Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c9.s2.30

c9.s2.30

About the expenditure of a king, Kṛṣṇadēva Rāya says : “ The expenditure of money which is utilised in buying elephants and horses, in feeding them, in maintaining soldiers, in the worship of Gods and Brahmans and in one's own enjoyment can never be called an expenditure.”67 In another place he suggests that the king should spend half of his income in the maintenance of the army (of which the expenditure on horses formed a large part).⁶⁸ Kṛṣṇadēva Rāya, for instance, purchased every year thirteen thousand horses of Ormuz and country-breds, and kept for himself the best ones.⁶⁹ The Vijayanagar kings valued the horses so much, that, if Nuniz may be believed, Sāḷuva Narasiṁha “ took them dead or alive at three for a thousand *pardaos*, and of those that died at sea they brought him the tail only, and he paid for it just as if it had been alive.”⁷⁰ Though this is perhaps an exaggeration, it shows the great value the Vijayanagar kings placed on horses. According to the account of Barbosa the price of the horses ranged from 400 to 600 *cruzados*.⁷¹ Nuniz, however, gives different prices for them. In one place he says that they were purchased at 4¾ horses per thousand *pardaos*,⁷² while elsewhere he remarks that they were selling at the rate of twelve to fifteen for a thousand *pardaos*.⁷³ Hence as Dames suggests the price of the horse seems to have varied between £78 and 26, or 1170 and 390 in Indian rupees.⁷⁴