Analyzing the Nature of the Nayankara System in the Vijayanagara Empire

The term Nayankara is derived from the word Nayaka, a ancient Sanskrit term
denoting a person of prominence and leadership, especially military leadership.
The nayakas were military chieftains who joined the king in defensive or
predatory warfare and in return enjoyed rights over land given to them. Great
and small warriors, nayakas, are presented as the key political figures in the VN
state. The tenure held by them is Amaram. The term amaranayankara
encapsulates the rights of the nayaka for it signifies an office (kara) possessed
by a military chief (nayaka) in command (amara) of a body of troops. Their
power rested on a substantial enhancement in military capability due to the use
of firearms and fortifications.

The first reference to the term ‘Nayaka’ was from Karnataka, thre centuries
before the the establishment of the Vijayanagara State. According to Satish
Chandra, Nayakas were subordinate rulers who were defeated by Vijayanagara,
but were allowed to continue as rulers with some autonomy. With the decline of
Cholas in the 12th century, we see the rise of powerful chieftainships over
portions of the Tamil country outside of Chola mandalam. While these chiefs
continued to recognize the ritual sovereignty of the Cholas, they constituted
independent the basis of competitive power as well. The Nayakas of
Vijayanagara may have been from among independent chieftains like these, the
Nayankara system as such had more complex origins. Scholars like Saletore
have traced its origin to Hoysala roots. This has been disputed by scholars like
Venkatramanayya and Velucheru Narayana. Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam . They believe that Vijayanagara drew upon the Kakatiya
kingship tradition, which according to J.F. Richards was “a political expression of
the settlement of the interiors by Telugu warriors.” These interior settlements
were nucleated and often fortified and administered on a military basis by a
number of military chiefs ie. Nayakas. The Kakatiya origin of the Nayankara
system is attested by the study of Kakatiya inscriptions by Cynthia Talbot. She
points out that the inscriptions refer to Nayamkara and Nayakapuravu. The
earliest of these inscriptions dates back to the reign of Kakatiya Queen
Rudramadevi (1259-1295), but references become more frequent in the
inscriptions from the period of Prataparudradeva (1295-1323).
We rely on extremely diverse source material for the study of the Vijayanagara
Empire. The first set of sources are the accounts of foreign travellers such as
Portuguese accounts of Duarte Barbosa, Domingos Paes and Fernao Nuniz,
memoirs of the North African Ibn Batutta , accounts of Ibn Said (Arab), Nicoli
Conti (Italian), Abdur Razzak (Persian) and Nikhitin (Russian)
Narratives such as local Kaifiyat literature, court chronicles, Krishandeva Raya’s
work, and accounts of Bhakti poets are the other set of literary sources.
There is rich Epigraphic material available in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada
especially Copper Plate land grant inscriptions. Coins also contain inscriptions.
An important set of inscriptions is the Mackenzie Collection. In the 1800s a
British surveyor, Mackenzie translated and put together thousands of
inscriptions in what is known as the Mackenzie Collection The interpretation of
this source material for analysing the nature of the Nayankara System, is highly
subjective. This has led to many theories regarding the nature of the
Vijayanagara State as a whole and the Nayankara system in particular.

Firstly, we have those theories which advocate the viewpoint that the Nayakas
were the agents of a centralised State. Ishwari Prasad and Vincent Smith believe
that the Raya was an autocrat who excercised firm control over other State
functionaries such as the Nayakas. Some scholars have compared the Nayakas to
the Iqtadars of the Sultanate, who were agents of the centralised State,
answerable to the King. Mahalingam, however believes that the Raya did not
exercise absolute power, and argues that there were certain important
institutional checks on the power of he raya. One was the Council of Ministers,
which had been in its nascent stage in the Chola period but had now developed
as an important institution. Customs and traditions also acted as a check on the
VN raya. They were influenced by the smriti literature and the raya was an
upholder of dharma. Local institutions also acted as a check on the power of the
king.
Scholars like Shastri and Mahalingam say that the VN polity was a centralized
polity, and the king had control over the nayakas and the provincial governors.
Shastri emphasized the centralized nature of the VN state more emphatically
than Mahalingam. In 1946, in ‘Further Sources of the Vijayanagar state’ he
wrote that, “the nayakas were completely dependent on the will of the rajas”.
When he saw the situation at the time of the defeat of the VN state in 1565, he
said that compared to earlier times they had acquires semi-independent,
autonomous status. Therefore these scholars believe the Vijayanagara State to
be a centralized bureaucratic setup. This view is based on the accounts of Paes
and Nuniz, Portuguese travelers, who described the nayakas as agents of the VN
state, indicating a centralized state structure. Scholars like Shastri, Mahalingam,
and Iyengar gave a lot of importance to the ideological factor in the rise and
emergence of the VN state. They say that the state emerged in response to the
Muslim threat. Therefore the Nayakas are considered an integral part of this
Centralised State, determined by an ideology of protection of Hindu Dharma
against the Muslim threat. This view has been comprehensively refuted by many
scholars. Burton Stein wrote that those who bore the major brunt of the VN
state’s military activities were nayakas, not the Bahamani or Bijapur kingdoms,
symbols of the so called Musilm threat. In fact most of the strategically placed
contingents of the Vijaynagar state comprised of Musilms. Therefore the both
aspects of the theory that is the ideological basis of the State and the
centralised, autocratic control over the Nayakas, have to be re-examined.

