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Vijayanagara Empire

Hindu kingdom in Southern India (14th-17th century)

The Vijayanagara Empire, (also called Karnata Empire, and the Kingdom of Bisnegar by the Portuguese) was based in the Deccan Plateau region in South India. It was established in 1336 by Harihara I and his brother Bukka Raya I of Sangama Dynasty. The empire rose to prominence as a culmination of attempts by the southern powers to ward off Islamic invasions by the end of the 13th century. It lasted until 1646, although its power declined after a major military defeat in 1565 by the combined armies of the Deccan sultanates. The empire is named after its capital city of Vijayanagara, whose ruins surround present day Hampi, now a World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India. The writings of medieval European travelers such as Domingo Paes, Fernão Nunes, and Niccolò Da Conti, and the literature in local languages provide crucial information about its history. Archaeological excavations at Vijayanagara have revealed the empire's power and wealth.

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  • [The Vijayanagar kings allowed] that every man may come and go, and live according to his own creed without suffering any annoyance, and without enquiring whether he is a Christian, Jew, Moor or Heathen. Great equity and justice is observed by all.
    • Duarte Barbosa. The Book of Duarte Barbosa, vol. I, p. 202. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2
  • 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.
  • 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 Paes (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.'
  • 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; Paes 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 the world, . . . Ior 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.”66 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.67 However, every traveler is a liar.
  • 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. 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 colored 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 labored 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 earthquake 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.
  • 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. Buddhism had lost its hold, and a form of Brahmanism that especially honored 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.
  • A European traveller named Barbosa who observed goings-on in Vijayanagara described the king as allowing great freedom, so that every man could come and go as he wished, living according to his own beliefs without suffering any persecution, and without having to be questioned as to whether he was a Christian, Jew or Moor. He said that the governors ruled with justice.’ Krishnadevaraya, and then his brother Achyuta, made gifts to brahmans of all sects, and gave land for both Shaiva and Vaishnava enterprises. A Hindu named Rangai Nayakayya gave funds for a mosque to be constructed. Devaraya II built a mosque in the capital for his Muslim soldiers." And Ramaraja, Krishnadevaraya’s son-in-law, used very inclusive symbolism in the state ceremony in which Muslim soldiers offered their obeisance to him: a copy of the Qur’an was placed before the king so that the soldier would be honouring his faith when he bowed, showing not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’ symbolism. This inclusive symbolism was like the coin of Caesar, using not force but persuasion.”
    • William J. Jackson’s book Vijayanagara Voices: Exploring South Indian History and Hindu Literature
  • 'The battle took place on Tuesday, 23 January, 1565. The Vijayanagara army commenced attack in right earnest and the right and left wings of the confederate army were thrown into such disorder that their commanders were almost prepared to retreat when the position was saved by Hussain who opposed the enemy with great valour. The fighting was then continued and the loss of life on both sides was heavy. But it did not last long and its fate was determined by the desertion of two Muhammadan commanders under Ramraja. Caesar Frederick, who visited Vijayanagara in 1567, said that each of these commanders had under him seventy to eighty thousand men and the defeat of Vijayanagara was due to their desertion. Ramaraja fell into enemy's hands and was beheaded on the order of Hussain.'120
    • R.C. Majumdar (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People, Volume VII, The Mughal Empire, Bombay, 1973, p. 425. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583
  • 'The Hindoos, according to custom, when they saw their chief destroyed, fled in the utmost disorder from the field, and were pursued by the allies with such success, that the river was dyed red with their blood. It is computed, by the best authorities, that above one hundred thousand infidels were slain during the action and in the pursuit. The plunder was so great that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels tents, horses, and slaves, the kings permitting every person to retain what he acquired, reserving the elephants only for their own use. Letters with accounts of this important victory were despatched to their several dominions, and to the neighbouring states, while the kings themselves, shortly after the battle, marched onwards into the country of Ramraj, as far as Anagoondy, and the advanced troops penetrated to Beejanuggur which they plundered, razed the chief buildings to the ground, and committed every species of excess.'
