From Indus to Independence - A Trek Through Indian History

Vol VII Named for Victory : The Vijayanagar Empire

Sanu Kainikara

• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9789389620528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud

This is the seventh volume of the series on Indian history, From Indus to Independence: A Trek through Indian History, and provides the history of the great Vijayanagara Empire. Named in aspiration of victory—in both the spiritual and temporal realms—Vijayanagara more than lived up to its name for more than three centuries, before it was brought down by a number of factors, some of them beyond its control. Vijayanagara was established at a critical juncture in the politico-religious history of Peninsular India. Even though it was not proclaimed as such, there is no doubt that the kingdom was created as the answer to the ferocious Islamic invasions of the 'Deep South' that was becoming a regular feature in Peninsular India. It succeeded in holding back the invading armies, for three long centuries, thereby blunting the zeal and urgency of the Islamic conquest. These three centuries provided the balm to make the interaction between Hinduism and Islam more congenial than at the outset of the Islamic invasion of the Deccan Plateau. This book provides a detailed historical narrative of the great Vijayanagara Empire and carries out an assessment of its successes and failures. The book provides the reader with an in-depth understanding of the irrevocable and fundamental forces of history that have been instrumental in forming the present that we live today.

CONCLUDING ANALYSIS

CONCLUSION

Finding Commonality Across the Ages

A. N. Mouravieff states in A History of the Church in Russia that in the Christian Remembrancer, Volume 10, published in October 1845, the following verse could be read.

‘The vision recurs; the eastern sun has a second rise;

History repeats her tale unconsciously, and goes off into a
mystic rhyme;

Ages are prototypes of other ages, and the winding course of
time brings us round to the same spot again.’

In 1874, Samuel L. Clemens, (writing as Mark Twain) and Charles Dudley Warner wrote in Chapter 47: ‘Laura in the Tombs and Her Visitors’, of the book The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day that, ‘History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.’

Essentially, the aphorism ‘History does not repeat, but it often rhymes’, attributed to the great Mark Twain, is generally accepted as being true. In order to test the veracity of the statement, if one is inclined to do so, it is important to identify two identical situations in the historical narrative, where the events and facts relevant to one may have the same relevance in the other. This is difficult because in historical situations, the dominant element that differentiates one from the other is the human factor. This element creates the fundamental difference between historical research and scientific enquiry/investigation/ experimentation. The human factor functions differently in different circumstances and varies with experience as well as a myriad number of other factors, directly affecting historical research.

Even though differences exist between historic and scientific research, comparisons of historical events of different periods and eras of the same region, and/or of different regions, can be done in a broad manner: to evaluate the experiences gained and analyse whether they were absorbed and employed at a later time; and gauge their significance, to the country, kingdom, and empire involved, for posterity. In such an analytical comparison, the experiences of the medieval Vijayanagara Empire and that of modern India make an interesting study.

Medieval Peninsular India, in the 12th and 13th centuries, consisted of three main kingdoms—the Yadavas of Devagiri, Kakatiyas of Warangal and the Pandyas of Madura. All three were repeatedly invaded, raided, pillaged and plundered by the Muslim armies from North India. By 1336, when the minor kingdom of Vijayanagara was being tenuously established, the kingdoms of the upper Deccan, modern day Maharashtra and Telangana, had already been conclusively defeated by the armies of Ala ud-Din Khilji and Muhamad bin Tughluq.

The Kampili Kingdom. There is a seldom mentioned episode in Deccan history. By around 1294, the Yadavas of Devagiri had become extinct, having been defeated and their kingdom annexed by the Delhi Sultanate. At this juncture, a Hoysala commander of calibre and repute, Singeya Nayaka III, declared independence and created the kingdom of Kampili, near Gulbarga and the River Tungabhadra, which corresponds to the north-eastern parts of present-day Karnataka state. The kingdom was brief-lived and became extinct after a Delhi army under the command of Malik Zada, defeated the Kampili army in battle and decapitated Singeya. His head was stuffed with straw and send to the Sultan in Delhi. It is reported that the entire population of Kampili committed Jauhar (ritual mass suicide by jumping into a specially created funeral pyre) on the day the king realised that he was certain to be defeated. The year was 1327-28. Eight years later, in 1336, from the burned out ruins of Kampili emerged the Vijayanagara kingdom.

The creation of Vijayanagara, as a Hindu state, was the culmination of a movement that originated in the Deccan; a movement that was focused on the expulsion of the Muslims from the region and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction
• SECTION I SOUTH INDIA – 14TH CENTURY
• SECTION II DISPUTED ORIGINS
• SECTION III THE SANGAMA DYNASTY
• SECTION IV THE SALUVA DYNASTY
• SECTION V THE TULUVA DYNASTY
• SECTION VI COLLAPSE OF AN EMPIRE
• SECTION VII THE ARAVIDU DYNASTY
• SECTION VIII AN EMPIRE CALLED VIJAYANAGARA
• CONCLUDING ANALYSIS