ORIGINS OF THE VIJAYANAGAR STATE

The Vijayanagar kingdom is said to have been established in the mid-14 th century by
two brothers, Harihara and Bukka. While the date generally agreed upon is 1336,
Wagoner and Kulke believe that major ceremony in 1346 marking their conquest up
to that time should be taken as the true date of commencement of the Vijayanagar
empire. There were four ruling dynasties of the empire, the first of which was the
Sangam dynasty established by Harihara and Bukka which lasted from 1336 to
1485.The second was the Saluva dynasty established by Saluva Narsimha which
lasted from 1485 to 1505. The next dynasty was the Taluva dynasty which lasted
from 1505 to 1562. The most important ruler of this dynasty was Krishna Deva Raya
under whom the Vijayanagar Empire reached its peak. After him, there was a period
of decline and in 1570 the Aravitu dynasty was established which lasted till 1644.

As the Sangamas were one of four ruling dynasties, the kingdom is named not for the
Kings but after the new name of the territories capital, Vijayanagar which means ‘the
city of victory’. The origins of Harihara and Bukka are arguable as some believe that
they were warriors of a local king defeated by the Delhi Sultan whose service they
then entered while other’s like Wagoner believe that the brothers were probably
local warriors who served in the Hoysala kingdom, who gave Muhammad bin
Tughluq political allegiance when he transferred his capital to Daulatabad and once
his power waned, the established their own state. Either was, the stage for the
development of the Vijayanagar Empire was set only due to the policies of the Delhi
Sultanate which sought to destroy the existing regional kingdoms of South India.

Sewell describes the Vijayanagar state as a state established in order to halt the
advance of Muslim power in the peninsula. This view is supported by the likes of
Nilakanta Sastri and Krishnaswami Iyengar. Cynthia Talbot and Catherine Asher
point out that the concept of a unified, monolithic, easily distinguishable Hindu
religion did not exist in the 14th century and neither did a well defined kingdom with
borders. Philip Wagoner too establishes that states with so-called ‘Hindu’ or
‘Muslim’ definitions fought as much amongst themselves as they did against each
other. He also points out that there was assimilation of Islamic cultural practices in
the court culture of Vijayanagar as a technique of horizontal legitimization on the
part of the ruler. These practices included the donning of Islamic costumes and the
adoption of titles such as ‘Hindu Raya Suratrana’ or ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’.
Burton Stein further highlights militarism in Vijayanagar as being caused by
indigenous developments and measures against the nayakas and local chieftains.
NATURE OF THE VIJAYANAGAR EMPIRE

Various theories as to the degree of administrative centrality of the Vijayanagar state

have been put forward based on the available sources which included inscriptions
by rulers and other agents, the accounts of foreign visitors Nuniz and Paes, and
contemporary texts such as Krishnadeva Raya’s Amuktamalya.

Scholars such as Nilakanta Sastri, Ishwari Prasad propagate the notion of a

centralized Hindu state. They believe that the Vijayanagar state was a highly
centralised, bureaucratic, hereditary monarchy, developing almost in continuation
with the Chola state. The King had full control over the nayakas and provincial
governors. The scholars had largely based their views on the writings and accounts
of the two Portuguese travellers, Paes and Nuniz. They described the nayakas as
agents and official of the state, indicating a centralized state structure. Thus Sastri, in
his writings, describes the ‘high and oppressive taxation”, the survey of lands, and
other important sources of state revenue, such as taxes on professions and houses,
transit and market dues and judicial fines. He also describes the elaborate judicial
and military systems of the state from the central to local levels. A number of
criticisms have developed in response to this theory: scholars now question the
possibility of the existence of such a state given the vast number of institutional
checks that existed, whether in the form of nayakas or external threats to the
empire. Sastri later began to highlight a more disjunctive character of the
Vijayanagar state, highlighting its new ideological aim.