    • TArIkh-i-Farishtah, translated into English by John Briggs as History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, New Delhi reprint, 1981, Volume III, p. 79. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583
  • 'The third day saw the beginning of the end. The victorious Mussulmans had halted on the field of battle for rest and refreshment, but now they had reached the capital, and from that time forward for a space of five months Vijayanagar knew no rest. The enemy had come to destroy, and they carried out their object relentlessly. They slaughtered the people without mercy; broke down the temples and palaces, and wreaked such savage vengeance on the abode of the Kings, that, with the exception of a few great stone-built temples and walls, nothing now remains but a heap of ruins to mark the spot where once stately buildings stood. They demolished the statues, and even succeeded in breaking the limbs of the huge Narasimha monolith. Nothing seemed to escape them. They broke up the pavilions standing on the huge platform from which the kings used to watch festivals, and overthrew all the carved work. They lit huge fires in the magnificently decorated buildings forming the temple of Vitthalaswami near the river, and smashed its exquisite stone sculptures. With fire and sword, with crowbars and axes, they carried on day after day their work of destruction. Never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought so suddenly, on so splendid a city; teeming with a wealthy and industrious population in the fun plenitude of prosperity one day, and on the next seized, pillaged, and reduced to ruins, amid scenes of savage massacre and horrors beggaring description' The loot must have been enormous. Couto states that amongst other treasures was found a diamond as large as a hen's egg, which was kept by the Adil Shah.'
    • Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire, New Delhi reprint, 1962, pp. 199-200. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583
  • At first the Hindus fought with success and nearly won the battle; but the issue was decided by the desertion of two Muslim commanders of Rama Raya's army, each in charge of seventy to eighty thousand men.
    • About the watershed battle of Talikota on 23 January 1565 which broke the back of the Vijayanagara Empire
    • Nilakantha Shastri: History of South India, pp.94-5, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.344
  • During the construction of the new road-some mounds which evidently marked the remains of destroyed buildings, were dug into, and in one of them were disclosed the foundations of a rectangular building with elaborately carved base. Among the debris were lumps of charcoal and calcined iron, probably the remains of the materials used by the Muhammadans in the destruction of the building. The stones bear extensive signs of having been exposed to the action of fire. That the chief buildings were destroyed by fire, historical evidence shows, and many buildings, notably the ViThalaswAmin temple, still bear signs, in their cracked and fractured stone work, of the catastrophe which overtook them…
    • Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1903-04, p. 63. Quoted from Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them. [1]
  • The most important temple at Vijayanagar from an architectural point of view, is the ViThalaswãmin temple. It stands in the eastern limits of the ruins, near the bank of the TuNgabhadra river, and shows in its later structures the extreme limit in floral magnificence to which the Dravidian style advanced… This building had evidently attracted the special attention of the Muhammadan invaders in their efforts to destroy the buildings of the city, of which this was no doubt one of the most important, for though many of the other temples show traces of the action of fire, in none of them are the effects so marked as in this. Its massive construction, however, resisted all the efforts that were made to bring it down and the only visible results of their iconoclastic fury are the cracked beams and pillars, some of the later being so flaked as to make one marvel that they are yet able to bear the immense weight of the stone entablature and roof above…”
    • Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1904-05, p. 24. Quoted from Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them. [2]
  • About two hundred miles away, still in the south, on a brown plateau of rock and gigantic boulders, are the ruins of the capital city of what was once the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. Vijayanagar – vijaya, victory, nagar, city – was established in the fourteenth century; it was conquered, and totally destroyed, by an alliance of Moslem principalities in 1565. The city was then one of the greatest in the world, its walls twenty-four miles around – foreign visitors have left accounts of its organization and magnificence – and the work of destruction took five months; some people say a year.
    • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Wounded Civilization (Vintage, 2003)
  • To the pilgrims Vijayanagar is its surviving temple. The surrounding destruction is like proof of the virtue of old magic; just as the fantasy of past splendour is accommodated within an acceptance of present squalor. That once glorious avenue – not a national monument, still permitted to live – is a slum. Its surface, where unpaved, is a green-black slurry of mud and excrement, through which the sandaled pilgrims unheedingly pad to the food stalls and souvenir shops, loud and gay with radios. And there are starved squatters with their starved animals in the ruins, the broken stone façades patched up with mud and rocks, the doorways stripped of the sculptures which existed until recently. Life goes on, the past continues. After conquest and destruction, the past simply reasserts itself.
    • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Wounded Civilization (Vintage, 2003)
  • If Vijayanagar is now only its name and, as a kingdom, is so little remembered (there are university students in Bangalore, two hundred miles away, who haven’t even heard of it), it isn’t only because it was so completely wiped out, but also because it contributed so little; it was itself a reassertion of the past. The kingdom was founded in 1336 by a local Hindu prince who, after defeat by the Moslems, had been taken to Delhi, converted to Islam, and then sent back to the south as a representative of the Moslem power. There in the south, far from Delhi, the converted prince had re-established his independence and, unusually, in defiance of Hindu caste rules, had declared himself a Hindu again, a representative on earth of the local Hindu god. In this unlikely way the great Hindu kingdom of the south was founded.
    It lasted two hundred years, but during that time it never ceased to be embattled. It was committed from the start to the preservation of a Hinduism that had already been violated, and culturally and artistically it preserved and repeated; it hardly innovated. Its bronze sculptures are like those of five hundred years before; its architecture, even at the time, and certainly to the surrounding Moslems, must have seemed heavy and archaic. And its ruins today, in that unfriendly landscape of rock and boulders of strange shapes, look older than they are, like the ruins of a long-superseded civilization.
    • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Wounded Civilization (Vintage, 2003)
  • It was at Vijayanagar this time, in that wide temple avenue, which seemed less awesome than when I had first seen it thirteen years before, no longer speaking as directly as it did then of a fabulous past, that I began to wonder about the intellectual depletion that must have come to India with the invasions and conquests of the last thousand years. What happened in Vijayanagar happened, in varying degrees, in other parts of the country. In the north, ruin lies on ruin: Moslem ruin on Hindu ruin, Moslem on Moslem. In the history books, in the accounts of wars and conquests and plunder, the intellectual depletion passes unnoticed, the lesser intellectual life of a country whose contributions to civilization were made in the remote past. India absorbs and outlasts its conquerors, Indians say. But at Vijayanagar, among the pilgrims, I wondered whether intellectually for a thousand years India hadn’t always retreated before its conquerors and whether, in its periods of apparent revival, India hadn’t only been making itself archaic again, intellectually smaller, always vulnerable.
    • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Wounded Civilization (Vintage, 2003)
  • Just over half a century later the great Hindu empire in the South, the empire of Vijayanagar, was defeated and physically laid waste by a combination of Muslim rulers; almost at the same time, in the North, the Mogul power was entering its time of glory. It might have seemed then that Hindu India, without the new learning and the new tools of Europe, its rulers without the idea of country or nation, without the political ideas that might have helped them to preserve their people from foreign rule – it might have seemed then that Hindu India was on the verge of extinction, something to be divided between Christian Europe and the Muslim world, and all its religious symbols and difficult theology rendered as meaningless as the Aztec gods in Mexico, or the symbolism of Hindu Angkor.
    • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Million Mutinies Now (Vintage, 2011)
  • I think every Indian should make the pilgrimage to the site of the capital of the Vijaynagar empire, just to see what the invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand what the centuries of plunder and slaughter meant. War isn't a game. When you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That's where modern India starts from...
    • V.S. Naipaul, A Million Mutinies, India Today Date: August 18, 1997 [3]
  • In 1522, the Portuguese traveler Domingos Paes had visited Vijayanagar, and reported that it was comparable in size to Rome, with a population of five hundred thousand. He called Vijayanagar “the best provided city in the world…for the state of this city is not like that of other cities, which often fail of supplies and provisions, for in this one everything abounds.” Inside the palace, he saw a room “all of ivory, as well the chamber as the walls from top to bottom, and the pillars of the cross-timbers at the top had roses and flowers of lotuses all of ivory, and all well executed, so that there could not be better—it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere another such.”
  • When the sultans of Delhi lost their hold on the South, Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms came to grips with each other. The wars between these two kingdoms generally ended in massacres. Only one instance should suffice to give an idea of this. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the fighting between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar king in 1366 in which “Ferishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million.” According to Ferishtah, Muhammad “So wasted the districts of Carnatic that for several decades they did not recover their natural population.”
    • R. Sewell, Ferishtah, I, p.295. quoted from K.S. Lal, Indian Muslims, who are they, 1990.
