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Aditya Singh

B.A. HONS. History

Roll no- 2016130

HOI- 4 Assignment

Q. Give an account of Vijayanagara symbolizing a dynamic and creative political culture in the

history of South India.

Ans. “For three centuries, the Vijayanagara Empire, stood like a mighty bulwark, protecting the South

and Deccan from the expansionists of the north” are the words of Ratnakar Sadasyula who wrote a

book on the Vijayanagara Empire1. The history of the origin of the Vijayanagara Empire is as

interesting as its architectural charms and political operations.

The Vijayanagara Empire was founded by two brothers who came from the Sangama Dynasty-

Harihara I and Bukka Raya2 on April 18, 13663. This origin story is too debated as if we see the

1
For more info see- Sadasyula, Ratnakar. 2016. ‘rise and fall of the Vijayanagara Empire’.
2
The total number of brothers was 5- Bukka, Harihara, Kampana, Mudappa, and Marappa; out of which, 2 are
of importance.
3
See Shastri, K.A.N. ‘the Bahamanis and the rise of Vijayanagara’.
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account of Fernao Nuniz4, who mentions Devaraya as the founder of the Vijayanagara Empire. The

backdrop for the formation of this state was filled with intense rivalry between the kingdoms of the

south and that of the northern invaders. According to the legend they were feudatories with the

Kaktiyas of Warangal, later on becoming ministers in the kingdom of Kampili in the present state of

Karnataka. When the region was attacked by Mohammad Bin Tughlaq, the two brothers were turned

into prisoners and taken to Delhi where they accepted Islam and thus became close associates of the

Sultan. They were then sent by the Sultan to govern the province of Kampili, the kingdom from where

they were imprisoned. After gaining sway over Kampili, the two brothers set to conquer more

territory for the Sultan in the same fashion. The two turned against the Sultan and went on to establish

an Independent state which soon grew to high status and they named it the city of Victory and the city

of learning- ‘Vijayanagara’ and ‘Vidyanagara’. The two brothers re-instated into Hinduism on the

advice of their teacher Vidyaranya and aimed to establish a Hindu kingdom against the Islamic states

of the Deccan and the Delhi Sultanate. According to Burton Stein, the Vijayanagara kingdom came to

be called an empire because the macro-regions which were never brought together in the earlier times

were clubbed during this time, it was also the newest war state that was ever made by a Hindu

kingdom or to say aspiring to be a Hindu kingdom5.

Harihara and Bukka both were great rulers establishing a strong Empire. They both followed an

expansionist policy and thus expanded their empire in all four directions. The history of the kingdom

can be divided into 4 dynasties- the Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, and the Aravidu dynasty. the kingdom

was fortunate enough to have many great kings ascending the throne but the numbers were lacking in

the long run. Bukka 2 and Devaraya were a few of the great kings of the empire. according to Nuniz,

Bukka 2 and Devaraya extended the city walls and strengthened the defence mechanism- building

new forts, stronger walls, etc. a huge dam was also constructed on the Tungabhadra river and brought

water to the city using long stretches of aqueducts. another important ruler was Devaraya 2 who

4
A Portuguese horse trader from the 15th century. His writings along with that of Peas were printed in English
in 1900 by Robert Sewell.
5
See Stein, Burton. 1989. ‘The New Cambridge History of India- Vijayanagara Empire’. Cambridge University
Press.
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succeeded his father in 1426. he was called Gajabetekara- a hunter of elephants maybe because he

was too into the game of hunting elephants or as a way of portraying his victory over the enemies. he

expanded the empire spreading it to Kerala subjugating the ruler of Quilon. he also conquered

Kondavidu and then further invaded the Gajapati kingdom of Orissa. he has been considered as a

great builder and patron of art- Telugu poet Srinatha was showered with golden Tankas (coins). Many

other rulers came and went. Devaraya 2 strengthened the Military of the kingdom by improving the

quality of the horses and the weapons, focusing on high-grade equipment attained from foreign trade.