Burton Stein on the other hand, propagates the segmentary state model of Aidan
Hall to the study of the Vijayanagar State. He conceived that the Vijayanagar king as
exercising a ritual authority just like the Chola king, in the form of gifts, tributes and
military assistance. He highlights the Mahanavami festival as a celebration of this
ritual authority of the king through processes such as gift-giving, homage and
private deity worship. He invokes Hocart’s conception of the king as a ritual
performer and the primary agent for prosperity and welfare of the realm and his
conception of the symbolically integrative character of the temple and the city. Stein
enlists the processes of extension of Vijayanagar over lordship in South India:
pillaging expeditions of small groups of Telegu warriors, transformation of local
chiefs into Nayakas, and incorporation of the support and followings of sectarian
groupings in all parts of the Southern peninsula. The Segmentary State Model
divides the regions into the core region and the macro or periphery regions. There
are various units of authority in the Vijayanagar state which include the king in the
core region, the mandalam or province, the nadu or the districts and the grama or
the village.

Stein saw this as constituting a pyramidal sort of structure with the core region at
the apex. Burton Stein identified certain Core regions which were located in the
fertile riverine regions. For Vijayanagar, this was located in the Tungabhadra region,
where the king exercised maximum authority. The relationship between the king
and the nayakas and the provincial governors were described in a ritual manner. The
further the segment was from the centre, the greater was its capacity to change its
loyalty from one power pyramid to another. The Vijayanagar state was an important
variant form of segmentary organisation in which the chiefly office, nayaka, was
more formed and independent of the dominant landed groups of a locality.

Stein’s theory has also come under alto of criticism for the following reasons: firstly,
it is a conception model, which has been loosely applied to the Vijayanagar state
without much proof of applicability. Its emphasis on the ritual status of the king is
also problematic in light of the evidence of Vijayanagar’s strong military thrust.

Besides these, D.C. Sircar and Krishnaswami Iyangar have propounded another
theory attributing the conception of the Vijayanagar state as a feudal one. These
scholars draw from the description of nayakas by Nuniz and Paes separately, and
based on their descriptions of the nayakas military contributions to the king’s
armies and monetary contributions to the treasury, establish that it was a feudal
framework. Sircar, therefore, viewed Nayankara as subinfeudation and amaram as
feudal tenure. Iyangar further uses terms such as ‘feudal revenue’ liberally and
refers to all kinds of subordinates as’ feudal vassals’. However, Burton Stein believes
that the application of such a theory obscures the failure to deal satisfactorily with
the fragmentary inscriptions of the Vijayanagar Empire.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

The King or the Raya was the head of the state. The kingship was a hereditary
monarchy and there was considerable increase in the powers and role of the king
from the Chola period. Some scholars like Shastri, Ishwari Prasad and Smith believe
that the Vijayanagar raya was an autocrat while others like Mahalingam argue that it
was a paternalistic kingship characterized by a concern for the welfare of the people.
According to Talbot and Asher the rulers excelled in ‘the combined role of servant
and patron of the gods’.
 Generally, the eldest son was appointed as the successor and called Yuvraj.
This helped in not only establishing a hereditary monarchy but also to end the
constant quarrelling and civil wars. The kings saw themselves as righteous kings and
upholders of dharma; they sought to uphold the Brahmanical social order to
maintain peace. Some scholars believe that the raya did not exercise absolute power
and that there were certain important institutional checks on his power, one of
which was the council of ministers which consisted of ministers, provincial
governors, feudal lords, military commanders and men of priestly class. Satish
Chandra observes that it mostly consisted of the great nobles of the kingdom. They
were appointed by the king and maintained their position so long as they remained
in his favour. Although their number was small, they played a dynamic role in policy
making and administration as they had developed over time into an important
institution. Besides the council of ministers, customs and traditions also acted as a
check on the Vijayanagar raya, who was influenced by the Smriti literature, as well as
local institutions.