Burton Stein completely rejected this theory. VN was no more a centralized

bureaucratic state than the Chola or the Pandya states had been. He applied the
Segmentary state model and argued that the Vijayanagara king exercised a
ritual authority just like the Chola king. He derived this theory from AW
Southall’s anthropological studies, which had been applied to Africa. Thus the
Vijayanagara State was an important variant form of segmentary organization
in which the chiefly office, nayaka, was more formal and independent of the
dominant landed groups of a locality.
There were various units of authority in the Vijayanagara State were the King in
the Core region, the Mandalam or the province, the nadu or the districts and the
grama or the villageHe identified certain Core regions, which were located in
the fertile riverine regions, having high population density. Here the king
exercised maximum authority. The Chola state was located in the Kaveri river
basin. For the Vijayanagara state, the Core region was situated in the
Tungabhadra region. He saw the Macro areas where the king’s authority
reduces as one moved further away from the Core regions. Here the king’s
authority takes the form of ritual authority, in the form of gifts, tributes and
military assistance. Stein saw this as constituting a pyramidal structure, with
the core region at the apex of the pyramid, where the relations between two
units were replicated at various levels. The relationship between the king and
the nayakas and the provincial governors were described in a ritual manner.

Stein has described the nayankara system as prebendalism and according to

him the nayakas enjoyed prebendal rights over the amaram tenure, which he
designates as a prebend. This concept is derived from Max Weber. He used it in
‘Economy and Society’. Weber saw it as a kind of entitlement, more specifically
as a fiscal right granted by a superior authority to a person not involving any
specific duty or obligation on the part of the recipient. The inscriptions do not
refer to any specific obligation of the nayakas to the rayas and only mention a
very general kind of obligation, where they had to supply a contingent and pay a
regular tribute. They were not feudatories or officials of a centralized state
structure, since if this would have been a feudal system then feudal levies would
have been clearly specified. They derived their income from the amaram tenure.
It is difficult to define the nayakas in terms of duties, privileges, obligations,
offices, origins, administrative, political roles etc. Hence Stein applied a loose
term i.e. prebendalism. They were just powerful territorial military chieftains.
They did accept the ritual sovereignty of the king, which is reflected in the
military contingent and tribute that they would send. It enabled the Nayakas, as
the karyakarta or agent of the knig, to assume hereditary rights. It is necessary
to question the specifically ‘feudal’ meaning which is ascribed by some
historians to a nayaka: ‘one who holds land from the VN king on the condition of
offering military service’. Stein – a more prudent reading of the term nayaka is
that of a generalized designation for a powerful warrior who, at times
associated with the military enterprises of Vijayanagara kings but who at all
times was a territorial magnate in his own right.

Some imperceptible changes take place in Stein’s arguments. Without moving

away from the Segmentary State theory, the new approach perceives a sharing
of authority and the large number of lordships and chiefships. The state
depends on the occasional tribute from the chief. The sharing of authority has
been compared to the 17th Century Maratha concept of Dayada, as being based
on the rights of kin-related, ethnically and linguistically unified communities.

