The early history of Vijayanagar is obscure, shrouded in diverse legends. The kingdom apparently evolved out of Kampili, a chiefdom in the rocky highlands on the northern bank of Tungabhadra. Two related developments facilitated its ascendancy—the subjugation of the long established Hindu kingdoms of South India by Muhammad Tughluq in the first half of his reign, followed soon after, in the second half of his reign, by the collapse of his power in South India. It was out of the political debris left by these developments that Vijayanagar rose to prominence.
According to a plausible and widely held tradition, Vijayanagar was founded by two adventurous brothers, Harihara and Bukka, sons of Sangama, the chieftain of Kampili. But the founding of a Hindu kingdom was not the destiny that their early political career had portended, for it was as minions of the Delhi Sultanate, and not as champions of Hindu political revival, that they first appeared in history. The story is that the brothers were captured by Muhammad Tughluq during his peninsular campaign, and were taken to Delhi, where they were converted to Islam, and then sent back to Kampili to administer it as imperial officers. But about a decade later, when the Delhi Sultanate’s power in the peninsula crumbled, the brothers lost their power base. However, they then rehabilitated themselves by opportunistically reverting to Hinduism and founding a Hindu principality on the southern bank of Tungabhadra. In this venture they were crucially helped by the blessing and support of Vidyaranya, a revered Hindu sage of the region. Vidyaranya, it is said, advised Harihara, the older brother, to adopt Virupaksha, a Shaivite deity, as his patron god, and rule the kingdom as a surrogate of the god, so as to overcome the persisting public misgivings about the legitimacy of he taking on the role of a Hindu raja, because of his former conversion to Islam.
Harihara’s Shaivite affiliation of was a factor in he choosing a site on the southern bank of Tungabhadra for his capital, for it was close to the temple of Virupaksha. Fortuitously—though Harihara would not have known anything about it—the region where the capital was founded had ancient historical associations going back to the period of the third century BCE Mauryan emperor Asoka, whose rock inscriptions have been found along Tungabhadra nearly fifty kilometres from the site chosen by the raja for his capital. The capital was named Vijayanagar, City of Victory, and the kingdom itself came to be known by that name. The kingdom and the city would indeed live up to the portent of that name.
Strategically the site was an excellent choice for the capital of the new kingdom, for the river border provided it a barrier against any military menace that might emanate from the north, the main direction from which it could expect invasions. Further, the site was bordered by three rocky hills, the slopes of which were covered with granite boulders, and that provided another impenetrable defence to Vijayanagar. Over a period of about a decade, Harihara linked together the three hills by building between them high and broad cyclopean walls bordered with deep ditches, so the city became virtually impregnable on all sides. In fact, only once in its long history was Vijayanagar city ever stormed.
Harihara was crowned king in Vijayanagar in April 1336. Under him and his successors the kingdom grew rapidly in territory and power, and at its height covered virtually the entire southern half of peninsular India, from river Krishna down to the tip of India, covering three distinct linguistic regions—of Telugu, Kannada and Tamil—so the kingdom is often described as an empire. The dynasty that Harihara founded was named Sangama dynasty, in memory of the raja’s father, and it ruled Vijayanagar for a century and a half, till around 1486. This dynasty was succeeded by three other dynasties—Saluva, Tuluva and Aravidu—and the kingdom endured in all for over three centuries, till the mid-seventeenth century. But it became considerably attenuated after its calamitous defeat at the hands of the Deccan Sultanates in the battle of Talikota in 1565. In its final phase even this small kingdom fragmented into a number of principalities, all of which were obliterated during the expansion of the Mughals and the Marathas into South India in the late seventeenth century.
THE KINGS OF Vijayanagar were Telugus, but the expansion of their kingdom was mainly into the Kannada and Tamil regions to its south, for it was beyond their power to expand northward to any significant extent, as the territory there was mostly under the rule of powerful Muslim kingdoms, initially under the Delhi Sultanate, and subsequently under the Bahmani Sultanate and its successor kingdoms. Its southward expansion too at first seemed impossible, for right next to it on the south was the large and long-established Kannada kingdom of Hoysalas, which was just then reemerging as an independent kingdom after having been subject to the Delhi Sultanate for a couple of decades. Hoysalas paid no attention to the founding of Vijayanagar, as their king Ballala III was then preoccupied with a military campaign in the Tamil country, to expand his kingdom southward. Moreover, Vijayanagar was at this time a far too insignificant a principality for Ballala to bother about. Even when Harihara began to flex his military muscle and make incursions into the northern districts of the Hoysala kingdom, Ballala ignored him as a peripheral nuisance, and not a threat to his kingdom.
