Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c8.111

c8.111

The normal code of punishment appears to have been severe under the Vijayanagar kings. Nuniz, while describing how criminal offences were punished, says: "For a thief whatever theft he commits, howsoever little it be, they forthwith cut off a foot and a hand, and if his theft be a great one he is hanged with a hook under his chin. If a man outrages a respectable woman or a virgin he has the same punishment, and if he does any other such violence his punishment is of a like kind. Nobles who became traitors are sent to be impaled alive on a wooden stake thrust through the belly, and people of the lower orders, for whatever crime they commit, he forthwith commands to cut off their heads in the marketplace, and the same for a murder unless the death was the result of a duel........ These are the common kinds of punishment, but they have others more fanciful; for when the king so desires, he commands a man to be thrown to the elephants and they tear him in pieces. The people are so subject to him that if you told a man on the part of the king that he must stand still in a street holding a stone on his back all day till you released him, he would do it."⁶⁴