Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c7.t2.3

c7.t2.3

The shares of the temples and the Brahmans were collected by the Sarkar and paid over by it, so that the share payable by the landholder was really ¼ of the gross produce.⁴⁵ According to Wilks this was the system recommended by Vidyāraṇya for the guidance of king Harihara I and his officers at the beginning of the fourteenth century. But Harihara introduced a few changes in the system due to the difficulties experienced in adhering to these recommendations. He abolished the system of payment of the government share in kind, and insisted on the payment being made only in cash at a particular rate. This conversion of the payment in kind to payment in cash was “founded on the quantity of land, the requisite seed, the average increase and the value of grain.”⁴⁶ Then as regards the assessment itself, he increased the rate. Thus “Harihara had recourse to the law of the Śāstras which authorised him by no very forced construction to attack the husbandman by a variety of vexatious taxes which should compel him to seek relief by desiring to compound for their abolition by a voluntary increase of their landed assessment."47 By so doing he did actually raise it by twenty per cent by his skill in applying to his calculations, a procedure which has been described by the Bombay High Court as "a thinly veiled violation of the law."48