Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c8.138

c8.138

This description of the method of the administration of justice in the Vijayanagar days shows clearly that the kings were anxious that justice should be administered to the people. Whether it was the judge at the imperial court or the village assembly in the outlying parts of the empire, the cases that appeared before them were examined in all their aspects. It may be that the code of criminal procedure was harsh and rigorous in certain cases. But it was only the fear of such severe punishment that made the people law-abiding citizens. Duarte Barbosa who bears testimony to the sense of security in the Vijayanagar empire says : “Great equity and justice is observed to all not only by the rulers but by the people one to another.”80 Vijayanagar was not the only empire in which the criminal code was harsh. Criminal law was severe in Europe even so late as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the middle ages criminal law had necessarily to be severe.