He held military and administrative sway over the ports of southern India which helped the kingdom

to flourish in his times. The most influential ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire was Krishnadeva Raya

who came to the throne in 1509 which falls outside our period of study but it did deserve reference in

the text. The policy of the Empire changed with every new king that came to power and so did the

politics of the state6.

The kingdom attracted foreign travelers like Abdur Razzak, Daunte Barbosa, and Domingo Peas. The

region was extremely diverse both in terms of culture and topography. The Geographical boundary of

the Empire consisted of high forested areas, hilly terrain, flat top mountains, arid regions, and the

Tungabhadra river flowing through it. Domingo Peas mentions in his works that it was impossible to

see the Empire at once even from a high mountain as it was covered up by different mountain peaks.

The mountainous region protected the state from 3 sides and the river from the 4th. The expansion of

territory happened in all directions. in the northwest, the ports of Goa, Chaul, and Dabhol were taken,

and also Kharepatan and the Krishna river became the northern frontier of the kingdom. the Reddis

were subdued in the regions of Kurnool, Nellore, and Guntur, even reaching Ceylon. The kingdom

was divided up into 3 broad zones – the one extending from the Tungabhadra bank called the ‘sacred

zone’, the 2nd called the urban zone which included the parts of Hampi, and the royal centre being the

3rd zone.7

6
See Chandra, Satish. ‘The age of Vijayanagara and the Bahamanids, and the coming of the Portuguese’
7
The architecture of all three zones is different yet something to be gazed at.
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Urban life flourished during the Vijayanagara Empire mostly around the temples8. The temples served

to a lot of public and thus had its need of food items and commodities for distribution amongst the

worshippers which helped local shops to flourish. craftsmen and artisans also grew around the temple

regions and in the urban centres because the needs of people for decorative objects grew with an

increase in the standards of living and there also developed a taste for foreign goods. The temples

were rich and also took an active part in trade, both internally and overseas. Domingo Peas and

Barbosa wrote in great detail about the markets of the Vijayanagara Empire calling it a place with

goods flowing in from all over the world with vibrant and living market life.

Carla M. Sinopoli’s book – the Vijayanagara Metropolitan survey, which covered a 400 square

kilometres region gives us details about the inhabitants and their economic activities. These

communities included agricultural villagers, pastoralists, mobile artisans, and others, who provided

goods and labor that transformed the semi-arid landscape into a defended zone of intensive

agricultural production. The vast majority of inscriptions found record donations of land, cash, or

goods made to temples by individuals or social groups.

The encounter with Muslim power from Delhi is perhaps the most important political fact of the

period, as Krishnaswami Aiyangar and others have insisted. The interests of the Vijayanagara rulers

and Bahamani sultans clashed at 3 particular regions- the Tungabhadra-doab, Krishna- Kaveri delta,

and the Marathwada country. The kingdom shared intense rivalry with the Gajapati and the Ashwapati

neighboring states9. Firuz Shah Bahamani has been seen as the most remarkable ruler of the

Bahamani kingdom set up by him in 1397. The decline of the Delhi sultanate around the time helped

the Bahamani kingdom to be established as many learned scholars and experts in the field of military

and warfare were leaving the setting Delhi Sultanate and moving to the Deccan or the

Dakkhin/Dakshin. The Bahamanis started the expansion of their empire from the region of Berar in

present-day Andhra Pradesh, a region that was so close to the Vijayanagara empire and the kingdom

8
As is the case in the present-day world, most of the ancient pilgrim cities like Varanasi, Mathura, Jerusalem,
and Mecca are important towns in the present-day context.
9
Gajapati kings of Orrisa and the Ashwapati Kings of the Delhi Sultanate and the Deccan Muslim states of
Bijapur and Golconda.
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itself controlled a lot of areas around the conquered province. The kingdoms fought frequent battles in

some the Vijayanagara Empire came victorious and in some the Latter.