But presently the scene changed altogether. Ballala’s southern campaign ended in disaster, as he was defeated and killed by the sultan of Madurai. And this soon led to the collapse of the Hoysala kingdom. But what was misfortune for Hoysalas was good fortune for Harihara. He now sent his army to invade the Hoysala lands and, overcoming the often unexpectedly stiff resistance of the feudal chieftains there, eventually, in 1346, in a campaign lasting some three years, annexed the whole kingdom.
Vijayanagar thus became the leading Hindu kingdom of the peninsula, indeed, of the whole of India. This achievement was celebrated by Harihara and his brothers by holding a grand victory festival, vijayotsava, in 1346. But presently, in the very year after Harihara’s victory celebration, there arose, immediately to the north of Vijayanagar, a Muslim kingdom, the Bahmani Sultanate, with which, and with its successor sultanates, Vijayanagar would be embroiled in a two centuries long see-saw military conflict, which would finally end in the virtual destruction of the Vijayanagar kingdom.
Harihara died around 1356, after a reign of twenty years. He had no children, and so was succeeded by his brother Bukka I. The Vijayanagar kingdom had been built by the joint effort of Harihara and his four brothers, and its provinces were held by the raja’s brothers as virtually independent rulers, as their share of the kingdom, and which their children in turn inherited and divided among themselves as their patrimony. Bukka viewed this as a pernicious arrangement which would eventually lead to the fragmentation and collapse of the kingdom. He therefore appointed his own sons as provincial governors whenever the opportunity arose, so that the kingdom could be more effectively brought under royal control.
There was considerable expansion of the territory of Vijayanagar under Bukka. He extended it southward by invading and annexing the Sultanate of Madurai, so the territory of Vijayanagar extended as far south as Rameswaram; he also extended the kingdom eastward by annexing portions of the Reddy kingdom of Kondavidu. He was not however successful in his clash with Muhammad Shah, the Bahmani sultan. According to Ferishta—whose account might be biased in favour of the sultan—Bukka was routed by the sultan and had to agree to peace on the sultan’s terms. However that be, the vast expansion of the territory of Vijayanagar under Bukka, and the diversity of the ethnic groups in it, turned the kingdom almost into an empire.
An equally important aspect of Bukka’s reign was that he was a liberal and progressive monarch. Though he was a staunch Hindu, who proudly bore the title Vedamarga-Pratishthapaka (Establisher of the Path of the Vedas), and sought to revitalise Hinduism by commissioning fresh commentaries to be written on ancient Hindu texts, it was not blind faith but open, earnest enquiry that marked his religious outlook. Most commendably, he considered it his duty as king to extend equal protection and patronage to the people of all religions and sects in his kingdom, such as Jains and Buddhists, and even to the followers of non-Indian religions like J
ews, Christians and Muslims. Bukka also had broad cultural interests and was a keen patron of poets, such as Nachanna Soma, the renowned Telugu poet of the age.
BUKKA DIED IN 1377, and was succeeded by his son Harihara II, who assumed the grand title, Rajadhiraja, King of Kings, which was not entirely unjustified, considering the vastness of the kingdom he ruled over. But the title was more than a mere status posture; it was also an expression of the raja’s aggressive military policy. He launched a number of military campaigns against his neighbouring kingdoms, in most of which he was victorious; his army is said to have invaded even Sri Lanka and exacted tribute from its king. And he, like nearly every king of Vijayanagar, battled repeatedly with the Bahmani Sultans. Under him the territory of Vijayanagar expanded eastward into Kondavidu and westward into Konkan, and this enabled him to dominate the immensely profitable overseas trade through the eastern and western peninsular ports, the revenue from which significantly added to the resources of his kingdom.