The view of Burton Stein has come under a lot of criticism. The first is that it is a
conception model is not backed by enough empirical or inscriptional evidence.
It has been borrowed and cannot be applied to the Vijayanagara state. The
authority exercised by the king is not just ritual authority. There was a
considerable increase in the power of the king from the Chola period. There was
also an expansion in the scope and role of the state and king. Certain
institutions like the Council of Ministers developed further. Stein said that there
is not much of a distinction between the Provincial Governors and the nayakas.
Scholars like Shastri and Mahalingam emphasize the differences between the
two such as the Provincial Governors were generally from the royal family, and
were representatives of the royal family whereas the nayakas were military
chieftains who enjoyed rights over land given to them. The Provincial Governors
were subject to transfer and dismissal, and were under greater control of the
king as compared to the nayakas who enjoyed relatively more autonomy. Yet the
Provincial Governors had some freedom to make appointments and some
power over the army. The Provincial Governors seem to replace the role which
was played by the Chola Assemblies in the earlier period. Stein points out that
the nayakas issue coins in the name of the VN raya, indicating ritual authority.
But his critics point out that this indicates that the nayakas were under the
complete authority of the king. Stein is also criticized by R.Champakalakshmi.
She believes that the concept of Dayada is not applicable to the Telegu and
Kannada Nayakas. Also, the authority wasn’t based on communal morality,
lineage or clan organisation.

The next set of scholars are those who believe that the Nayankara system was
feudal in nature. This may based on the views of foreign travellers like Paes and
Nuniz wrote that all land was held by the king, and refer to the nayakas as
‘captains’. Coming form a feudal European background, they obviously drew
parallels betweern the Nayakas and European feudal lords. According to Fernao
Nuniz, a Portuguese horse trader who came to Vijayanagara in the 1530s, there
were some 200 nayakas in the empire and each held land rights from the
Viajayanagara king who owned all the land sub-letted it and paid 9/10th to the
king. Hence he hints at sub-infeudation. This was apart from the lands granted
to brahmanas and temples and lands reserved for royal purposes. Scholars
have estimated that perhaps 75% of the villages of the empire were under
amaram tenure. Based on this some scholars have spoken of the Vijayanagara
State as a feudal state. Even D.C. Sircar, who vigorously rejected the general
proposal that medieval India was feudal, is inclined to term the Vijayanagara
Empire as feudal, largely on the strength of the evidence of the amaram tenure.
He also believed that the amaram was a feudal tenure and also referred to the
aspect of subinfeudation. Krishnaswami Iyengar said that the amaram was a
feudal tenure and devoted two chapters of his book ‘Tamil Country under
Vijayanagar’ to this aspect of the state. He saw the King as the Lord of the state
and the nayakas as feudal lords. He referred to the tribute paid by the nayakas
as feudal taxation and says that 3/4th of the total land was given to the nayakas.
Iyengar also writes that the nayakas were military agents of the Vijayanagara
Raya and had a major role to play in the expansion of the Vijayanagara Empire.
And as the Vijayanagara State expanded, so also the nayankara system grew and
developed. Stein agrees with Iyengar to the extent that the nayakas began as
agents of the king and played an important role in the military expansion of the
state. However, he believes they did not continue as such. They soon established
control over the local people and became increasingly independent and
autonomous, becoming powerful personages in their own right over time.
Krishnaswami Iyengar saw the Poligars and Poliyams as evidence of
subinfeudation. In The Mackenzie collection referred to these two terms. The
Poligars were the Telugu migrants to the Tamil country. According to Iyengar
they were dependent warriors who were appointed by the central government
to assist the nayakas. They had to supply poliyams or military contingents to the
centre through the nayakas. They would also receive land grants from the
nayakas. Stein said that they were Telugu migrants who were simply associated
with nayakas in the military aspect. How then should we interpret them? The
critics of the feudalism hypothesis point out that the evidence is not clear at all
for us to say that they were dependent warriors or that there was
subinfeudation. All that can be said is that the Poligars were migrants who
played an important military role.

Noburu Karashima and Subbaraylu divide the development of the Vijayanagara

State into two distinct stages. They point out the use terms such as
mahamandaleshwara and mahapradhani, in the context of personal names and
figures associated with Vijayanagara presence. These titles indicate provincial
governors overseeing an administration consisting of adhikaris. This indicates a
somewhat centralised, bureaucratic structure.
It is argued by them, that some structural changes took place in the
Vijayanagara State, transforming it to a more indirect administration carried out
through the Nayakas. The team led by Karashima, is inclined to treat the
Nayakas as feudal, with elements of personal loyalty to the overlord.
Landholdings such as sirmai and nayakattana are interpreted as fief. A
subinfeudation seems to have existed among the nayakas, creating a hierarchy
of land rights. Karashima also points out that both the Nayaka-feudal system
was a highly exploitative, based on forcible extraction of the revenue from the
peasantry.