The concept of kingship among the rulers was quite high. according to them, the king had the duty to

protect the good and punish the evil. In Vijayanagara like any other kingdom, the king was advised by

a council of ministers which were the great nobles. the Kingdom was divided up into Rajya and

mandalams and further into Nadu (district), sthala (sub-D), and grama(village). the provincial

Governors had a large measure of autonomy in their region, having their courts, maintaining their

troops, and appointing their sub officials except in the strategically and economically important

regions where the king held sway over the appointment-related issues. each governor paid a fixed

contribution in men and money to the king. some regions in the kingdom were under provincial rulers

who were defeated in war but were allowed to rule after accepting the suzerainty of the Vijayanagara

kings. there is an absence of knowledge about the economic life of peasants and alike as the travelers

knew little about them. a land tax was implemented which was 1/6th or sometimes 1/4th of the total

produce. other than the land tax, there were taxes on property, sale, purchase of products, military

contribution, and even marriages10. We find evidence of taxes on shoemaking come from 1375 and

that on camels from 1382. The use of cavalry by Vijayanagara was an innovative aspect of their

military strategies and had a considerable impact on their success. The carvings on temple walls of

horses and horsemen gives us a clear picture of the importance of cavalry in the expansion of the

Empire.

The founders organized the state on the Kakatiya model and thus dividing the kingdom into sthala and

nadus. The empire was divided into several rajas ruled by princes and highly favoured generals- Uday

be Odagiri Rajya, Penugonda Rajya, Mulvayi Rajya, Maleha Rajya, and the Rajagambhira Rajya were

10
See Chandra, Satish. ‘The age of Vijayanagara and the Bahamanids, and the coming of the Portuguese’. Page
no-14-15.
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a few of them. The two sources of authority - ksattra/utai and rajadharma (given by God to the king to

do justice) - were complementary, together they fulfilled the conception of appropriate authority. The

high-ranked officials who were called pradani, Rajymam-Karta, and Mantri were assisted by a set of

officials called the Adhikaris. The work of Noboru Karashima ‘Nayaka Rule in the Tamil Country

during the Vijayanagara period’ states that people in the 14th century the common population was

distressed because of the misbehaviour and extracting nature of the Adhikaris. The inscriptions came

from the Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur districts. According to these inscriptions, Adhikaris imposed a

poll tax on the people of Tiruvarur-uchavadi and farmed out the region to some local magnates for the

collection of this tax. This farming out increased the quantum of the tax by competitive bidding and

the amount increased from 200 to 2000 pana within the space of a year. The king tried to improve this

situation of maladministration by the officers of his government, an open revolt by the distressed

people against the government broke out.

We find an inscription from Deva Raya 2 around the year 1360 which refers to Lakkanu Danaya and

states that service lands were neither to be sold nor mortgaged by the parties who received them and

that this order was to be accepted as a Royal one. Anyone trying to go against this order was to be

punished like traitors by the king and the community would suffer along with a fine imposed by the

temple administration. Nuniz was one of the historians who described the itinerant officers of the king

- the minister (rajedar), the treasurer, and the commander of the palace. The last one was more part of

the military than the administration including the Danda Adhikari.

The Nayaka system which was a special feature of the Vijayanagara empire needs special attention

when we are to discuss the topic but it needs to be kept in mind that it is a system about which we find

information only from the 15th-century Portuguese sources. During the time of Devaraya 2, there was

an enlargement in the importance of grants to soldiers and military commanders in return for the

service to Rayas, which came to be called the Amara. As Nilakantha Shastri stated, the empire was
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organized on a war-state basis because of the military needs of the time as the Empire was in constant

conflicts with the neighbours and it had to expand its territories. Great and small warriors have been

given the term ‘nayaka’ or a hero and are were an important component of Vijayanagara’s political

structure. The early Chola states had a segmentary state but the Nayaka system of Vijayanagara was a

significant variation. We find the use of the term ‘amaranayakara’ in the macro-regions of the empire

and as the name suggests it was an office possessed by a military chief in command of a body of

troops. According to Nuniz, there were around 200 Nayaks in the Vijayanagara empire, each entitled

with a vast stretch of land to be governed for which the nayaka paid tribute to the king, it wouldn’t be

wrong to say that the Nayakas owned the land. The territory granted to the Nayakas was called

nayakatana. According to some scholars, about 75% of the villages of the empire were owned or

governed by the Nayakas- exactly the reason why some historians called the state feudal. The views

of Shastri were at odd with Stein and he stated that the Nayakas were at the mercy of the king and

only in the 16th century they achieved semi-independent status. The term nayaka was taken up by the