The Nayankara system was the central feature of the administrative system of the
Vijayanagar Empire. Perhaps one of the most debated of the Vijayanagar system
surrounds the problem of defining the Nayankara system. The Nayakas were
military chieftains who enjoyed rights over land given to them in return for which
they had to furnish troops to the state and pay tributes to the king. They played a
very important role in the political history and all rulers attempted to establish
control over them as they were able to strengthen or weaken dynasties. The term
‘amaranayankara’ encapsulates the rights of the nayaka as it signifies an office (kara)
possessed by a military chief (nayaka) in command (amara) of a body of troops.
About 200 nayakas are believed to have existed in the mid-16 th century. As Stein
writes, “the political history of the Vijayanagar state is essentially the history of the
great Telugu nayakas, their formidable military capabilities, their patrimonial power,
and their relations to religious leaders in a new level of authority everywhere in the
southern peninsula.”

The Nayaka was a holder of the amaram tenure which was a land assignment
and these rights were not simply revenue collection. They were responsible for
cultivation, clearing of forests, etc. They also had to provide a military contingent
and send fixed tribute to the king, which could be in the form of a gift or a share in
the revenue. The state however did not interfere in the internal functioning of the
nayaka and they were not subject to transfers as long as they continued to pay their
tribute. Besides the amaram tenure, there was the amara umbalige which were rent
free grants of land given to those nayakas expected to render military service but
were exempted from giving any tribute. It is important to note that the nayakas
played an important role as rural entrepreneurs who were seeking the maximum,
protected return on resources. They facilitated the construction of irrigation
facilities and sometimes undertook the dasavanda system whereby a share of an
increased product from the construction of an irrigation facility was to go to the
cultivators of the concerned village, and a smaller share was granted to the person
who financed the construction.

There are different views to describe the role of the nayakas and the relationship
they shared with the Vijayanagar king. Satish Chandra refers to the nayakas as
‘subordinate rulers’. Some scholars however see them as feudal lords and the amara
tenure as their fiefdom while others see then as agents of the powerful, centralised
state. Thus D.C. Sircar subscribes to the belief that amara tenure can be considered
military service tenure and therefore proves that a strong feudal vein ran through
the Vijayanagar administrative system. Krishnaswami Iyenger too uses phrases such
as ‘feudal revenue’ to transactions between the king and the nayakas.
Venkatramanayya, while agreeing that the Nayankara system has many strong
affinities to feudalism, establishes that it also has many differences: these include
the absence of fealty, homage and sub-infeudination. He prefers to define the system
as one of military tenure under a central authority, land that was ‘held immediately
or mediately of the emperor on condition of military service.’
Noburu Karashima however questions whether nayakas can be discussed
as feudal lords. He talks about the stabilizing effect of the Nayankara system in the
latter half of the 16th century and believes that they derived their authority and were
legitimized only by the king. Dealing with contemporary inscriptions, Karashima
shows that nayakas needed to seek permission from the king for tax remissions and
land grants and constantly sought his favour. Stein describes the nayakas as the
‘major connecting elements of the Vijayanagar segmentary state’, and according to
him, the system carried prebendal rights over land. Prebendalism, conceptualized by
Max Weber, is a fiscal right granted by a superior authority. It is difficult, according
to Stein, to define the nayakas in terms of duties, privileges, obligations, offices,
origins, and administrative and political roles. Hence, Stein applied loose term-
prebendalism.

There is also a debate about the existence of Provincial Governors. Stein does
not distinguish between the nayakas and the Provincial Governors but Shastri and
Mahalingam emphasize the difference between the two i.e.,
 1. The Provincial Governors were from royal families and ruled on the basis of
the king. The nayakas were military chieftains who enjoyed rights over land
given to them.
2. The Provincial Governors were subject to transfer and dismiss and were
not completely autonomous as compared to the nayakas who enjoyed
relatively more autonomy. However, the Provincial Governors had some
freedom to make appointments and some power over the army.

The Provincial Governors seem to replace the role which was played by the Chola
Assemblies in the earlier period. Their main functions included right to hold courts,
maintaining law and order, appointing officers and maintaining armies, and
imposing taxes. They seem to have maintained coordination of work with the centre,
like paying a fixed contribution in men and money.

