Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c7.s2.12

c7.s2.12

About 1446 the taxes seem to have weighed heavily on the people in certain parts of the empire. An epigraph at Tiruvaḍi in the South Arcot district records that as the taxes iṇavari and iḍaṅgaivari collected from the Valaṅgai and Iḍaṅgai communities were exorbitant, and the villages were distressed and the people migrated to other places, the country became depopulated, the king sent an order to Nāgarasa Uḍaiyār authorising him to cancel all those taxes.³²⁶ In the Salem district, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the people seem to have laboured under oppressive taxes, and hence the inhabitants of the districts (nāṭṭār) of Magadai maṇḍalam left the country. Therefore to stop such migrations Tyāgaṇa Nāyaka, who was perhaps the local chief, granted a pledge (aḍaiōlai) to the people.³²⁷