Vijiyanagara - Introduction

ವಿಜಯಗರ (Vijiyanagara, in Kannada)

Vijiayanagara is the name of the empire controlling most of Southern India from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.  The empire typically has a firm ending in 1565, when the capital city of Vijayanagara is sacked and destroyed.  In January 2010, I had the opportunity to visit Hampi - the present day name for the location of the Vijayanagara ruins, and see what remains.  I'm currently working on creating this site to organize the information I found there.

First, the location - here are some of the more prominent historical sites, and if you expand, you can get a satellite picture:

But my favorite map is the one posted at the Vitthala Temple, which had great numbered annotations of the historical sites in the area.  I highly recommend going to people view and "walking" around the site, as it's got walkways of some of the major pedestrian areas.

As important as "where" is "when".  Vijayanagar research has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years, and due to the speed of academic research, that means that in the last 5 years, the books for the public have been published that actually explain some of these awesome findings.  So it's important to point out that my trip was in January of 2010, after 10 years of 16th century South Indian research, and I was in Hampi for 3 days.

Some key dates in the history of the city (Vijayanagar) and the empire (Vijayanagar):

• 1336 AD - city was founded by five sons of Sangama, of whom Harihara and Bukka became the city’s first kings.  The city and the empire parellel each other with the kings of the empire ruling from this city.  I think of it a bit like Washington, D.C. - a huge reason for it's being there is so that the rulers have a place to rule from.
• 1485 AD - the ruler changes from the Sangama dynasty to the Saluva family.
• ~1503 AD - the Tuluva dynasty takes over
• 1565 AD - the city and empire collapse under the reign of Rama Raya - there is a fatal battle were the army is routed by the combined forces of the Muslim states of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, and Golconda and the city falls.  After that point, most scholars will call the remaining Hindu leadership of a much-reduced area the Nayak empire.  

As such, this city is a nice time capsule of a few centuries of specific leadership.  It's a time where the city is fairly cosmolitan, we know of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Jews and Christians all having some amount of population here, and it was a site of visitation by Europeans (mostly Portuguese).  So while it's Hindu lead, there's enough tolerance for some of the other religions to have symbols and other artifacts around for archeaologists to dig up.

After 1565, the population reduced significantly, and could no longer really be considered a city.  Today, the city of Hampi is right next to it, but it exists separate enough from the ruins for the site to be fairly separate.  And when I was there, I saw very little vandalism, more often, it was that age had just taken a toll.