In addition to a new more explicitly martial conception of chieftainship,

the Vijayanagar state produced another politico-military change over its territory,
that being its forts and Brahman commanders. The Brahmanas represent an element
of continuity from the Chola period. Earlier they had not been associated with the
administration, though the Vijayanagar period saw a change and a widening of their
role and functions; their role was no longer confined to being advisors, they became
integral part of the administration and military. They were also appointed as
military commanders and were given forts as durga dannaiks and they maintained
the forts. They were also given specific lands for this purpose known as the
bhandarvada grants. The highest state attention was given to forts and Brahmans as
it was through them that the Vijayanagar military supremacy as well as its ability to
draw fighting men for its wars was maintained. The Brahmanas also emerged as the
agents of the Vijayanagar raya in these areas and represented the military and ritual
supremacy of the king in that area. They were also appointed to act as insurance
against the creation of anti- Vijayanagar coalition of warriors. During the
Vijayanagar period, Brahmanas became increasingly the instruments for enhancing
imperial control through their direct political function as commanders and
governors of fortresses.

As far as the local institutions are concerned, there is some amount of

controversy as some scholars believed that the Chola local assemblies had declined
by the Vijayanagar period, others assert that they continued into the new political
reign. Scholars like Salatore and Venkatramanayya hold the view that the assemblies
continued to exist and perform an active role. The essential difference to which
these scholars draw attention is that of ideology. The struggle to maintain Hindu
institutions in the face of Islamic threat is believed to have produced a defence of
existing institutions. The term purvamaryade is invoked in this debate to show that
there were few social and cultural changes in South India and that mostly these local
assemblies would have continued. The opposite view is put forward by Sastri and
Krishnaswami, argues that the king may have respected purvamaryada but this did
not necessarily imply continuation. They acknowledged the ideological basis of
Vijayanagar but argue that under the protectors of Hinduism, many of the earlier
social and economic arrangements of South India changed. According to
Krishnaswami, the neglect of these institutions stemmed from the feudal and
military organisation of the state and the hostility of the soldiers to these
institutions. Several divergent views focus upon the question of why such local
institutions first declined and then virtually disappeared during the Vijayanagar
rule. Iyengar, Stein and Mahalingam believe that there was a considerable decline in
the powers of these assemblies. Iyenger blamed the growth of the feudal military set
up for the decline of these assemblies while Mahalingam wrote that the rise of
Provincial Governors led to the decline of the assemblies. Stein finally asserted that
the Nayankara system replaced the Chola assemblies and the emergence of
institutions like Ayagar played a role in the decline of the assemblies. Thus these
assemblies may have continued but they would not have played any significant role.

Another important institution was the ayagar, which refers to the practice of
providing land allotments to village servants. This system seems to have existed in
every village and is referred to as an institution of 8 or 12 functionaries. They were
appointed by the government and would include the headman (reddy,
maniyam,gauda), an accountant (karnam), a watchman or an astrologer. They were
responsible for looking after the law and order of the village and were also
responsible for dispensing justice. They would be assigned rights over some plots of
land in the village, which were tax-free. The ayagar derived their income from the
manya tenure which was the tenure granted to the Brahmanas in the form of
brahmadeya and devadanas.

Land revenue was a major source of income for the state. The revenue
department was known as athavana. The land was carefully surveyed and assessed
according to its quality, the rates differing between wet and dry lands and in
accordance with the crops and the yield. Often revenue came through farming,
which was undertaken in the core regions or through local bodies like the ayagar, the
nayakas or other holders of land. Custom duties or trade was another important
source of revenue. There were three types of land tenures- bhandarvada, manya and
amaram; according to which the shares of income from villages were distributed.
Thus bhandarvada villages contributed to the support of Vijayanagar fortresses,
manya lands to the support of temples, and amarams were designated to
amarnayakas.