Their theory has been critiqued by Velucheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam. The first point in the critique is a general shortcoming
in the use of inscriptions as a source of history. They are of inherently
fragmented nature and lead the scholars to overemphasise the importance of
institutions which house them, such as temples, or of the patrons of the
inscriptions. They also criticise the binary classification of the periods as
bureaucratic or feudal and categorisation of objects as either of the two as being
arbitrary.

Rao, Shulman and Subrahmanyam point out that there is a lack of sufficient
evidence of a bureaucratic system in the Vijayanagara State. They also believe
that the feudalism and the segmentary state theories are insufficient in
understanding the Vijayanagara State, especially the Nayankara System. They
believe that the Nayankara System was essentially militaristic in nature. They
also add a new dimension to the interpretation of the Nayankara system. They
believe that the system represented migration and settlement of Vadugas
(generally northerners but specifically Telugu Nayakas) in the Tamil region.
They established their base at the Paleyams or small fortified centres. On one
hand these Telugu Nayakas took recourse to temple grants and donations to
strengthen their authority, independent of the Vijayanagara State. On the other
hand, they had to declare themselves as servants of the Vijayanagara State and
to articulate this even in their donative inscriptions. It was much later that they
asserted greater independence, rhetorically. Even then they could never wholly
free themselves from the image of being mere kartakkal or ‘executors’ of
Vijayanagara rule. Therefore the Nayankara system played an important role in
integrating ‘peripheral’ areas into the Vijayanagara Empire.

Rao, Shulman and Subrahmanyam also elaborate on the relationship between

the Nayakas and the Vijayanagara Raya. During the Kakatiyas, the relationship
between the Nayaka and the sovereign ruler is characterised by strong
expression of personal loyalty. This is a feature that continues (albeit with
certain changes), in the relations of the Raya of Vijayanagara with the Nayakas.
Kakatiya period texts define the paradigm that govern relations between the
two. For example, in the Prataparudradevacharitamu, the ruler is shown to have
“summoned the nayakas, greeted them, declared their worthiness for
leadership, assigned them their stronghold, and gave them wealth, gold,
vehicles, palaquins and silk. He also gave them royal symbols such as umbrellas,
processional banners, etc. for their heroic deeds. Conversely, Nayaka
inscriptions in Tamil Nadu express the Nayakas’ worshipful submission towards
the Raya. A source which gives us valuable information about the relationship
between the Nayaka and the Raya is the Tanjavuri Andhra Rajula Charita
(TARC), which is a Telugu chronicle of anonymous authorship, probably form
early 18th Century Tanjavur. It is centred around the relationship of King
Krishnadeva Raya of Vijayanagara with Nagama Nayaka and his son Viswanatha.
It has been analysed in detail by Nicholas Dirks. He emphasises on the themes of
loyalty and service, publicly and dramatically displayed, as being the basis of
this relationship. This relationship is symbolically articulated by the overlords’
gifts of honour and emblems to the Nayaka, who carries them with him to the
region under his control, as a tangible representation of the bond between the
two. Dirks believes that the transactions between the two closely parallel
transactions of Puja and worship. Dirks points out that the Nayaka begins to
exercise independent power in the name of the Raya. This forms the basis for a
process of independent State formation.

R. Champakalakshmi has also made certain observations on the nature of the

Vijayanagara State. According to her, one must keep in mind that Vijayanagara
sought to establish a supra regional or peninsular State with hegemony over the
three major politico-cultural zones of the South (excluding Kerala). There may
have been an attempt by the Vijayanagara Stateto develop a series of
sub-systems, similar to those existing in the heartland of the empire. In this
context the Nayaka system may have been a superimposition over these
pre-existing structures, with the use of military force.

The one point of convergence in most of the theories is the acknowledgement of

the importance of military functions in the Nayankara system. The need to give
due emphasis to this factor brought about modifications in many major
theories.

