Vijayanagara Empire

“ Luckily a severe storm prevented him from setting said, but he plundered and destroyed some rich temples on the western coast, and enriched himself with the spoil This was a mere wanton attack on property belonging to feudatories of the Vijayanagar empire, for there has never been any pretence that the peace-loving Brahmans attached to these temples had in any way offended or interfered with the Portuguese. ”

“ In 1526 Baber, the fifth in descent from Timur, and also the fifth Mahommedan conqueror, invaded India at the instigation of the governor of the Punjab, won the victory of Panipat over Ibrahim, the last of the Lodi dynasty, and founded the Mogul empire, which lasted, at least in name, until 1857.
In southern India at this time authentic history begins with the Hindu empire of Vijayanagar, which exercised an ill-defined Vijayanagar. sovereignty over the entire south from the 14th to the 16th century. ”

“ There has been half a century of peace and law and order under the sway of Britain. Time alone will prove if it is the order of progress or not.
There have been a few religious movements amongst the Indian people during the British rule, following the same line that was taken up by northern Indian sects during the sway of the empire of Delhi. They are the voices of the dead or the dying — the feeble tones of a terrorised people, pleading for permission to live. ”

“ So long as these qualities are inherent in the British character, let thousands of such Indian Empires be lost, thousands will be earned again. But if the flow of the stream of those qualifier be retarded, shall an Empire be governed by the mere emblazoning of British prestige and glory? ”

“ The Sabayo was then at war with Narasimha of Vijayanagar.
He describes Vijayanagar as a great city, "very large and strongly walled. It is situated on the side of a mountain, [187] and is seven miles in circumference. It has a triple circlet of walls." It was very wealthy and well supplied, situated on a beautiful site, and enjoying an excellent climate. The king "keeps up constantly 40,000 horsemen" and 400 elephants. The elephants each carry six men, and have long swords fastened to their trunks in battle — a description which agrees with that of Nikitin and Paes. ”

“ There was war then with Kulbarga in 1419, Deva Raya II. being king of Vijayanagar. The Sultan had been unsuccessful in his attack on the Warangal fortress, Pangul, and the troops of Vijayanagar marched against him with horse, foot, and elephants. Firuz Shah gave battle forthwith, though he judged his forces to be inferior. Firishtah does not mention where the fight took place.
"Meer Fuzzul Oollah, who commanded the troops of Islaam, charged the infidels with heroic vigour, and, routing their center, proceeded to attack their right wing. ”

“ At Vijayanagar there was the utmost confidence. Remembering how often the Moslems had vainly attempted to injure the great capital, and how for over two centuries they had never succeeded in penetrating to the south, the inhabitants pursued their daily avocations with no shadow of dread or sense of danger; the strings of pack-bullocks laden with all kinds of merchandise wended their dusty way to and from the several seaports as if no sword of Damocles was hanging over the doomed city ”

“ The expression of Firishtah last quoted is deserving of note, as it implies that, according to tradition in his time, the Raya of Vijayanagar had by the year 1366 A.D. become a great and important sovereign. ”

“ The country was now fully alive to the danger that lurked in such a monstrous extension of the Queen’s prerogative as would permit her to use the revenues of India, which the House of Commons could not control, for carrying on war outside the Indian Empire. The only real control which the people have over the Crown is their power to stop supplies for the army. The Persian War, however, proved that the Crown could draw supplies and troops from India, without any Parliamentary sanction whatever. ”

“ Within thirty years the Hindu Rayas of Vijayanagar were able to hold their own against the Bahmani sultans, who had now established their independence of Delhi in the Deccan proper. Warfare with the Mahommedans across the border in the Raichur doab was carried on almost unceasingly, and with varying result. Two, or possibly three, different dynasties are believed to have occupied the throne of Vijayanagar as time went on ”