The Vijayanagar land revenue system presents a stark contrast to the one
prevailing under the Cholas. In the Vijayanagar period, it was not the locality but the
village which became the major unit in which land rights were distributed. This shift
in organizational focus from nadus, localities, to consequent villages, is of greatest
significance in the Vijayanagar land system. This process can be located in
connection with temple-centered urbanization, increased trade, and the emergence
of more complex forms of localized society.

Temples played an important part especially with the decline of various

local institutions. They were educational, economic and religious centres maintained
by the devadana land grants. They had become the node of the socio-economic life of
the village and they were the largest employers. They became major landholding
and land-managing institutions. They also served as banks and around them a
number of economic activities took place. Generally the land given to the temple was
not cultivated by them, they sublet the land to peasants who cultivated it and got a
share of the produce. The peasants only grew crops which the temple wanted them
to produce. Most of the temples had several devadana villages to support their ritual
functionaries and to provide the goods or the money necessary for ritual
performances. Special officers of the temple oversaw the management of the
devadana villages and assured that the income endowed by the grant of rights in a
village was applied to its specified purpose. The temple also played an important
role in irrigation projects, tanks, wells and dams, in a process termed by Stein as
‘rural development entrepreneurship.’ Thus large temples which held income shares
in villages maintained irrigation works systems for the precise purpose of utilizing
money endowments for productive irrigation works.

Justice in Vijayanagar was administered by a hierarchy of courts, the

emperor’s sabha being the highest appellate authority. Nuniz, however, says that the
only law of the land was the law of the Brahmans. Punishments were harsh and
often barbarous. Death or mutilations were common for crimes such as adultery or
theft or treason. Minor offences and violation of caste and trade rules were dealt
with in the first instance by village courts and caste and guild organisations and
seldom found their way to the courts of the crown.
 The police system was fairly efficient. There were two kinds of police forces.
One was maintained by the state and the other maintained by the local people. In the
provinces, nadukas were responsible for maintaining peace. A regular system of
espionage performed the duties of the modern intelligence service and kept the
emperor informed about the doings of his sub-ordinates all over the empire as well
as of the designs and movements of neighbouring rulers.

According to Nilkanta Sastri, Vijayanagar marked “the nearest approach to a

war-state ever made by a Hindu kingdom; and its political organisation was marked
by military needs.” The components of Vijayanagar authority were: the artillery,
cavalry, strategically placed fortified places, troops and Brahmanas, as well as
Nayakas. The Vijayanagar rulers had a well organised military department called
kandachara, which functioned under a senapati or sarve-senyadhikari. They
maintained large standing army consisting of elephants, cavalry and infantry. This is
evidence of the use of artillery and camels. The two mainstays of the Vijayanagar
military strength were its cavalry and use of firearms. There were two methods of
recruitment to the army- directly by the king, which constituted a regular standing
army of the state and a largely irregular supply consisting of contingents by the
nayakas. Forts played a vital part in defence and public rituals in the city highlighted
the states military prowess .

TRADE AND COMMERCE

The Vijayanagar kings called themselves, ‘Lords of the Eastern and Western Oceans’,
a title that asserted hegemony over the Bay of Bengal in the east all the way to the
Arabian Sea to the west of the Indian peninsula. Domination over coastal territories
was one of Vijayanagar’s primary geo-political objectives and a frequency cause of
conflict with other kingdoms. Krishnadeva Raya, in his writings, asserted that the
importance of improving trade relations was so that articles of importance would
never reach one’s enemies. Access to ports, therefore, meant access to a range of
coveted goods, including war- horses, sandalwood, musk, and camphor. The
Vijayanagar kings exercised indirect control over ports such as Bhatkal, where they
had to share claims with Jain chiefs. Imports from this port, such as horses, copper,
gold, etc, brought in from the Middle East were sent overland to the Vijayanagar
capital and pepper, sugar and textiles were among the items exported.

