With reference to the "Amara-Nayaka system", which one of the following statements is not correct?

Correct — D, They were not allowed to use their share of revenue for the maintenance of temples. This is the one statement the textbook contradicts. The amara-nayakas were military commanders to whom the raya assigned a territory; they collected taxes and other dues from the peasants, craftspersons and traders of that area, kept part of the proceeds for their own use and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants that had to be available to the empire, and — this is the point the question turns on — they also spent revenue on temples and irrigation works. That spending was not incidental. Endowing a temple was how a commander converted revenue into local standing: it made him a patron in the eyes of the community, tied his name to a deity, and gave his authority a religious sanction that a purely military claim could not. Irrigation works did the same in economic terms. What the nayaka owed in return was an annual tribute in cash and a personal appearance at court with gifts, and the raya reasserted his own authority by transferring nayakas from one place to another. The system worked while the centre was strong; in the seventeenth century many nayakas set themselves up as independent kings, and that hastened the collapse of the imperial structure.

• (a)It was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire. — Correct as stated, and therefore not the answer to a question asking what is not correct. This is the textbook's own opening sentence on the subject; many of the system's features are thought to derive from the iqta of the Delhi Sultanate, but the amara-nayaka arrangement itself is treated as Vijayanagara's innovation.
• (b)They were military commanders, who were given territories to govern and collect taxes and other dues from peasants, craftspersons and traders in the area. — Correct, and again close to the textbook's wording. The grant was of the right to collect revenue from a defined territory in place of a cash salary, which is what made the nayaka a governor as well as a soldier.
• (c)They retained part of the revenue for personal use and to maintain a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants. — Correct. The contingent is the heart of the bargain — the empire was buying cavalry and war elephants with revenue rights, and the number each nayaka had to keep was fixed.

Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by Harihara and Bukka and ruled the peninsula south of the Krishna until the defeat at Talikota in 1565, with its capital at Hampi on the Tungabhadra. Its army was built on cavalry, which had to be imported through the west-coast ports, and on the loyalty of provincial commanders. The amara-nayaka system was how the crown paid for both: instead of a salary from a central treasury, the commander received the revenues of a territory, out of which he financed himself and a fixed body of troops. The word amara is usually derived from the Sanskrit samara, battle, and its resemblance to the Persian amir has been noticed.

Not-correct questions reward a change of method: read every option as a claim to be tested, and expect three of them to be sentences you have met before. Here the first three are the textbook's own; the fourth introduces a prohibition, and prohibitions are the classic place to plant a false statement because they are hard to disprove from memory. The test to apply is whether the prohibition makes sense in the system as described. A commander who already keeps part of the revenue for personal use and for his troops is plainly spending it, so a rule forbidding one particular kind of spending would need a reason — and in fact the sources show the opposite, with nayakas among the most important temple patrons of the period. The same subject is asked in a keyed CDS paper of 2021, which simply asks which empire the system belonged to.

• The amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire, with features probably derived from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate.
• Amara-nayakas were military commanders given territories by the raya, from which they collected taxes and dues from peasants, craftspersons and traders.
• They kept part of the revenue for personal use and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants.
• They also used revenue for the maintenance of temples and irrigation works — the claim the fourth option denies.
• They sent an annual tribute and appeared at court with gifts; kings periodically transferred them between territories, and in the seventeenth century many became independent kings.

• Reading past the words 'not correct' and marking the first true statement you see.
• Assuming a revenue assignment forbade religious spending; temple patronage was one of its main political uses.
• Treating the amara-nayaka as a hereditary landowner. The grant was of revenue rights, and the raya could and did move nayakas from one territory to another.

As a not-correct item like this one, as a single-line question on which empire the system belonged to, or inside a match-the-term set with iqta, jagir, mokasa and amaram.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the amara-nayaka system, what did a nayaka owe the ruler in return for the revenues of his territory?

  • (a)A share of the harvest delivered to the capital in kind
  • (b)An annual tribute in cash and a personal appearance at court with gifts
  • (c)The right of the ruler to nominate his successor
  • (d)Nothing, since the grant was hereditary and unconditional

  Answer(b) An annual tribute in cash and a personal appearance at court with gifts — along with the maintenance of a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants for the empire's use.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The features of the amara-nayaka system are often said to have been derived from which earlier arrangement?

  • (a)The iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate
  • (b)The brahmadeya grants of the Cholas
  • (c)The mansabdari system of the Mughals
  • (d)The mokasa of the Marathas

  Answer(a) The iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate — like the iqta, it assigned the revenues of a territory to a commander in place of a salary, in return for troops.