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Krishnadevaraya and the Vijayanagar Empire

Dr. M. V. Kamath

My dear Gauri,

In my last letter I suggested that some day or the other you must go to Chittor to see for yourself the great fort and the kund where Rajput princesses immolated themselves. It is not a pretty sight. Indeed, it is a bit frightening, but there is no other way of understanding the culture of a people except the manner in which they lived and died.

If there is another place I would like you to visit, it is the ruins of Hampi, the old capital of the great Vijayanagar Empire. This, too, is heart-rending and makes you swear that never again will you let aliens destroy our culture or attempt to ruin our civilization.

The ruins of Hampi are there for all to see. They are the only ruins of a medieval city to be found anywhere in the world.

But first I must give you some background to the times. Islam had come to the south as well and the Bahmani kingdom had been established in the Deccan. The establishment of this kingdom was at first the result of the revolt of the nobles of the Deccan against Sulthan Mohammad bin Tughlak. This, of course, was standard practices in those days. A powerful ruler establish kingdom but once he died or became weak the very people he appointed as his governors would establish kingdoms of their own. That was inevitable. And so it happened in the Deccan.

But these were medieval times and religion played a notable part in administration and, inevitably, again, conflicts arose between the rulers and the ruled. Where the Hindus were well organized, they founded their own kingdoms. Thus Vijayanagar was largely the outcome of South India’s determination to save its cultural and political integrity against the threat of Muslim domination.

You must remember that during these early years the Muslims were still aliens and did not belong to the soil. They were largely from Persian or Arab or Turkish stock and wanted to have nothing to do with the local people. They lived in style, whereas the poor often lived in grinding poverty. So, on the one hand, you have magnificent mausoleums and palaces, but nowhere do you see remains of ordinary medieval homes. They just could not survive the ravages of time.

The presence of rival Hindu kingdoms was a threat to the Islamic rulers and there were constant battles. Most of the Islamic rulers never rose above treating Hindus as heathens and desecrating their temples. Friction between Muslims and Hindus, in the circumstances, was inevitable. The Muslim rulers and the Ulemas had exaggerated and distorted concepts of what Islam was. According to the British historian Sir Wolseley Haig, during the time of Allauddin Khilji, “Hindus throughout the kingdom were reduced to one dead level of poverty and misery”. Another historian had written that the greatest service one could perform for Islam was too see that Hindu women and children came to beg in front of Muslim houses. Zaiuddin Barani has himself written that, during the reign of Ghiasuddin Tughlak, the king had directed that “there should be left only so much to the Hindus that neither, on the one hand, should they become arrogant on account of their wealth nor, on the other, should they desert their lands and business in despair”. It was under such pathetic circumstances that two Hindu brothers, Hukka and Bukka, founded on the southern banks of the river Tungabhadra the first small Hindu principality of Vijayanagar.

Their dynasty was not to last long. It was overthrown by the Saluvas who, in turn, were overthrown by a Tuluva ruler Vira Narasimha. But Vijayanagar became great not under him but under his brother Krishnadevaraya (reign: 1509-1529) who succeeded him. Krishnadevaraya is rightly considered one of the greatest monarchs of Indian history.

Krishnadevaraya was a great statesman, a brave warrior, an able administrator and an accomplished scholar – a rare combination. He was also a great builder, as his capital, Hampi, even in its present ruins, would show. The Portuguese traveler Dominique Paes said this about Krishnadevaraya:

“He is the most learned and perfect king that could possibly be cheerful of disposition and very merry; he is one of those that seeks to honour foreigners and received them kindly, asking all about the affairs whatever their conditions may be. He is a great ruler and a man of justice, but for certain fits of rage…. He is by rank a greater lord than any… so gallant and perfect is he in all things…”

For all that, Krishnadevaraya, like all medieval kings, was an autocrat with unfettered authority over all things. Child marriage was common; sutee (sati) was practised and sacrifices were almost routine. If there is one period, Gauri, that I would have hated to have born in, it was the medieval period in India! It was a terrible time!

And yet, Vijayanagar was a mighty empire. Abdul Razzak, another historian, has said the kingdom possessed 300 seaports, the most important among them being Calicut in Malabar. There was active commerce between Vijayanagar and Burma, China, Arabia, Persia, Abyssinia and even Portugal. In Hampi were available rubies from Pegu, silk from China and Alexandria and goods from several parts of India. Wrote Abdul Razzak: “The city of Vijayanagar is such that the eye has not seen nor ear heard of any place resembling it upon the earth. It is so built that it has seven fortified walls one within the other.” The chambers of the king’s treasury were filled with masses of molten gold. Krishnadevaraya’s army consisted of 700,000 infantry, 32,000 cavalry and 600 elephants! The use of artillery was also known by then.

There was freedom of worship. A foreign traveler, Barbosa, who visited the court of Krishnadevaraya, wrote: “The king allows such freedom that every man may come and go and live according to his creed without suffering any annoyance and without enquiries whether he is a Christian, Jew, Moor or Hindu.” This is in strong contrast to the reign of Allauddin Khilji who was congratulated by an Egyptian exponent of Muslim law who wrote to the Sulthan: “I have heard… that you have degraded the Hindus to such an extent that their wives and children beg their bread at the doors of the Muslims. You are, in doing so, rendering a great service to religion.”

In my next letter I shall write about the famous battle of Talikota and the downfall of the Vijayanagar Empire.

Your loving,

Ajja