Harihara II reigned for 28 years, and died in 1404. His death was followed by a two-year-long succession struggle between his three sons, in which his youngest son, Devaraya I, emerged victorious. The sixteen years of Devaraya’s reign were marked by continuous wars—with the Bahmani Sultanate, with the Velamas of Rachakonda and the Reddys of Kondavidu. He is also known to have invaded Kerala and subjugated several chieftains there. Because of these victories over tough adversaries, or because he was addicted to wildlife hunting, Devaraya bore the sobriquet Gajabetekara: Hunter of Elephants.
But there was much more to Devaraya’s reign than his military campaigns. He was, like his grandfather Bukka, an ardent patron of scholars, writers and artists, whom he often honoured by literally showering them with gold coins and gems. He himself was reputed to have been a distinguished scholar, and under him Vijayanagar became the main centre of Hindu culture in peninsular India. Devaraya also undertook several major public works, such as the construction of a massive dam across Tungabhadra, and a 24-kilometre-long aqueduct from the river to his capital, to provide water for the city. He also built several waterworks to irrigate farmlands.
There is much confusion about the immediate successors of Devaraya, but it seems likely that he was succeeded by his son Ramachandra, whose reign lasted only for about six months. He was succeeded by his brother Vijaya. But Vijaya had no interest at all in governance, and he left it to his son Devaraya to run the government, and this prince eventually succeeded him to the throne. Devaraya II ‘was of an olive colour, of a spare body, and rather tall,’ states Abdur Razzak, the Persian envoy in peninsular India, who saw him in 1443. ‘He was exceedingly young, for there was only a slight down upon his cheeks, and none upon his chin. His whole appearance was very prepossessing.’ Devaraya II, like several of his predecessors, was a keen patron of literature, and his court was adorned by the celebrated Telugu poet Srinatha.
The main occupation of Devaraya II, as that of most other Vijayanagar kings, was to wage wars against his neighbours, particularly against the Bahmani Sultanate. But he had no success against the Sultanate—in fact, according to Ferishta, the raja, defeated by Sultan Ahmad Shah, had to agree not to molest the sultan’s territories thereafter, and to pay him an annual tribute.
The raja then, according to Ferishta, ‘called a general council of his nobles and principal Brahmins’ to inquire why Vijayanagar invariably lost its wars with Bahmani, and was reduced to paying tribute to it, even though its territories, population and revenue far exceeded those of the Sultanate, ‘and in like manner its army was far more numerous.’ After due deliberation, the council concluded that the victory of Bahmani was due to the superiority of its cavalry and archers. Devaraya then gave orders to recruit a large number of Muslims into his army, and he ‘allotted to them jagirs, erected a mosque for their use in the city of Vijayanagar, and commanded that no one should molest them in the exercise of their religion. He also ordered a copy of the Koran to be placed before his throne, on an ornate desk, so that Muslims might perform the ceremony of obeisance before him, without violating their religious regulations. He also made all Hindu soldiers learn the discipline of the bow … [from Muslim soldiers, so that he at length came to have in his army] 2000 Muslims and 60,000 Hindus well skilled in archery, besides 80,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry, armed in the usual manner with pikes and lances.’ These changes considerably enhanced the military might of Vijayanagar and enabled it to become, during the reigns of Krishnadeva and Ramaraya, the dominant power of peninsular India.
Devaraya died in May 1446. ‘In the evil year Kshaya, in the wretched second [month] Vaisakha, on a miserable Tuesday, in … [the dark fortnight], on the fourteenth day, the unequalled store of valour, Devaraya, alas, met with death,’ states an inscription at Sravana Belgola.
THE DEATH OF Devaraya was followed, as on the death of several other Vijayanagar kings, by a period of chaos and succession struggles. His four successors were all effete and utterly incompetent to meet the challenges faced by the kingdom. They would be the last rulers of the Sangama dynasty, and during their rule the kingdom suffered a substantial loss of territory—it lost large tracts of its eastern districts to the king of Orissa, and on the west coast it lost Goa and its adjoining areas to the Bahmani sultan. The loss of Goa was a major blow to Vijayanagar, for it was heavily dependent on Goa for the import of horses from the Middle East, which its army critically needed.