  • “The first Bhamani King, Alauddin Bahman Shah (1347-1358) despatched an expedition against the northern Canatic Hindu chieftains, and his booty included ‘1000 singing and dancing girls, Murlis, from Hindu temples’. In 1406 Sultan Tajuddin Firoz (1397-1422) fought a war with Vijayanagar and captured 60,000 youths and children from its territories. When peace was made Bukka gave, besides other things, 2,000 boys and girls skilled in dancing and music… His successor Ahmad Vali (1422-36) marched through Vijayanagar kingdom, ‘slaughtering men and enslaving women and children.” The captives were made Musalmans. Sultan Alauddin (1436-58) collected a thousand women in his harem. When it is noted that intermittent warfare between the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms continued for more than a century and half, the story of enslavement and conversions need not be carried on. Even ordinary soldiers used to get many slaves and, at the end of the Battle of Talikot (1565), ‘large number of captives consigned to slavery, enriched the whole of the Muslim armies, for the troops were permitted to retain the whole of the plunder.’ …”
    • Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6, quoting The Cambridge History of India
  • Ally Adil Shah, intent on adding to his dominions, and repairing the losses sustained by his father, entered into a close alliance with Ramraj; and on the occasion of the death of a son of that Prince, he had the boldness, attended only by one hundred horse, to go to Beejanuggur, to offer his condolence in person on that melancholy occasion. Ramraj received him with the greatest respect...
    'Ally Adil Shah resolved to curb his [Ramraj's] insolence and reduce his power by a league of the faithful against him; for which purpose he convened an assembly of his friends and confidential advisers. Kishwur Khan Lary and Shah Aboo Toorab Shirazy, whose abilities had often been experienced, represented, that the King's desire to humble the pride of the Ray of Beejanuggur was undoubtedly meritorious and highly politic, but could never be effected unless by the union of all the Mahomedan kings of the Deccan, as the revenues of Ramraj, collected from sixty seaports and numerous flourishing cities and districts, amounted to an immense sum; which enabled him to maintain a force, against which no single king of the Mussulmans could hope to contend with the smallest prospect of success. Ally Adil Shah commanded Kishwur Khan to take measures to effect the object of a general league; and an ambassador was accordingly despatched without delay to sound Ibrahim Kootb Shah, and to open to him if prudent, the designed plan'
    'Ibrahim Kootb Shah, who had been inwardly stung with indignation at the haughty insolence and the usurpations of Ramraj, eagerly acceded to the proposed alliance, and offered to mediate a union between Ally Adil Shah and Hoossein Nizam Shah, and even promised to obtain for the former the fort of Sholapoor, which had been the original cause of their disagreement. With this view Ibrahim Kootb Shah despatched Moostufa Khan Ardistany, the most intelligent nobleman of his court, to Ally Adil Shah, with orders, if he should find him still sincere in his intentions towards the league, to proceed from thence to Ahmudnuggur, and conclude the alliance'...'After some days it was agreed that Hoossein Nizam Shah should give his daughter Chand Beeby in marriage to Ally Adil Shah, with the fortress of Sholapoor as her dowry; and that he should receive the sister of that Prince, named Huddeea Sooltana, as a consort for his eldest son Moortuza; that a treaty of eternal friendship should be entered on between both states, and that they should unite sincerely to reduce the power of Ramraj; for which purpose it was resolved to march against him at the earliest practicable period. Hoossein Nizam Shah, Ally Adil Shah, Ibrahim Kootb Shah, and Ally Bereed Shah,117now began to make active preparations for the campaign against Ramraj'...'In the year A.H. 972 (1564 CE), the four princes, at the head of their respective armies, met on the plains of Beejapoor, and on the 20th of Jumad-ool-Awul (Dec. 26) of the same year marched from that neighbourhood. After some days they arrived at Talikote, and the armies encamped near the banks of the Krishna; where, as the country on the north bank belonged to Ally Adil Shah he entertained his allies with great splendour, and sent strict orders to all the governors of his dominions to forward supplies of provisions from their districts regularly all to the camp.'
    • About the planning of the conquest of Vijayanagara. TArIkh-i-Farishtah, translated into English by John Briggs as History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, New Delhi reprint, 1981, Volume III, p. 71-79.
  • [Muhammad Shah had vowed to slaughter 100,000 infidels in the attack and] ‘the massacre of the unbelievers was renewed in so relentless a manner that pregnant women and children at the breast even did not escape the sword.’... About ten thousand of the enemy were slain in the pursuit; but the King’s thirst for vengeance being still unsatisfied, he command- ed the inhabitants of every place around Beejanuggur to be massacred. ... At this time, a favourite remarked to the King, that he had only sworn to slaughter one hundred thousand Hindus, and not to destroy their race altogether. The King replied, that though twice the number required by his vow might have been slain, yet till the Ray satisfied the musicians, be would neither make peace nor spare the lives of his subjects. To this the ambassadors. who had full powers, immediatdy agreed, and the money was paid on the instant. ... The ambassadors, seeing the King pleased, bowed their foreheads to the ground, and besought him to hear from them a few words. Being permitted to speak, they observed, that no religion required the innocent to be punished for the crimes of the guilty, more especially helpless women and children : if Krishna Ray had been in fault, the poor and feeble inhabitants had not been accessory to his errors. Mahomed Shah replied, that the decrees of Providence had ordered what had been done, and that he had no power to alter them.
