Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c6.s2.5

c6.s2.5

An office called the Rāyasam, and its officials are frequently mentioned in the inscriptions. The term Rāyasam, which is a popular form of vrāyasam, means literally the profession of writing. There appears to have been an office of that name in Vijayanagar; and people employed in this office generally prefixed the name of the office to their personal names, and this in course of time was transformed into their surname. Rāyasam Koṇḍamarasayya and his son and grandson, Timmarasayya and Ayyaparasayya, respectively adopted in this manner the term Rāyasam as a family name. The officer called Rāyasasvāmi, mentioned in a Mysore inscription,¹²⁸ was apparently its head. It is not possible to definitely fix the position of the Rāyasam in the administrative machinery of the empire. The office was probably a secretariat attached to the person of the king. Persons attached to the department rose to high positions, and became ministers of state.¹²⁹ Nuniz, who refers to these Rāyasams as ‘secretaries’, gives an account of their duties. The Vijayanagar sovereigns never issued written orders to their governors or servants, nor did they make grants in writing. But they had their own ‘secretaries’ who wrote what the kings said and the favours they bestowed. Nuniz gives a clear description of how the orders of the kings were carried out. He says: “When he (the king) confers a favour on any one it remains written in the registers of his secretaries. The king, however, gives the recipient of the favour a seal impressed in wax from one of his rings which the minister keeps and these seals serve for letters patent.”¹³⁰ These ‘secretaries’ who always remained with the king and noted all he said or did, resemble the Tiruvāykēlvis of the Cōḷa inscriptions who had similar duties to discharge.¹³¹ The evidence of epigraphy corroborates the prevalence of this practice in the Vijayanagar days. An inscription at Tirukōyilūr in the South Arcot district registers that certain lands in the three banks out of 12 banks in the village (Tirukōyilūr) were sold at a loss to the temple of Tiruviḍaikaḷināyaṉār by the tenants, owing to their inability to pay the taxes, and that when Immaḍi Narasā Nāyaka visited the temple on a dvādaśi day, he made these lands tax free, and ordered the profits thereon to be utilised for offerings and worship to the God on certain days every month. Immaḍi Narasayyadēva and Vīramarasayya Pallavarāyaṇ are mentioned as the king’s ‘secretaries’ to whom the above oral orders were given.¹³²