CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 12 of 120

Correct — D, Vijayanagara. The stem is the school textbook's own sentence turned into a question: the amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire. The amara-nayakas were military commanders to whom the raya assigned territories to govern. Each collected taxes and other dues from the peasants, craftspersons and traders of his area, kept a part for himself and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants, and spent some of the rest on temples and irrigation works. Those contingents added up to the army with which the Vijayanagara kings brought the whole southern peninsula under their control. The obligations that kept the arrangement from becoming hereditary independence were annual tribute and a personal appearance at court with gifts, and the kings occasionally reminded a nayaka of his place by transferring him elsewhere. In the seventeenth century many of them stopped appearing, set up kingdoms of their own, and the imperial structure collapsed the faster for it.

• (a)Cholas — The Cholas are known for something almost opposite — the self-governing village assembly. The Uttaramerur inscriptions of Parantaka I describe the sabha and its variyams, elected committees for tanks, gardens and justice, chosen by lot. Their military organisation is not the amara-nayaka model, which is a Vijayanagara arrangement of the fourteenth century onwards.
• (b)Chalukyas — The Chalukyas of Badami and Kalyani belong to the sixth to twelfth centuries, well before Vijayanagara was founded in the fourteenth. They are examined mainly for the rock-cut and structural temples of Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal and for the long contest with the Pallavas.
• (c)Guptas — Wrong period and wrong region — a northern empire of the fourth to sixth centuries. Gupta land grants to brahmanas and religious institutions, the agrahara and similar assignments, are a different device from a military governorship held on condition of maintaining a fixed contingent of cavalry and elephants.

Vijayanagara faced the problem every large pre-modern empire faces — how to raise an army and administer distant provinces without a salaried bureaucracy. Its answer was to convert revenue into service. A commander received a defined territory, called amaram, and drew its revenue on condition of keeping a stated number of horses and elephants ready for the king. Many features of the arrangement are thought to descend from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate. The word amara is believed to come from the Sanskrit samara, meaning battle, and it also resembles the Persian amir, a high noble.

The three wrong options are dynasties from different centuries, so the item can be settled on chronology alone once amara-nayaka is placed in the south after 1336. The deeper point worth carrying is the family resemblance among these assignments, because UPSC has set it as a match-the-following: iqta belongs to the Delhi Sultans, jagir to the Mughals, amaram to Vijayanagara and mokasa to the Marathas. All four transfer revenue in return for service, and telling them apart is a matter of attaching each word to its dynasty. The nayakas' later history is examinable too — the Nayaka kingdoms of Madurai, Tanjavur and Gingee grew directly out of commanders who stopped sending tribute.

• The amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire; many of its features are thought to derive from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate.
• Amara-nayakas were military commanders given territories to govern by the raya, and they collected taxes from peasants, craftspersons and traders.
• They retained part of the revenue for personal use and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants, and spent some on temples and irrigation works.
• They sent tribute annually and appeared personally at court with gifts; kings sometimes transferred them from one place to another.
• During the seventeenth century many nayakas established independent kingdoms, hastening the collapse of the central imperial structure.

• Confusing amaram with the Mughal jagir or the Sultanate iqta; the mechanism is similar but the dynasty is what is being asked.
• Placing the system before the fourteenth century by associating nayakas loosely with 'south Indian empire'.
• Assuming an assignment of revenue always implies hereditary ownership; tribute, court attendance and transfer were the checks on that.

As a system-to-dynasty item, or as a match-the-following pairing revenue assignments with the states that used them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the amara-nayaka system of Vijayanagara, an amara-nayaka was principally required to

  • (a)surrender the entire revenue of his territory to the royal treasury
  • (b)maintain a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants for the king
  • (c)serve as the chief priest of the principal temple in his territory
  • (d)collect customs duties at the ports on behalf of the crown

  Answer(b) maintain a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants for the king — he kept part of the revenue he collected for that purpose, and those contingents made up the imperial army.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The revenue assignment known as mokasa is associated with which one of the following?

  • (a)The Delhi Sultans
  • (b)The Mughals
  • (c)The Marathas
  • (d)The Vijayanagara rulers

  Answer(c) the Marathas — mokasa was a Maratha grant made for the maintenance of troops, while iqta belongs to the Delhi Sultans, jagir to the Mughals and amaram to Vijayanagara.