    • Ferishtah, Vol. II, p. 195 ff. [4] (also quoted in M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011)) About Sultan Muhammad Shah’s attack against King Krishna Ray of Vijaynagar kingdom in 1366.
  • [King Dev Raya II (1419–49)] ‘gave orders to enlist Mussulmans (of his kingdom) in his service, allotting them estates, and erecting a mosque for their use in the city of Beejanuggar (Vijaynagar). He also commanded that no one should molest them in the exercise of their religion and moreover, he ordered a Koran to be placed before his throne on a rich desk, so that the faithful (Muslims) can perform their ceremony of obeisance in his presence without sinning against their laws.’
    • Ferishtah, p 266 [5] (also quoted in M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011))
  • When the sultans of Delhi lost their hold on the South, Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms came to grips with each other. The wars between these two kingdoms generally ended in massacres. Only one instance should suffice to give an idea of this. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the fighting, between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar king iri 1366 in which “Ferishtah computes the victims on the Hindu.side alone as numbering no less than half a million’’. 5 According to Ferishtah, Muhammad “So wasted the districts of Carnatic that for several decades they did not recover their natural population.'”
    • K.S. Lal Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) 42 quoting Sewell, Firishta
  • Subsequently, the Vijayanagara rulers succeeded in wresting a large part of the western coast, including Goa. Madhavamantri was appointed governor of Goa. ... Another inscription described how Madhava-mantri ousted the Turuska groups from Goa and re-consecrated the Saptanatha and other lingas that had been uprooted, “and made the trees of dharma sprout again which were burnt by the flames of fire of the wicked”.
    • Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Episodes from Indian history. 216, quoting (Ritti 2017: xxxiii, 105)
  • Traditionally, the founding of the Vijayanagara Empire was interpreted as the reaffirmation of Hindu dharma in the face of the challenge from Islam. An interesting inscription stated that the divine cow, Kamadhenu complained to Shiva that is was very difficult to walk on one leg, as it no longer had all four. That was a proclamation that only a semblance of dharma remained. Shiva recognized the gravity of the situation and said he would send king Sangama, and dharma would stand firmly again. The inscription was a declaration that Vijayanagara was founded to re-instate dharma .
    • Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Episodes from Indian history., quoting (Ritti 2017: li) 310
  • The city of Bidjanagar is such that the pupil of the eye has never seen a place like it, and the ear of intelligence has never been informed that there existed anything to equal it in the world.
    • Abdur Razzak, quoted in Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Episodes from Indian history. 311
  • “And yet these foure Kings were not able to overcome this Citie and the King of Bezeneger, but by treason. This King of Bezeneger was a Gentile, and had, amongst all other of his Captaines, two which were notable, and they were Moores: and these two Captaines had either of them in charge threescore and ten or fourscore thousand men. These two Captaines being of one Religion with the foure Kings which were Moores, wrought means with them to betray their owne King into their hands. The King of Benzeneger esteemed not the force of the foure Kings his enemies, but went out of his Cities to wage battell with them in the fields; and when the Armies were joyned, the battell lasted but a while, not the space of four houres, because the two traiterous Captaines, in the chiefest of the fight, with their campanies turned their faces against their King, and made such disorder in his Armie, that as astonied they set themselves to flight...and the foure Kings of the Moores entered the Citie Bezeneger with great triumph, and there they remained sixe moneths, searching under houses and in all places for money and other things that were hidden, and then they departed to their owne Kingdomes, because they were not able to maintayne such a Kingdome as that was, so farre distant from their owne countrie”.
    • Sack of the city described by Caesare Federici, in (Filliozat 2001: 318-326). quoted from Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Episodes from Indian history.334 ff
  • “... in the course of the war, plundered and destroyed the city of Bisnaga, which was the royal city, and capital of the whole of the kingdom, so populous, rich and well-fitted that there were within its enclosure about a thousand temples, they say. The ruins that remain still show evidently that it was one of the wonders of the East”.
