Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c8.83

c8.83

Similarly when a quarrel between the Baḍugulavāru and the Palināṭivāru about the *birudas* to be carried during festival procession came up for decision before the Vaiṣṇavas, Voḍeyas, elders and the merchants of Kāñcī in A.D. 1576 “they granted on the authority of a previous document on stone a very long list of privileges including that of *Kuṅkuma vastram* to the Baḍugulavāru.”⁵⁰ The same procedure was adopted by Mahānāyakācārya Haraṭi Immaḍi Raṅgappa Nāyaka Ayya’s (son) Huṅgahati Nāyaka’s family, relatives, and others in the grant of a *gauḍa*-ship to a particular individual. By a copper-plate *śāsana* Vīra Ballāḷa Rāya had granted the *nāḍ gauḍika* to a certain person. But one Muḍi Gauḍa . . . of the two tanks said that the *nāḍ gauḍika* was his, and sent a few of his men to Tumkūr, where they prepared a false document (*vōle*), and produced it before Huṅgahati Nāyaka and others, to show that the *gauḍika* belonged to him, and claimed that he had proved his case. But the Mahānāyakācārya sent his men from his palace to test the genuineness of the *vōle*, who however returned the verdict that it was a false *vōle*, and hence the *gauḍika* did not return to him. Therefore the authorities decided that there should be no joint *gauḍika* or substitute, and in the presence of the chief priest of the God Melikuṇṭe Bālakṛṣṇa’s temple, set up a stone *śāsana*.⁵¹