Telegu and Kannada speakers in a way of creating a link with a great kingdom. Many scholars have

suggested that this distribution of land amongst the Nayakas was similar to the feudal mode in

western Europe but Burton stein was entirely against it. Stein ignored the small Nayaks and only

mentions the big one from Thanjavur because he wanted to apply the theory of the segmentary state to

the Vijayanagara Empire as it was done with the Chola kingdom. From the Accounts of Nuniz, it is

clear that the Nayaks had to collect taxes from their territory to remit a certain amount to the king.

According to Peas, the Nayakas performed other functions for the king as well such as working in the

governance and other duties, some being called mahamandalesvara- ruler of a large area. According

to Karashima, there is no doubt that the Nayakas played a crucial role in the revenue collection for the

state.

According to the historians working on the Vijayanagara Empire, there existed three sets of tenurial

categories: - the Amara, Bhandaravada, and Manya which denoted how the shares of income from

Villages were distributed. The Bhandaravada was the smallest of these three and a little portion of
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their income went to the Vijayanagara Empire for the construction and enhancement of the forts. The

Manya came the 2nd and a large portion of the villages gave shares of their income to the Brahmanas,

temples, and the Mathas. The 3rd division Amara was the large number of villages that were unaligned

with the Vijayanagara Empire and were ruled by the Amaranayakas. The Amaranayakas engaged

themselves in infrastructural activities such as the construction of canals to increase crop production

with a profit motive.

The Ayagar system was the institution that provided land to the village or the local level servants.

According to Krishnaswami such a system never existed in the past but we do find references of a

similar system in the Chola dynasty. The Ayagar system was, after all, a poor system for the

maintenance of services of value to an entire village where land was relatively valuable. Under this

system, the Ayagar or village servants consisted of 12 functionaries which included the headman,

accountant, and policeman. To each of these officials, a portion of the village income in terms of land

was given to them in return for their service. These lands were not liable to any taxes and were thus

called the Manya or the tax-free land. The latter Ayagaras included providers of services important for

ritual purity, such as washermen and priests, Others provided goods and services. Special tenures for

individual Brahmans groups of Brahmans continued to be granted and protected as were granted to

Mathas.

The beginning of the Vijayanagara Empire was not very different from its predecessors- it kept the

same political system which was followed by the Cholas and the Hoysalas but with time it changed its

way of functioning to a different level. The empire emerged as the grandest Urban centre in the

Deccan region and the with the fiercest military capabilities as we know it invested a lot in the

construction of forts and moats and also in high-quality war horses. The political and the

administrative system developed with time but it had its flaws as well like any other system in the

world. To sum up, the History of Vijayanagara was one of a Grandiose which met its fatal end.
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Bibliography

• Sinopoli, Carl M. 2000. ‘From the Lion Throne: Political and Social Dynamics of the

Vijayanagara Empire’. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 43,

No. 3

• Stein, Burton. 1989. ‘The new Cambridge history of India- Vijayanagara’. Cambridge

university press.

• Shastri, K.A.N. ‘The Bahamanis and the rise of the Vijayanagara’

• Chandra, Satish. ‘The age of Vijayanagara and the Bahamanids, and the coming of

Portuguese (circa 1350-1565)’.

• Shastri, K.A.N. ‘The empire of Vijayanagara’.

• Saletore, B.A. 1934. ‘Social and political life in the Vijayanagara empire (A.D.1346-

A.D.1646)’. B.G. Paul &Co, Madras.

• Karashima, Noboru. ‘fifteenth century to the seventeenth century- Vijayanagara state and the

wider world’.

• Shastri, K.A.N. 1955. ‘A history of south India: from Pre-Historic times to the fall of

Vijayanagara empire’. Oxford India Press.