The last two kings of the Sangama dynasty were depraved, wicked scamps. According to Fernao Nuniz, a Portuguese trader who spent some three years in Vijayanagar in the mid-sixteenth century, Virupaksha, the penultimate king of the dynasty, ‘cared for nothing but women and to fuddle himself with drink.’ And his life ended bizarrely, murdered by one of his sons. This prince then, disdaining to ascend the throne himself, raised one of his brothers, Praudha Devaraya, to the throne. But this raja proved to be even more wicked and dissolute than his father, and he immediately freed himself from the debt of gratitude he owed to his parricide brother by assassinating him, and then plunged into a life of wanton debauchery. But before he could do much harm, he was deposed by Saluva Narasimha, one of the leading provincial chieftains of the kingdom, who then ascended the throne. Devaraya offered no resistance to the usurper, but cravenly fled from the capital on the approach of Narasimha. Thus ended, around 1486, the rule of the Sangama dynasty.
Narasimha, who had his fief at Chandragiri in southern Andhra Pradesh, had functioned as a virtually independent ruler for quite some years, and had over the years considerably expanded the territory under his control. Because of the misrule of the last couple of kings of the Sangama dynasty, several provincial chiefs of Vijayanagar, particularly in the southern and eastern provinces of the kingdom, transferred their allegiance to Narasimha. So his position on his accession to the throne was quite strong, though he, like most other rulers of the kingdom, inevitably had to face several internal challenges.
Narasimha ruled for about five years, during which he was engaged in a number of battles, against his adversaries in the kingdom, and to protect the Vijayanagar territory from rival kingdoms. He was mostly successful in these campaigns. But the Saluva dynasty he founded barely survived him. Though Narasimha had two sons, they were too young to rule at the time of his death, so he on his deathbed he entrusted them—and the kingdom—to the care of his trusted minister, Narasa Nayaka, requesting him to rule as the regent till the boys came of age.
On Narasimha’s death, his eldest son, Timma, was crowned king, but the boy was soon killed in a palace intrigue, so Narasa Nayaka placed the raja’s second son, Immadi Narasimha, on the throne, but kept him under his tutelage and himself ruled as the de facto king. But Narasa Nayaka himself died in a few years, upon which his son, Vira Narasimha, took over as the regent. But Vira Narasimha had none of his father’s scruples. Presently he got rid of his ward by assassination, then himself ascended the throne, and founded the Tuluva dynasty, the third dynasty of the kingdom.
This usurpation
led to widespread unrest in the kingdom, and several rebellions erupted in its provinces. At this time there was also an invasion of the kingdom by Adil Shah of Bijapur. In the midst of all these troubles Vira Narasimha himself died, in 1509. The major concern of the raja at the time of his death was to secure the throne for his children, so he (according to Nuniz) instructed Saluva Timma, his trusted Brahmin minister, to blind his brothers and raise one of his sons to the throne. But Timma sensibly disregarded the royal mandate and offered the throne to Krishnadeva, the raja’s youngest brother—half-brother, actually—who then ascended the throne, in August 1509.
KRISHNADEVA WAS IN his early twenties at the time of his accession, and had hardly any administrative or military experience. But he turned out to be the most celebrated ruler of Vijayanagar, who was exceptionally successful in administration as well as in military campaigns. In the initial years of his reign, he had the great advantage of having the sagacious counsel of Saluva Timma, whom the raja affectionately called appaji, revered father.
The kingdom that Krishnadeva inherited was, at the time of his accession, beset with several rebellions and invasions, but the raja prevailed over all his adversaries, and in time raised Vijayanagar to the stature of the most powerful kingdom in the peninsula. The first invasion he faced, soon after his accession, was by Mahmud Shah, the Bahmani sultan, who, though he was little more than a figurehead at this time, was prodded by his nobles to lead an army against Vijayanagar. But the raja was equal to the challenge; he not only routed the enemy army massed at his frontier, but pursued it into the Bahmani territory, trounced it again in a second battle, and then went on to capture Gulbarga, the old capital of the Sultanate, as well as Bidar, its new capital. The raja then restored Mahmud Shah to the throne—perhaps because he was innocuous, or perhaps because the sultan was expected to add another unsettling element in the turbulent politics of the disintegrating Sultanate. The raja then returned to Vijayanagar.
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 33