Due to rich interactions of foreign traders with Indian ports in the peninsula,
communities of indigenous Muslims developed in places as a result of conversion
and intermarriage with local residents. The largest concentration of Muslims was
found on Calicut on the Malabar Coast which became the greatest free port of the
western seaboard because of the policies of its rulers, the Zamorins, who provided
security to traders. A community of indigenous Muslims known as Mappilas
flourished here, who were engaged actively in maritime commerce, along with other
immigrant communities such as the Syrian Christians and Jews. The main exports of
Calicut were black pepper, ginger, cardamom, teak and sandalwood. Chinese ships
frequented Calicut and acquired items such as frankincense and myrrh from the
Middle East, as well as pepper, diamonds, pearls and cotton from India and in
exchange, they sold Chinese silks and ceramics.

Violence was used as a means of furthering commercial objectives as a result

of Portuguese hostility in the Indian Ocean. Their heavy artillery enabled them to
rapidly seize a series of coastal sites including the Colombo in 1505, Malacca in
1511, and Hormuz in 1515. They established the centre of their maritime empire at
Goa which was seized in 1510. Pulicat was a major port on the south-eastern
Coromandel Coast which was part of the Vijayanagar territory and linked to the
capital by road. Its major exports included textiles and its imports included
Indonesian spices and non- precious metals, foodstuff, silk and cotton textile from
Bengal, etc.

Few goods that were bought and sold in these ports were produced in
their immediate vicinities; most commodities were brought to trading ports through
an elaborate network of internal trade through overland routes as well as coastal
travel. Aleast 80 major trading centres are mentioned within Vijayanagar territory
reveal the rise of urbanization. The peninsula’s agrarian economy was on the rise
due to the construction of new irrigation facilities, large reservoirs, etc, which
improved the agricultural productivity of agrarian uplands. Commercial agriculture
included the production of crops such as cotton, indigo and sugarcane. Large temple
complexes and well- populated urban areas were major consumers of goods and
served as a stimulus to trade, as demand for luxury goods increased.

The growing trade and urbanization of Vijayanagar parallel trends that had
occurred earlier in North India at the height of the Delhi Sultanate. Deccan India
became the most dynamic part of the subcontinent, both economically and
culturally.

CONFLICTS WITH THE BAHAMANI KINGDOM

The Bahmani kingdom was established in 1346 by Alauddin Bahman Shah, who was
Iqtadar of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, around the same time as the establishment of
the Vijayanagar empire. Writers like Swell, Shastri, Mahalingam present the
emergence of these two states as an ideological reaction to Muslim rule. Both these
states were involved in a constant military conflict which affected military
organization of the states and this conflict lasted till around 200years.
The main cause of the conflict according to one source was control of the Raichur
Doab while another source gave a religious colour to the conflict. However these
sources are not altogether convincing and the roots of the conflict can be traced to
geographical, political and economic factors.
In the Decanni terrain, there are very few fertile zones, since it is primarily a
plateau region. The Raichur doab region is a fertile area and was not only a bone of
contention between the two kingdoms but also the arena of the conflict. Security
depended on how many forts could be controlled in this region. Due to their
location, the Brahmani kingdom could only expand southwards and the Vijayanagar
state could only expand northwards. Obviously, the two states were bound to get
into a conflict.
Control over the Raichur doab also meant access to the Konkan coast was very
important because of the number of ports located in the area. Both the states got
their supply of horses from the Portuguese through these ports and hence control
over this region implied assess to sea routes.

Therefore strategic, geographic and economic reasons for the conflict always existed
in the region

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Karashima, Noboru. - A Concordance of Nayakas: The

Vijayanagar Inscriptions in South India.

 Mahalingam, T.V. - Administration and Social Life under

Vijayanagar.

 Nilakanta Sastri, K.A. - A History of South India from Pre-

historic Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar.

 Sewell, Robert. - A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar)

 Stein, Burton. -Chapter VIII: The Vijayanagar State and
Society. In Peasant, State and Society in Medieval South India.

 Stein, Burton. - Chapter 3: The City and the Kingdom. In

The New Cambridge History of India: Vijayanagar.

 Talbot, Cynthia and Asher, Catherine. - India before

Europe

 Wagoner, Phillip B. - Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress,

Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagar.