RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISMVijayanagar could benefit from the mutual rivalry of the four successor
states of the Bahmani sultanate. In the process of adopting the Muslim
methods of warfare which had so greatly contributed to the rise of
Vijayanagar, the Hindu rulers now also did not mind recruiting Muslim
soldiers and letting Muslim officers rise to high positions in their army.
This gave the sultans access to all the information they wanted about
Vijayanagar though it might, by the same token, have helped Vijayanagar
to keep in touch with the affairs at the courts of the sultans.
Finally Vijayanagar was surprised by an alliance of the sultans, who had
realised that their own internecine warfare was to the benefit of
Vijayanagar and had often been fostered by intrigues emanating from the
Hindu court. The Muslim chronicler Ferishta reports that the sultans
eventually united because of the destruction of mosques by the Vijayanagar
army. Towards the end of 1564 the combined forces of the sultans rallied
near the Vijayanagar fortress of Talikota on the banks of the Krishna. As
leader of the Vijayanagar army Rama Ray a must have realised what was
at stake: he mounted a determined attack with all the forces at his disposal.
When battle was joined in January 1565, it seemed to be turning in
favour of Vijayanagar—suddenly, however, two Muslim generals of
Vijayanagar changed sides. Rama Ray a was taken prisoner and
immediately beheaded. His brother Tirumala then fled with the whole
army, including 1,500 elephants and the treasures of the realm, leaving the
capital city to the wrath of the victorious Muslims. The victors destroyed
Vijayanagar, thus taking revenge for Krishnadeva’s devastation of the old
Bahmani capital of Gulbarga in 1520. There are few comparable instances
in history of such a sudden defeat and of such a wanton destruction of a
large imperial capital: Vijayanagar was even more thoroughly sacked than
was Delhi by Timur’s army.
Tirumala and his descendants continued to rule for some time in the
south, but this Aravidu dynasty—the last dynasty of the once-mighty
empire—could not restore Vijayanagar to its former glory. In 1568, only
three years after the downfall of Vijayanagar, the realm of the Gajapatis also
succumbed to Muslim conquerors. These years mark the end of the great
medieval Hindu kingdoms of India. With Akbar’s accession to the throne of
the Great Mughals in 1556 there started a new process of conquest which
led to the extinction of all southern states in the course of the subsequent
150 years. In this way the Islamic state reached its zenith in India.
The Amaranayakas and military feudalismIn contrast to all earlier Hindu realms whose history we know only from
inscriptions, Vijayanagar is very well documented, which permits us to get
an insight into the daily life, the administrative structure and the social
organisation of the late medieval Hindu state. There are Hindu chronicles,