of Krishnadevaraya as the greatest ruler of Vijayanagar. He made very large donations to many of the greatest Siva and Vishnu temples of the day- Srisailam, Tirupati, Kalahasti, Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Chidambaram, etc. He added towering gopuras to many of those temples, which survive to this day. Contemporary foreign visitors like Paes and Nuniz, who visited Vijayanagar left glowing tributes to his personality, and the grandeur and opulence of the city.
His court was also adorned by some great poets like Allasani Peddana, Nandi Thimmana. He himself is considered a great scholar and is author of the famous poem Amuktamalyada (the story of Andal). But his crowning achievement, as a clever administrator, was the reorganization of the Nayak or nayankara system and giving legal recognition to the system. This is explained below under administration.
Krishnadevarayar XI History - Lesson - - Bahmani and Vijayanagar Kingdoms By , there were five rajyas in the Tamil area: Chandragiri, Padaividu, Valudalampattu, Tiruchirappalli and Tiruvarur. The pradhani was either a royal member or a military officer not related to the royal family. The pradhani had his own revenue accountants and military to assist in his administration. Within each rajya, there were smaller administrative divisions like nadu, sima, sthala, kampana, etc.
The lowest unit was of course the village. The rajya s lost their administrative and revenue status under the Tuluva dynasty due to the development of the Nayak system under Krishnadevaraya. Nayak System The term Nayak is used from thirteenth century onwards in Telugu and Kannada areas in the sense of a military leader or simply soldier. Assigning the revenue of a particular locality to the Nayak for their military service is found in the Kakatiya kingdom during the thirteenth century.
This is similar to the iqta system practiced by the Delhi Sultanate at that time. But in the Vijayanagar kingdom the regular assignment of revenue yielding territory in return for military service is clearly found only from about or a little earlier. Inscriptions refer to this revenue assignment as nayakkattanam in Tamil, Nayaktanam in Kannada, and nayankaramu in Telugu.The practice