Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c11.98

c11.98

The temples were maintained both by royal benefaction and public patronage. The kings constructed the temples and endowed lands for their maintenance, and such lands were called *devadāna* and at times *devadāya* lands. The royal patronage took the form of either grant of lands as a *sarvamānya* to be enjoyed by the temples in perpetuity or gift of specified taxes payable to the government by the people of the locality, which the temple authorities were permitted to collect for the support of their temples. Thus under the orders of Kampaṇa his minister Viṭṭappar made a grant of Māḍambākkam to the temple of Śērvai Aḷuḍaiya Nāyanār. The inscription states: "This village, the whole village, which is the sacred holding of this God, limited by its four boundaries, including the village waste, wet lands, and garden lands with all its limitations of communal obligations, fees on cotton looms, obligations for maintaining oil mills, etc., fees for maintaining village servants and other similar obligations new or old, which may hereafter become due from each tenant, we have given for worship and repairs as *sarvamānya* grant to the temple in order that it may last till the Sun and Moon exist."⁶⁶ Kṛṣṇadēva remitted 10,000 *varāhas* being the income from the *jōḍi*, *araśupēru* and *śūlavari* in favour of the Śiva and Viṣṇu temples in the Cōḷamaṇḍalam.⁶⁷ The temples themselves collected these taxes. Here as in the case of the village assemblies, a distinction has to be drawn between the taxes levied and collected by the temple authorities in certain villages independently of the central authority and the taxes and other income collected by them with the sanction or under instructions from the government. In the former case the taxes collected were in the nature of customary dues payable to the landlord by the tenant, while in the latter case the right of collecting certain taxes and dues payable by the people to the government was made over to the temple for its benefit. Thus Dēva Rāya II issued for instance a nirūpa or order to Śrīgirinātha of Candragiri asking him to remit the jōḍi of 131 poṇs and 6¼ paṇams or 13,16¼ paṇams at 10 paṇams per poṇ due to the Candragiri rājya from Tiruppukkuḷi in order that that amount might be utilised for the temple of Porēṟruperumāḷ of that place.⁶⁸ Kṛṣṇadēva Rāya’s remission of certain taxes in favour of the Śiva and Viṣṇu temples in the Cōḷamaṇḍalam was also of this type.⁶⁹