Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c8.56

c8.56

Commenting on the system under which the king acted as the judge Saletore expresses the view that there must have been some confusion in the judicial organisation at Vijayanagar. He says: "According to the Persian ambassador it is the daṇṇāyaka who constituted the highest judicial official in the kingdom; in the opinion of Nuniz the king gave a sort of rough-and-ready dispensation of justice, independent of the daṇṇāyaka. Nothing but confusion would have resulted if this were really the case in Vijayanagara".³³ But this criticism is groundless, for it is not correct to assume that both the king and the judge would have had concurrent jurisdiction. The judge would have tried a particular set of cases, while the king would have tried another set of cases. At times the king in Council would have acted as a court of appeal, and at others as a court with original jurisdiction in certain cases. Further it is reasonable to assume that the king would have tried criminal cases and cases in which certain special interests like those of a temple or a high dignitary were involved, while the judge tried the other civil cases.