Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.
Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India
Jawaharlal Nehru quotes Domingo Paes, a Portuguese traveller: “Of the ruler, Krishna Deva Raya, is the most feared and perfect king that could possibly be, cheerful of disposition and very merry; he is one that seeks to honour foreigners, and receives them kindly, asking all their affairs whatever their condition may be” [Discovery of India, p 235].
As the Moslems advanced into India native culture receded farther and farther south; and towards the end of these Middle Ages the finest achievements of Hindu civilization were those of the Deccan. For a time the Chalyuka tribe maintained an independent kingdom reaching across central India, and achieved, under Pulakeshin II, sufficient power and glory to defeat Harsha, to attract Yuan Chwang, and to receive a respectful embassy from Khosrou II of Persia. It was in Pulakeshin’s reign and territory that the greatest of Indian paintings the frescoes of Ajanta were completed. In the extreme south, and as early as the first century after Christ, the Pandyas established a realm comprising Madura, Tinnevelly, and parts of Travancore; they made Madura one of the finest of medieval Hindu cities, and adorned it with a gigantic temple and a thousand lesser works of architectural art. The Cholas ruled the region between Madura and Madras, and thence westward to Mysore. They were of great antiquity, being mentioned in the edicts of Ashoka; but we know nothing of them until the ninth century, when they began a long career of conquest that brought them tribute from all southern India, even from Ceylon. Then their power waned, and they passed under the control of the greatest of the southern states, Vijayanagar.
The kingdom of Vijayanagar was founded by Harihara and Bukka, two of five brothers (surnamed Sangama) who had served in the administrations of both Kakatiya and Kampili before those kingdoms were conquered by the armies of the Delhi sultanate in the 1320s. When Kampili fell in 1327, the two brothers are believed to have been captured and taken to Delhi, where they converted to Islam. They were returned to the Deccan as governors of Kampili for the sultanate with the hope that they would be able to deal with the many local revolts and invasions by neighbouring Hindu kings. Their first campaign was against the neighbouring Hoysala king, Ballala III of Dorasamudra, but it stagnated; after the brothers reconverted to Hinduism under the influence of the sage Madhavacarya (Vidyaranya) and proclaimed their independence from the Delhi sultanate. It is said that a sage Madhav Vidyaranya and his brother Sayana were the inspirational source for this empire. The rulers were strict worshipers of the Hindu Gods and Goddess, but also tolerant towards the other religions.
Kings of Vijaynagar Empire:
There were four dynasties ruled over Vijaynagar — Sangama Dynasty, Saluva Dynasty, Tuluva Dynasty and Aravidu Dynasty.
Sangama Dynasty
Harihara I (1336 – 1356 CE) :
Bukka (1356-1377 CE)
Harihara Raya II (1377-1404 CE)
Virupaksha Raya (1404-1405CE).
Bukka Raya II (1405-1406 CE)
Deva Raya I (1406-1422 CE).
Ramachandra Raya (1422 CE)
Vira Vijaya Bukka Raya (1422-1424 CE)
Deva Raya II (1424-1446 CE)
Mallikarjuna Raya (1446-1465 CE)
Virupaksha Raya II (1465-1485 CE)
Praudha Raya (1485 CE)
Saluva Dynasty
Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya (1485-1491 CE)
Thimma Bhupala (1491CE)
Narasimha Raya II (1491-1505 CE)
Tuluva Dynasty
Tuluva Narasa Nayaka (1491-1503 CE
Viranarasimha Raya (1503-1509 CE)
Krishna Deva Raya (1509-1529 CE)
Achyuta Raya (1529-1542 CE)
Sadashiva Raya (1542-1570)
Aravidu Dynasty
Aliya Rama Raya or Rama Raya, (1542-1565 CE)
Tirumala Deva Raya (1565-1572 CE)
Sriranga I/Sriranga Deva Raya (1572-1586 CE)
Venkata II/Venkatapati Deva Raya(1586-1614 CE
Sriranga II/Sriranga Chika Raya (1614-1614 CE
Ramadeva/ Vira Rama Deva Raya (1617-1632 CE)
Venkata III/Peda Venkata Raya (1632-1642 CE)
Sriranga III (1642-1646 CE) or Sriranga Raya II (1642 – 1652 CE)
Vijayanagar the name both of a kingdom and of its capital is a melancholy instance of forgotten glory. In the years of its grandeur it comprised all the present native states of the lower peninsula, together with Mysore and the entire Presidency of Madras. We may judge of its power and resources by considering that King Krishna Raya led forth to battle at Talikota 703,000 foot, 32,600 horse, 551 elephants, and some hundred thousand merchants, prostitutes and other camp followers such as were then wont to accompany an army in its campaigns. The autocracy of the king was softened by a measure of village autonomy, and by the occasional appearance of an enlightened and human monarch on the throne. Krishna Raya, who ruled Vijayanagar in the days of Henry VIII, compares favorably with that constant lover. He led a life of justice and courtesy, gave abounding alms, tolerated all Hindu faiths, enjoyed and supported literature and the arts, forgave fallen enemies and spared their cities, and devoted himself sedulously to the chores of administration. A Portuguese missionary, Domingos Pacs (1522), describes him as the most feared and perfect king that could possibly be; cheerful of disposition, and very merry; he is one that seeks to honor foreigners, and receives them kindly. . . . He is a great ruler, and a man of much justice, but subject to sudden fits of rage. … He is by rank a greater lord than any, by reason of what he possesses in armies and territories; but it seems that he has in fact nothing compared to what a man like him ought to have, so gallant and perfect is he in all things.
