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perfect King there could be, cheerful of disposition and very
merry... so gallant and perfect is he in all things.’
Paes was as clear as previous visitors about the city’s fertility
and wealth. ‘It is stocked,’ he wrote, ‘with provisions such as
rice, wheat , grains, Indian corn, and a certain amount of barley
and beans, pulses, horse gram and many other seeds which
grow in this country and which are the food of the people...
then you see the loads of limes which come in every day, and
the loads of sweet and sour oranges, and wild brinjals and other
garden stuff in such abundance as to stupefy one...’
the fecundity did not stop at fruit: Paes estimates that
Krishnadevaraya enjoyed the pleasures of between three to five
hundred wives, and altogether employed about twelve hundred
women as dancers, singers, musicians and astrologers. each
wife, he says, ‘has her own house to herself, with her maidens
and her women of the chamber, and women guards and all other
women servants necessary; all of these are women, and no man
enters where they are, save only the eunuchs who guard them.’
Paes says he was unable to estimate the size of Vijayanaga-
ra’s population ‘because it cannot all be seen from any one spot’.
But he acknowledged that ‘the people in the city are countless
in number, so much so that I do not wish to write it down for
fear that it should be thought fabulous... What I saw... seemed
as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight; there are many
groves of trees within it... many orchards and gardens with fine
trees... many conduits of water which flow in the midst of it,
and in places there are lakes’. he concluded that, ‘this is the best
provided city in the world.’a
fteR the Death of Krishnadevaraya, the city began
a period of decline. Its rulers, particularly the usurper
Ramaraya, grew arrogant and not only succeeded in falling
out with all their neighbours, but actually managed to unite
them in hatred and envy of the largest and richest of the South
Indian kingdoms.
the end came in 1565—230 years and 60 rulers after the city-
state’s founding. an alliance of Muslim principalities gathered
a mighty force and on January 26, defeated the army of Vijay-
anagara at the Battle of tunghabadra about 100 km to the north
of the city. Ramaraya was killed almost immediately. When
his head was raised on a stake, the remains of the royal army
withdrew in panic to the impregnable fortress of Penuokonda,
one hundred kilometre to the south of the city, and the massed
troops of five sultanates fell on the undefended capital and put
most of its men to the sword, leading the women and craftsmen
off to slavery. the sculptures were smashed and the buildings
of the city were set on fire. even so, the work of destruction took
five months; some say a year.
today hampi—as Vijayanagara is now known—remains
much as it was left: almost deserted, a strange, haunting and
otherworldly landscape of massive boulders, dusty red-earth
fields and sudden lush green banana plantations. through all
this can be seen the mighty remains of walls, gateways, watch-
towers and spectacularly carved temples. this is the reality so
beautifully caught as never before by Bharath Ramamrutham’s
brilliant photographs.
there is a celebrated opening sequence to VS naipaul’s
masterpiece, India: A Wounded Civilization, which beautifully de-
scribes these shattered ruins of hampi. naipaul leads the reader
through the remains of the once mighty city, its 24 miles of walls
winding through the ‘brown plateau of rock and gigantic boul-
ders’. these days, he explains, it is just ‘a peasant wilderness’, but
look carefully and you can see scattered everywhere the crum-
bling wreckage of former greatness: ‘palaces and stables, a royal
bath, a temple with a cluster of musical columns that can still
be played, the leaning granite pillars of what must have been a
bridge across the river’. Over the bridge, beyond the river, there is
yet more: ‘a long and very wide avenue, with a great statue of the
bull of Shiva at one end, and at the other end a miracle: a temple
that for some reason was spared destruction four hundred years
ago, is still whole, and is still used for worship’.
naipaul goes on to lament the fall of this great centre of
hindu civilisation, ‘then one of the greatest [cities] in the world’.
It fell, according to naipaul, because already the hindu society