Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c13.s2.3

c13.s2.3

The foreign travellers who visited Vijayanagar and a few other important provincial centres have left brilliant accounts of the immense size of the cities and the excellent palaces and houses in them. But India was a land of villages as it still continues to be, and the condition of life in the villages was not so attractive as to draw the pen of the travellers. And it is difficult to estimate the exact number of villages in the empire. Abdur Razāk while describing the west coast region says that he arrived "each day at a town or village well populated".¹⁶⁸ Nikitin, the Russian traveller, remarks that between the large towns there were many small ones, and that he came across three such places each day and occasionally four.¹⁶⁹ Paes also speaks of many cities and walled villages.¹⁷⁰ But we have no definite idea as to the number of villages in the empire.¹⁷¹