Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c6.74

c6.74

More important than this elementary duty of the State was the preservation of the social solidarity of the people by enforcing on them the duty of the observance of their *svadharma* based on immemorial custom and the authority of the Vedas. Speaking of the mendicants, Kṛṣṇa Rāya insists on the fact that a king should not through his partiality for letters give large sums of money and villages to them (since the mendicants and ascetics were considered to be learned men) lest they should swerve from their necessary discipline, which would increase in the State evils as famine, disease, and infantile mortality, and further remarks that in such cases it would be sufficient if the king showed *bhakti* (respect and devotion) towards them. He further asserts that the only evil that might then result is their suffering, but no sin would accrue to the sovereign.⁴²