“ Vijaya landed in Ceylon "on the day that the successor of former Buddhas reclined in the arbour of the two delightful Sal-trees to attain Nirvāṇa," approaching the island from southwards, and became the founder of the "Great Dynasty." Vijaya then sent a present of precious stones to the king of Pandya, and caused to be brought a princess whom he took to wife, and also seven hundred women attendants whom his followers married. ”

“ Mallikarjuna and Virupaksha I. — Rajasekhara and Virupaksha II. — The Dakhan splits up into five independent kingdoms — The Bijapur king captures Goa and Belgaum — Fighting at Rajahmundry, Kondapalle, and other parts of Telingana — Death of Mahmud Gawan — The Russian traveller Nikitin — Chaos at Vijayanagar — Narasimha seizes the throne.
I have already stated that the period following the reign of Deva Raya II. is one very difficult to fill up satisfactorily from any source. It was a period of confusion in Vijayanagar — a fact that is clearly brought out by Nuniz in his chronicle. ”

“ The Royal Family of Delhi resented the whole arrangement. “Remembering the old relations between the Company and the Empire, the immense benefits originally conferred on them, and the admitted position of the Company as servants of the State, it was,” writes Colonel Taylor, “only natural they should now be accused of perfidy. The efforts and intrigues of the spirited Queen and several of the princes were now redoubled, locally as well as in foreign quarters; and India, especially the North-West Provinces, became filled with the most alarming rumours.” ”

“ Here in India, everybody wants to become a leader, and there is nobody to obey. Everyone should learn to obey before he can command. There is no end to our jealousies; and the more important the Hindu, the more jealous he is. Until this absence of jealousy and obedience to leaders are learnt by the Hindu, there will be no power of organization. We shall have to remain the hopelessly confused mob that we are now, hoping and doing nothing. India has to learn from Europe the conquest of external nature, and Europe has to learn from India the conquest of internal nature. ”

“ Castanheda confirms other writers in this matter, stating that the infantry of Vijayanagar were countless, the country being of large extent and thickly populated, so that the king could call upon a million, or even two millions, of men at will. [242] This writer visited India just at the close of the reign of Krishna Deva Raya. He states that the king kept up at his own cost an establishment of 100,000 horses and 4000 elephants.
As to all this, I repeat that every one is at liberty to form his own opinion ”

“ The success of the early kings was phenomenal. Ibn Batuta, who was in India from 1333 to 1342, states that even in his day a Muhammadan chief on the western coast was subject to Harihara I., whom he calls "Haraib" or "Harib," from "Hariyappa" another form of the king's name; while a hundred years later Abdur Razzak, envoy from Persia, tells us that the king of Vijayanagar was then lord of all Southern India, from sea to sea and from the Dakhan to Cape Comorin — "from the frontier of Serendib (Ceylon) to the extremities of the country of Kalbergah ... ”

“ They had been constantly at war with the Samuri of Calicut and other feudatories of Vijayanagar; but with the Raya himself they were on terms of friendship, and in 1540 they ratified a treaty of peace with the sovereigns of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar as well as with the Samuri.
Throughout the whole of their dealings with the Portuguese I find not a single instance where the Hindu kings broke faith with the intruders, [287] but as much cannot, I fear, be said on the other side. The Europeans seemed to think that they had a divine right to the pillage, robbery, and massacre of the natives of India. ”

“ There is evidence of a lively trade carried on by sea with the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Christian era, but of the political history of the Kerala kingdom nothing is known beyond a list of rajas compiled from inscriptions, until in the 10th century the struggle began with the Cholas, by whom it was conquered and held till their overthrow by the Mahommedans in 1310. These in their turn were driven out by a Hindu confederation headed by the chiefs of Vijayanagar, and Kerala was absorbed in the Vijayanagar empire until its destruction by the Mahommedans in 1565. ”

