership and granted only the right of enjoyment to the Brahmans of his sect.¹⁰