Vijayanagar the city was a symbol of vast power and wealth. It was a royal ceremonial and administrative centre and the nexus of trade routes. Foreign travelers and visitors were impressed by the variety and quality of commodities that reached the city, by the architectural grandeur of the palace complex and temples, and by the ceremonial significance of the annual Mahanavami celebrations, at which the Nayakas and other chiefs assembled to pay tribute.
The capital, founded in 1336, was probably the richest city that India had yet known. Nicolo Conti, visiting it about 1420, estimated its circumference at sixty miles; Pacs pronounced it “as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight.” There were, he added, “many groves of trees within it, and many conduits of water”; for its engineers had constructed a huge dam in the Tungabadra River, and had formed a reservoir from which water was conveyed to the city by an aqueduct fifteen miles long, cut for several miles out of the solid rock. Abdu-r Razzak, who saw the city in 1443, reported it as “such that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, of any place resembling it upon the whole earth.” Paes considered it “the best-provided city in tne world, . . . ror in this one everything abounds.”
The houses, he tells us, numbered over a hundred thousand implying a population of half a million souls. He marvels at a palace in which one room was built entirely of ivory; “it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere another such.” When Firoz Shah, Sultan of Delhi, married the daughter of Vijayanagar’s king in the latter’s capital, the road was spread for six miles with velvet, satin, cloth of gold and other costly stuffs.
The administration of the kingdom sporadically achieved a relatively high degree of centralization, although centrifugal tendencies regularly appeared. To the original five rajyas (provinces) held by the Sangama brothers, new ones were added as territories were acquired. Within and among these regions, a complex mosaic of great chiefly houses exercised power to varying degrees, though not with the virtual autonomy that some historians have suggested. The central administration had both a revenue and a military side, but the actual business of raising taxes and troops was mostly the responsibility of the provincial governors and their subordinates. The central government maintained a relatively small body of troops, but it assigned a value to the lands held by the provincial governors and determined the number of troops that were to be supplied from the revenues of each province. This administrative plan led to the development of the nayankara system, in which prominent commanders received land grants and privileged status, becoming Nayakas (local lords or governors). The system, which has been characterized as a kind of military feudalism, worked well enough when the central authority was strong but provided territorial bases for the Nayakas to build semi-independent hereditary holdings in times of imperial weakness. The imperial rulers were aware of the power of the provinces and tried to counter it by appointing members of the royal family as governors of the militarily more important provinces.
Although exact figures are unavailable, the evidence suggests that the level of taxation was close to half of the produce in many areas. Much of the revenue collected did not go to the state, however, because various layers of local landholders took their share first. Although most revenue came from agrarian taxes, commercial and artisan taxes and tributary duties from foreign traders were levied as well.
Underneath this wealth a population of serfs and labourers lived in poverty and superstition, subject to a code of laws that preserved some commercial morality by a barbarous severity. Punishment ranged from mutilation of hands or feet to casting a man to the elephants, cutting off his head, impaling him alive by a stake thrust through his belly, or hanging him on a hook under his chin until he died;” rape as well as large- scale theft was punished in this last way. Prostitution was permitted, regulated, and turned into royal revenue. “Opposite the mint,” says Abdu-r Razzak, “is the office of the prefect of the city, to which it is said twelve thousand policemen are attached; and their pay … is derived from the proceeds of the brothels. The splendour of these houses, the beauty of the heart-ravishers, their blandishments and ogles, are beyond all description.” Women were of subject status, and were expected to kill themselves on the death of their husbands, sometimes by allowing themselves to be buried alive.
