RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISMone example being the Achyutarayabhyudaya, which deals with the life of
King Achyuta Raya, there are many Muslim chronicles, and there are the
extensive reports of European travellers who started visiting Vijayanagar
soon after the Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510. Unlike Hindu authors,
who took so much for granted, the Muslim chroniclers and the European
travellers recorded many details.
The Europeans admired the impressive organisation of the empire and
their reports show that this was a state run along the lines of ‘military
feudalism’, in a rather efficient manner. Domingo Paes, a Portuguese who
visited Vijayanagar in 1522 during the rule of mighty Krishnadeva,
provides us with the following information:
this king has continually a million fighting troops, in which are
included 35,000 cavalry in armour, all these are in his pay, and he
has these troops always together and ready to be dispatched to any
quarter whenever such may be necessary. I saw, being in this city
of Bisnaga (Vijayanagar), the king dispatch a force against a place,
one of those which he has by the seacoast, and he sent fifty
captains with 150,000 soldiers, amongst whom were many
cavalry. He has many elephants, and when the king wishes to
show the strength of his power to any of his adversaries amongst
the three kings bordering on his kingdom, they say that he puts
into the field two million soldiers; in consequence of which he is
the most feared king of any in these parts....
Should any one ask what revenue this king possesses, and what
his treasure is that enables him to pay so many troops, since he has
so many and such great lords in his kingdom, who, the greater
part of them, have themselves revenues, I answer thus: These
captains whom he has over these troops of his are the nobles of his
kingdom; they are lords and they hold the city, the towns and the
villages of the kingdom; there are captains amongst them who
have a revenue of a million and a million and a half pardaos,
others two hundred, three hundred or five hundred thousand
pardaos, and as each one has revenue so the king fixes for him the
number of troops which he must maintain, in foot, in horse, and
elephants. These troops are always ready for duty, whenever they
may be called out and wherever they may have to go; and in this
way he has this million of fighting men always ready.... Besides
maintaining these troops, each captain has to make his annual
payments to the king, and the king has his own salaried troops to
whom he gives pay. He has eight hundred elephants attached to
his person, and five hundred horses always in his stables, and for
the expenses of these horses and elephants he has devoted the
revenue that he receives from this city of Bisnaga.^4