1955, a change seems to have taken place in the view of Sastri. He referred to
the Vijayanagara State as a war state. One reason was the confrontation with the
Bahamanis. This accounted for the military basis of the VN state. This is
indicated by the nayankara system, which probably emerged in response to the
need of the struggle with the Bahamani kingdom. It has also been pointed out
that the VN state tried to seek firearms from the Portuguese. In “History of
South India” he wrote that in addition to the large army at the centre, the whole
of the country was studded with military chiefs, who owed certain obligations
to the king. Now the nayakas weren’t seen as completely dependent on the
rayas. In 1965, he wrote in “sources of Indian History” that the nayakas were
like a confederacy of many chieftains, who co-opted among themselves, under
the leadership of one chieftain. Despite this gradual shift in his emphasis, he
continued to present the Vijayanagara State as a centralized model on the
whole.
Due to its nature many scholars have emphasized the military aspect of the
state. Not simply because of the military aspect but also because the nayakas
were military chieftains. While strong rulers could keep nayakas under control,
they were able to take advantage of weak rulers. Now the focus of studies has
shifted to the nayankara system as a military institution and not just in the
context of the Bahamani conflict. Nayakas continued to play an important role
even after the decline of the VN state. The nayakas were also involved in conflict
with the rayas, which made it imperative for the raya to develop a strong
military to control the nayakas. The nayakas would also fight among themselves.
In comparison with the Chola period we can see that in the VN period there was
a considerable increase in the growth and functioning of the state.

In another article, Stein used the term Sultanism to describe the Vijayanagara
State. He borrowed this term from Max Weber as well, who had used it in his
book ‘Economy and Society’, in the context of a large administration having
enlarged and modern military force. Stein used this especially in the context of
the state under Krishna Deva Raya. The features of Sultanism include a large
army. There is evidence that the VN Raya adopted firearms. This was the period
of Portuguese dominance in the West coast and in this context we can see the
efforts of the Vijayanagara State to acquire firearms, artillery, horses etc.

Let us now briefly examine some aspects of the role played by the Nayakas. The
military role has been adequately examined. They had to provide contingent of
troops to the Raya, in return of the Amaram tenure. They also had to fortify new
settlements.

They also played an important role in economic activities. Most of the income of
the state was derived from agriculture and most people were associated with
land and agriculture. Land revenue was the major source of income for the
state. It was probably calculated according to the quality of the land and would
have varied between 1/6th and ½ of the produce. It was collected by the state
officials especially in the core regions where the raya exercised effective
authority. For certain categories the rate of revenue was very low. For
brahmanas it was 1/20th and for temples it was 1/30th. Often revenue also came
through revenue farming, which was undertaken in the Core regions or maybe
through local bodies like the ayagar, the nayakas or other holders of land.
 An important role was played by the nayakas in developmental projects such as
irrigation works, tanks, wells, dams etc. Some were undertaken by the state,
some by brahmanas and some by temples as well. Amaranayakas were among
the most active rural entrepreneurs. For undertaking these development
projects, people would be entitled to a share known as the dasavanda in Andhra
and kattu kodage in Karnataka. This was a share in the increased income of
peasants due to the developments. This could be between 1/3rd 1/4th and 1/5th.

Nayakas forged local political relationships by patronising Hindu Temples.

Large institutions like temples and mathas were prime instruments of creating
political constituencies. This explanation based on ideological and historical
significance of these institutions, have been provided by ethno-historical and
anthropological studies of Arjun Appadorai and Carol Breckenridge.

To conclude, we can say that there are differences of opinion regarding the
nature of the Vijayanagara State. However, there seems to be a general
acceptance of the nayakas as military chieftains, agents of the state and that
they were extremely powerful. The nayankara system had both centralizing and
decentralizing tendencies. The nayakas could become extremely powerful if
there was a weak raya at the centre. If the raya succeeded on establishing
control over them then the state could become more centralized. In fact after
the Battle of Talikota we see that the nayakas became increasingly autonomous
with the weakening power of the king. This contributed to the decline and
disintegration of the Vijayanagara State. Formally the rule of the raya continued,
but the dominance of the VN kingdom ends and it enters a state of decline.

Bibliography

1. Burton Stein – ‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India’

2. Burton Stein – ‘A History of India’
3. K.A.Nilakanta Sastri – ‘History of South India’
4. Velucheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam – ‘Symbols
of Substance’
5. Jos J.L. Gommans and Dirk H.A. Kolff – Warfare ad Weaponry in South Asia
1000-1800
6. Article by R. Champakalakshmi – ‘The State in Pre-Modern South India: A
Histiriographical Re-Assessment’
7. Class Notes