Under the Rayas or Kings of Vijayanagar literature prospered, both in classical Sanskrit and in the Telugu dialect of the south. Krishna Raya was himself a poet, as well as a liberal patron of letters; and his poet laureate, Alasani-Peddana, is ranked among the highest of India’s singers. Painting and architecture flourished; enormous temples were built, and almost every foot of their surface was carved into statuary or bas-relief.
Under Vijayanagar rule, temples, which exhibited such singularly imperial features as huge enclosures and entrance gateways (gopuras), emerged as major political arenas. Monastic organizations (mathas) representing various religious traditions also became focal points of local authority, often closely linked with the Nayaka chieftaincies. A fairly elaborate and specialized administrative infrastructure underlay these diverse local and regional religio-political forms.
Buddhism had lost its hold, and a form of Brahmanism that especially honoured Vishnu had become the faith of the people. The cow was holy and was never killed; but many species of cattle and fowl were sacrificed to the gods, and eaten by the people. Religion was brutal, and manners were refined.
In one day all this power and luxury were destroyed. Slowly the conquering Moslems had made their way south; now the sultans of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golkonda and Bidar united their forces to reduce this last stronghold of the native Hindu kings. It is likely that the sultans of Golconda and Ahmadnagar, who had lost much at the hands of Rama Raya, were primarily responsible for the formation of an alliance that destroyed Vijayanagar’s power forever. By 1564 at least four of the five sultans (Berar is questionable) had begun their march on Vijayanagar. Their combined armies met Rama Raja’s half-million men at Talikota; the superior numbers of the attackers prevailed; Rama Raja was captured and beheaded in the sight of his followers, and these, losing courage, fled. Nearly a hundred thousand of them were slain in the retreat, until all the streams were colour with their blood. The conquering troops plundered the wealthy capital, and found the booty so abundant “that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels, effects, tents, arms, horses and slaves.”
For five months the plunder continued: the victors slaughtered the helpless inhabitants in indiscriminate butchery, emptied the stores and shops, smashed the temples and palaces, and laboured at great pains to destroy all the statuary and painting in the city; then they went through the streets with flaming torches, and set fire to all that would burn. When at last they retired, Vijayanagar was as completely ruined as if an earth-quake had visited it and had left not a stone upon a stone. It was a destruction ferocious and absolute, typifying that terrible Moslem conquest of India which had begun a thousand years before, and was now complete.
| After Talikota, the memories of the Empire remained in the minds of thousands but historians of the subsequent period deliberately avoided it from their purview. The writings of medieval travelers such as Abdur-Razzak, Nicolo Conti, Domingo Paes, Fernao Nuniz and the literature in local vernaculars provide crucial information about its history. Above all the archaeological excavations at Vijayanagar have revealed the extent and depth of the empire’s power and wealth. The unfading memories survived in the Hindu social psyche of the subsequent generations gave way to the birth of several patriots. In the opinion of K. A. Nilkanta Sastri, the catastrophic end of Vijayanagar is not the end of the Hindu spirit of nationalism. [A History of South India, p337]. Venkita II, the last ruler of the Aravidu dynasty reigned Vijayanagar until 1614. In 1612 another Hindu kingdom rose to prominence in South India was Mysore, under Raja Oedyar. No doubt, it is sufficient testimony to the idea of an uninterrupted survival of the nationhood feeling among the Hindu social psyche. Similarly powerful Hindu dynasties such as Travancore, Cochin, Madurai, etc were continued over the South India. The coronation of Chatrapti Sivaji in 1674 was, no doubt, an appendix to the great saga of the Vijayanagar experience. |
| REFERANCES: |
HAVELL, E. B.: Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India. London, 1915.
HAVELL, E. B.: Ideals of Indian Art. New York, 1920.
KEYSERLING, COUNT HERMANN: Travel Diary of a Philosopher. 2V. New York, 1925.
SMITH, V. A.: Oxford History of India. Oxford, 1923.
SEWELL, ROBERT: A Forgotten Empire, Vijayanagar. London, 1900.
WILL DURANT. : Our Oriental Heritage. Simon and Schuster. New York, 1954