exports and imports, customs duties on articles of merchandise and excise
duties. These taxes or tolls were farmed out to merchant-guilds or
associations on payment of a fixed sum to the government. These tax-farmers
had their own branches in different localities along with their own officials
and establishments. The toll-farmers could exempt any dealer from paying
the stipulated duty as a privilege for some important service which he might
have done for the guild organisation. The merchant-guilds wielded unlimited
powers and enjoyed full autonomy in the internal management of their own
affairs. This was probably due to the help which they had rendered to the
Kakatiya monarch by furnishing forces (srenihala) at the time of Muslim
Invasions.
LITERATURE
The Kakatiya rulers extended liberal patronage to Sanskrit. Several
eminent Sanskrit writers and poets authored inscriptions which must be
regarded as kavyas in miniature. Of these writers Achintendra was
commissioned by Rudradeva to compose the prasasti embodied in the
Anumakonda inscription. The most famous of the prasasti writers of the
time was, however, Isvarasuri, the author of the Bothpur inscriptions.
Besides, the contribution of the Kakatiya poets to Sanskrit literature is
considerable. A well-known scholar and poet, Sakalya Malla or
Mullubhatta, lived at the court of Prataparudra, and composed the
Udattaraghavakavya and the Niroshthya-Ramayana. In the field of
alankarasutra, the Prataparudra-Yasobhushanam of Vidyanatha, is by far
the best.
Telugu literature also flourished in the Kakatiya kingdom. Several
inscriptions were composed partly or wholly in Telugu verse like the
inscriptions at Gudur (of Beta II), Karimnagar (Gangadhara), Upparapalle
(Kata) and Konidena (Opilisiddhi). The new religious movements like
Vaishnavism and Virasaivism gave a great impetus to Telugu literature.
Several works on the two great national epics—the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata—were produced during this period. The earliest and the
most popular Telugu work on the Ramayana is Tikkana’s
Nirvachanoltara-Ramayanam. Next in point of time come the Bhaskara-