“ Will the British Government and the Dominion Governments and the free peoples behind them approach all questions in which India is concerned in the same spirit which they have already learnt to bring to bear upon questions in which not India but other partners of the Empire are concerned? Will they be prepared to approach them in the same spirit in which India was welcomed in times of stress and storm to the War Councils and Peace Councils of the Empire? ”

“ Ballala Deva then built the city of Vijayanagar, [38] raised an army, and the war began. Warangal, then in the hands of the Muhammadans, was reduced, and its governor, Imad-ul-Mulkh, retreated to Daulatabad or Devagiri. The two chiefs then induced other Rajahs of the Malabar and Kanara countries to join them, and the joint forces seized the whole of the Dakhan and expelled the Muhammadans there, "so that within a few months Muhammad Taghlak had no possessions in that quarter except Daulatabad." ”

“ New frontiers of British Empire.
The annexation of the Punjab and Burma are the crowning events of the nineteenth century. Lord Wellesley had delivered India from Tippu, and established the paramount power of the East India Company over the Mogul viceroys and the Mahratta princes. Lord Hastings had converted Nipal into a staunch ally, and stamped out the predatory powers of Central India. Lord Dalhousie annexed the empire of Runjeet Singh, excepting Cashmere, and the empire of the Alompras, excepting Upper Burma, and thus laid down frontiers which remained unchanged for an entire generation. ”

“ It furthermore greatly affected the Hindus by raising in them a spirit of pride and arrogance, which added fuel to the fire, caused them to become positively intolerable to their neighbours, and accelerated their own downfall.
It equally affected the fortunes of the Portuguese on the coast. Goa rose and fell simultaneously with the rise and fall of the second Vijayanagar dynasty; and necessarily so, considering that its entire trade depended on Hindu support; for the king of Portugal was never well disposed towards his hereditary enemies, the "Moors." ”

“ All the Muhammadan dynasties in the Dakhan fell under the power of the Mogul emperors of Delhi towards the close of the seventeenth century, and the whole of the south of India soon became practically theirs. But meanwhile another great power had arisen, and at one time threatened to conquer all India. This was the sovereignty of the Mahrattas. Sivaji conquered all the Konkan country by 1673, and four years later he had overthrown the last shreds of Vijayanagar authority in Kurnool, Gingi, and Vellore ”

“ Rama Raya was conducted by the officer who commanded the artillery of Hussain Nizam to his Sultan, who immediately ordered his captive to be decapitated, and the head to be elevated on a long spear, so that it might be visible to the Hindu troops.
On seeing that their chief was dead, the Vijayanagar forces broke and fled "They were pursued by the allies with such successful slaughter that the river which ran near the field was dyed red with their blood. It is computed on the best authorities that above one hundred thousand infidels were slain in fight and during the pursuit." ”

“ After that, for a while they seem to have been subjected to the Bellala dynasty of the Mysore, and the same Mahomedan invasion that destroyed that power in 1310 spread its baneful influence as far as Ramnad, and for two centuries their raids and oppressions kept the whole of southern India in a state of anarchy and confusion. Their power for evil was first checked by the rise of the great Hindu state of Vijayanagar, in the Tongabhadra, in the 14th century, and by the establishment, under its protection, of the Nayak dynasty by Viswanath Nayak, in the beginning of the 16th. ”

“ At every period of India's awakening, there have always been great efforts made to break down caste. But it must always be we who build up a new India as an effect and continuation of her past, assimilating helpful foreign ideas wherever they may be found. Never can it be they; growth must proceed from within. All that England can do is to help India to work out her own salvation. All progress at the dictation of another, whose hand is at India's throat, is valueless in my opinion. The highest work can only degenerate when slave-labour produces it. ”

“ I consider that the great national sin is the neglect of the masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are once more well educated, well fed, and well cared for. They pay for our education, they build our temples, but in return they get kicks. They are practically our slaves. If we want to regenerate India, we must work for them. I want to start two central institutions at first — one at Madras and the other at Calcutta — for training young men as preachers. ”