    • Account by a Jesuit in 1583 CE recording the devastation of Vijayanagara, in (Filliozat 2001: 329-330). quoted from Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Episodes from Indian history. 334 ff
  • The sultan (of Bedar) moved out with his army on the fifteenth day after the Ulu Bairam to join Melich-Tuchar at Kulburga. But their campaign was not successful, for they only took one Indian town, and that at the loss of many people and treasures.
    The Hindoo sultan Kadam is a very powerful prince. He possesses a numerous army, and resides on a mountain at Bichenegher (Bijanagar). This vast city is surrounded by three forts, and intersected by a river, bordering on one side on a dreadful jungel, on the other on a dale; a wonderful place, and to any purpose convenient. On one side it is quite inaccessible; a road goes right through the town, and as the mountain rises high with a ravine below, the town is impregnable.
    The enemy besieged it for a month and lost many people, owing to the want of water and food. Plenty of water was in sight, but could not be got at.
    This Indian stronghold was ultimately taken by Melikh Khan Khoda, who stormed it, having fought day and night to reduce it. The army that made the siege with heavy guns, had neither eaten nor drunk for twenty days. He lost five thousand of his best soldiers. On the capture of the town twenty thousand inhabitants, men and women, had their heads cut off; twenty thousand, young and old, were made prisoners, and sold afterwards at ten tenkas and also at five tenkas a head; the children at two tenkas each. The treasury, however, having been found empty, the town was abandoned.
    • Bedar-Vijayanagar conflict, Athanasius Nikitin in Major, R. H., India In The Fifteenth Century Being A Collection of Narratives of Voyages To India, Asian Educational Services, 1992, first published 1858. quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume II Chapter 12
  • ….the King allows such freedom that every man may come and go and live according to his own creed, without suffering any annoyance and without enquiry whether he is a Christian, ‘Jew’ Moor or Heathen. Great equity and justice is observed to all, not only by the rulers, but by the people one to another.
    • , Duarte Barbosa quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 12
  • After Salvatinia had arrived and had been well received by the King, and after the lapse of some days, the King told him that he desired to fulfil all the wishes expressed in the testament of King Narsyanga, one of which was to capture Rachol [Raichur], which was a very strong city and amongst the principal ones of the Ydallcao [Adil Shah of Bijapur], who had taken it from the kings of his ancestors…
    This city of Rachol lies between two great rivers, and in the midst of a great plain where there are no trees except very small ones, and there are great boulders there; from each river to the city is three leagues. One of these rivers is the northern boundary, and beyond it the country belongs to the Ydallcao, and the other is the boundary to the south which is the boundary of Narsymga. This plain lies in the middle of these two rivers, and there are large lakes therein and wells and some little streams where the city is situated, and a hill which looks like a woman’s breast and is of natural formation. The city has three lines of strong walls of heavy masonry made without lime; the walls are packed with earth inside, and it has on the highest point a fortress like a tower, very high and strong; at the top where the fortress stands is a spring of water which runs all the year round. It is held to be a holy and mysterious thing that a spring which is in a lofty situation in some way never be without water. Besides this spring there are several tanks of water and wells, so that the citizens had no fear of being ever taken for lack of water; and there were in the city supplies for five years. There were eight thousand men as garrison and four hundred horse and twenty elephants, and thirty catapults (trabucos) which hurled heavy stones and did great damage. The towers which are on the walls are so close together that one can hear words spoken from one to the other. Between these and all around they posted their artillery, which consisted of two hundred heavy pieces, not to mention small ones.
    • (a) Capture of Raichur from Bijapur, Fernao Nuniz in Filliozat, Vasundhara ed., Vijayanagar, National Book Trust, 2001. 159ff quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 12
  • In the yeer of our Lord 1567 [in the original it is 1566], I went from Goa to Bezeneger, the chiefe Citie of the Kingdom of Narsinga eight dayes journey from Goa, within the Land, in the companie of two other Merchants which carried with them three hundred Arabian Horses to that King… Bezeneger Idalcan, Xamalucco &c. A most unkind and wicked treason against their Prince; this they have for giving credite to strangers, rather than to their owne native people.
    The citie of Bezeneger was sacked in the yeere 1565 by foure Kings of the Moores, which were of great power and might: the names of these foure Kings were these following: the first was called Dialcan [Ali Adil Shah of Bijapur], the second Zamaluc [Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda], the third Cotamaluc [Husain Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar] and the fourth Viridy.
    And yet these foure Kings were not able to overcome this Citie and the King of Bezeneger, but by treason. This King of Bezeneger was a Gentile, and had, amongst all other of his Captaines, two which were notable, and they were Moores: and these two Captaines had either of them in charge threescore and ten or fourscore thousand men. These two Captaines being of one Religion with the foure Kings which were Moores, wrought means with them to betray their owne King into their hands. The King of Benzeneger esteemed not the force of the foure Kings his enemies, but went out of his Cities to wage battell with them in the fields; and when the Armies were joyned, the battell lasted but a while, not the space of four houres, because the two traiterous Captaines, in the chiefest of the fight, with their campanies turned their faces against their King, and made such disorder in his Armie, that as astonied they set themselves to flight. Thirty yeeres was this Kingdome governed by three brethren which were Tyrants, the which keeping the rightful King in prison, it was their use every yeere once to shew him to the people, and they at their pleasures ruled as they listed. These brethren were three Captaines belonging to the father of the king they kept in prison, which when he died, left his sonne very young, and then they took the government to themselves. The chiefest of these three was called Ramaragio, and sate in the Royall Throne, and was called the King: the second was called Temiragio and he took the government on him: the third was called Bengatre [the three brothers were: Ramaraya, Timmaraya and Venkatadri], and he was Captaine generall of the Armie. These three brethern were in this battell, in which the chiefest and the last were never heard of quicke nor dead. Only Temiragio fled in the battell, having lost one of his eyes. When the newes came to the Citie of the overthrowe in the battell, the wives and children of these three Tyrants with their lawful King (kept prisoner) fled away, spoyled as they were, and the foure Kings of the Moores entered the Citie Bezeneger with great triumph, and there they remained sixe moneths, searching under houses and in all places for money and other things that were hidden, and then they departed to their owne Kingdomes, because they were not able to maintayne such a Kingdome as that was, so farre distant from their owne countrie.
    When the kings were departed from Bezeneger, this Temiragio returned to the Citie, and then beganne for to repopulate it, and sent word to Goa to the Merchants, if they had any Horses, to bring them to him, and he would pay well for them, and for this cause the aforesaid two Merchants that I went in companie withall, carried those Horses that they had to Bezeneger. Also this Tyrant made an order or law, that if any Merchant had any of the Horses that were taken in the aforesaid battell or warres, although they were of his owne marke, that he would give as much for them as they would and beside he gave generally safe conduct to all that should bring them. When by this meanes hee saw that there were great store of Horses brought thither unto him, he gave the Merchants faire words, untill such time as he saw they could bring no more. Then hee licenced the Merchants to depart, without giving them any thing for their Horses, which when the poore men saw, they were desparate, and as it were mad with sorrow and griefe…
    In the yeere of our Lord God 1567 [in the year 1567, he is mentioning what happened after the battle of Talikota and the sack of the city of Vijayanagar] for the ill successe that the people of Bezeneger had, in that their Citie was sacked by the foure Kings, the King with his Court went to dwell in a Castle eight dayes journey up in the land from Bezeneger, called Penegonde. Also sixe dayes journey from Bezeneger, is the place where they get Diamants: I was there but it was told me that it is a great place, compassed with a wall, and that they sell the earth within the wall, for so much a squadron, and the limits are set how deepe or how low they shall digge. Those Diamants that are of a ceraine size and bigger then that size are all for the King, it is many yeeres agone, since they got any there, for the troubles that they have beene in that Kingdome.
    • (b) Battle of Talikota, 1565, Cesare Federici , in Filliozat, Vasundhara ed., Vijayanagar, National Book Trust, 2001. 318-326 quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 12
  • This town (San Thome of Mylapore) is in the kingdom of Bisnaga, called otherwise Narsing, which some years back was one of the largest, most powerful and richest kingdoms of the whole East; because its sovereign ruled over numberless people and could raise an army either of one million or one million and a half soldiers, so much so that all the kings and princes who were his neighbours were also subjected to him; he enjoyed a very large revenue and there was in his army a great deal of elephantry and cavalry since he was the owner of more than three thousand elephants and thirty or forty thousand of the best horses ever seen in this country, because they come from both Arabia and Persia. But eighteen years ago his power was decaying on account of different circumstances: because kingly offspring being wanted, a succession war burst out and many principal chiefs arose in arms against that who ruled at this time and, in the course of the war, plundered and destroyed the city of Bisnaga, which was the royal city, and capital of the whole of the kingdom, so populous, rich and well-fitted that there were within its enclosure about a thousand temples, they say. The ruins that remain still show evidently that it was one of the wonders of the East. But in spite of that the Sovereign of this kingdom was not so shaken that he lost all his power and wealth, because he owns a large state and good many elephants and cavalry and a numerous army.
    • An anonymous account by a Jesuit on the state of the kingdom in 1583 Filliozat, Vasundhara ed., Vijayanagar, National Book Trust, 2001. 329ff, quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 12
  • Add to this the destruction of the city of Bisnagar, residence of the king of all this part of India, who is called king of Narsinga in the geographical maps; a name which cannot be traced here; (a city) larger than Cairo, according to the Moors who had seen both of them. It had so much traffic you couldn’t even imagine; being astonishingly large, inhabited by rich people, not like we, whose riches can be enclosed in a small case, but as people like Crassus and others used to be in those times: it absorbed and coped with the large quantities of merchandise which came our places via Alexandria and Syria, and the many cloths and drapes which were produced in so great quantities were sold here. And the traffic was so big that the road from this country to that one was so crowded as the streets in a fair; and the profit of this business was so sure, that it sufficed to carry the goods there: no matter what the merchants brought, within the fifteen days the trip on land took they earned 25 or 30 per cent on both sides, since they carried other goods from there on the return journey; and which goods! Diamonds, rubies and pearls, on which they made a large profit.
    • (d) Destroyed city larger than Cairo, letter sent to Florence on January 22 1586, by Filippo Sassetti Prodosh Aich, Lies With Long Legs, Discoveries, Scholars, Science,Enlightenment, Documentry Narration, Samskriti, 2004, p., 72 quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 12
  • The same attitude is far more strikingly illustrated in another sphere. The end of Hindu ruling dynasties, followed by almost wholesale destruction of temples and monasteries by the Muslim invaders and rulers, very nearly extinguished the Hindu culture by destroying the sources which fed and nourished it. Its further growth was arrested and an almost impenetrable gloom settled over it. It seemed as if the whole course of its development came to a sudden halt. It is not a mere accident that the lamp of the past glory and culture of Brahmanical Hinduism was kept burning only in the Hindu principalities—particularly the tiny State of Mithila in the north and the kingdom of Vijayanagara in the south. Modern Hindu India is indebted to these Hindu kingdoms for having preserved the continuity of Brahmanical culture and traditions, from the Vedic age downwards, which was in imminent danger of being altogether snapped. For it is impossible to deny that India was saved from this irretrievable disaster by the patronage of the rulers of Vijayanagara and Mithila. While the Brahmanical culture was submerged under the sea of Islam from one end of India to the other, it found its last refuge in the two islands at the northern and southern extremities. This plain truth is not fully realized by many historians. (Preface)
    • RC Majumdar, Volume 6: The Delhi Sultanate [1300-1526]
  • “Mujahid Shah, on this occasion, repaired mosques which had been built by the officers of Alla-ood-Deen Khiljy. He broke down many temples of the idolaters, and laid waste the country; after which he hastened to Beejanuggur… The King drove them before him, and gained the bank of a piece of water, which alone divided him from the citadel, where in the Ray resided. Near this spot was an eminence, on which stood a temple, covered with plates of gold and silver, set with jewels: it was much venerated by the Hindoos, and called, in the language of the country, Puttuk. The King, considering its destruction a religious obligation ascended the hill, and having razed the edifice, became possessed of the precious metals and jewels therein.”
  • “Ahmud Shah, without waiting to besiege the Hindoo capital, overran the open country; and wherever he went put to death men, women, and children, without mercy, contrary to the compact made between his uncle and predecessor, Mahomed Shah, and the Rays of Beejanuggur. Whenever the number of slain amounted to twenty thousand, he halted three days, and made a festival celebration of the bloody event. He broke down, also, the idolatrous temples, and destroyed the colleges of the bramins. During these operations, a body of five thousand Hindoos, urged by desperation at the destruction of their religious buildings, and at the insults offered to their deities, united in taking an oath to sacrifice their lives in an attempt to kill the King, as the author of all their sufferings…”

See also

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