Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c11.5

c11.5

The origin of the village sabhā is shrouded in mystery. But it can be assumed that the term sabhai is the Tamilised form of the Sanskrit word *sabhā* which means an assembly, and this term was used to denote an assembly even in the days of the Vedas. But it appears that the assembly of some villages only was called the *sabhai*, and such villages were those granted to Brahmans (*brahmadēya* villages). Side by side with the assembly of the *brahmadēya* villages was the assembly of the *ūr*, and it was called the *ūr*. There seems to have been a good deal of difference between a *sabhai* and an *ūr*. While the one was purely a Brahman concern and obtained only in *brahmadēya* villages, the other was an assembly of persons in a non-*brahmadēya* village or a village in which the proprietors of the soil were not exclusively Brahmans. Though we find some reference to the *ūr* in the inscriptions yet the knowledge we have of it is very limited. But about the constitution and working of the *sabhā* in the *brahmadēya* villages we have much information. However the epigraphs that describe the working of these *sabhās* belong to the Cōḷa period, and are far anterior to the Vijayanagar days. But inasmuch as we get references to the *sabhās* as doing almost what the Cōḷa *sabhās* did, it may be assumed that in the Vijayanagar days also the *sabhās* continued to work on the old lines and discharged their old functions regularly.