Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c15.35

c15.35

The condition of literacy among the people in the Vijayanagar days can be gleaned through the style, orthography and script used in the inscriptions of the period. Royal grants were composed in the language of the territory in which the inscription was to be engraved. Though a few epigraphs were in Sanskrit or in Telugu even in the Tamil districts the portions of the inscriptions wherein were described the boundaries of lands and similar other details of general local interest and importance were generally in Tamil. So far as the Tamil epigraphs are concerned a perceptible deterioration is seen both in the matter of style and in orthography. This was evidently due to the fact that the composition and engraving of the inscriptions were in the hands of men of mediocre abilities.