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  1. Home
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  3. The New Cambridge History of India
  • Cited by 15
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1990
Online ISBN:
9781139055611
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521266932
Subjects:
Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Regional History Before 1500
Series:
The New Cambridge History of India
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Asian History
Information

Book description

The Vijayanagara rajas ruled a substantial part of the southern peninsula of India for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, and during this epoch the region was transformed from its medieval past towards a modern colonial future. Concentrating on the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history of Vijayanagara, Burton Stein details the pattern of rule established in this important and long-lived Hindu kingdom, which was followed by other, often smaller, kingdoms of peninsular India until the onset of colonialism. Through an analysis of the politics, society and economy, Stein addresses the central question of the extent to which Vijayanagara, as a medieval Hindu kingdom, can be viewed as a prototype of the polities and societies confronted by the British in the late eighteenth century. This work thus presents an understanding of one of the great medieval kingdoms of India, and a more general assessment of the nature of the state, society and culture on the eve of European colonial rule.

Reviews

"Burton Stein's comprehensive survey of the Vijayanagara empire incorporates and further refines many of his earlier and more detailed findings on the medieval history of the south. Indeed, Vijayanagara summarizes a lifetime's research and reflection on South Asian history and it has all the qualities of a single, sustained argument presented in a narrative form but nevertheless informing on and illuminating a whole range of analytical problems." K. N. Chaudhuri, Indian History

"...thanks to his success in interweaving his analysis of 'structural changes' together with a narrative synopsis of political history, the potential audience has been expanded beyond the narrow circle of specialists to include anyone who desires an intelligent overall introduction to the period." Phillip B. Wagoner, Newsletter of the Society for South Indian Studies

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Contents

Contents
  • 1 - Introduction
    pp 1-12
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The kingdom or empire of Vijayanagara takes its name, 'City of Victory', from its capital on the Tungabhadra River, near the centre of the sub-continent. Among Indian kingdoms, a rule of three centuries is very long and this together with the large territory over which Vijayanagara kings reigned makes it one of the great states in Indian history. Vijayanagara historiography also changed because of Krishnaswami Aiyangar's insistence that literary evidence of that period should have as much standing in the interpretations of historians as epigraphy and archaeology. Nilakanta Sastri's major contributions to Vijayanagara history were of another sort. Nilakanta Sastri's efforts in the 1950s to make Vijayanagara out to be a centralised empire has influenced subsequent writing on in two ways, both negative. Nilakanta Sastri made the centre of his interpretive analysis the onslaught of Islam. The military consequences of this led to what he called the 'war state' of Vijayanagara.
  • 2 - The medieval past: continuity and disjunction
    pp 13-30
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Vijayanagara was also a medieval south Indian kingdom, one of about fifty royal houses whose inscriptions and whose sovereign claims extended over more than one of the linguistic, or cultural, regions of the peninsula from the time of the Chalukyas of Badami. The encounter with Muslim power from Delhi is perhaps the most important political fact of the period, as Krishnaswami Aiyangar and others have insisted. Under the changing conditions of the fourteenth century, a more professionalised military that offered great careers to Muslim soldiers and hastened urbanisation - an ancient Indian conception of polity came under threat. The corroding effect of urbanisation upon the old order was not merely set by military and political factors, temples were another cause. Under the early kings, Vijayanagara became an empire in the sense of exercising rule over regions and peoples of the peninsula who were of different languages and cultures.
  • 3 - The city and the kingdom
    pp 31-71
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The best examples of temple building in the sixteenth-century heyday of Vijayanagara are found in the northern section of Hampi, the sacred centre along the riverside. As a ritual or ceremonial centre, the city was a greatly enlarged, yet unified, version of the Chalukyan royal centres of Aihole and Pattadakal, according to the descriptions and poetry of contemporaries and to what can be beheld by the modern sojourner at Hampi. Vijayanagara was also an important commercial centre. This chapter explores the history of the Vijayanagara kingdom and its political structure. The most powerful Vijayanagara rulers of the sixteenth century, Krishnadevaraya, Achyutadevaraya and Rama Raja, enjoyed only a part of the revenues collected from the richest provinces of the realm. Krishnadevaraya gave both major responsibilities and privileges in Tamil country, and both were ultimately to rise against their Vijayanagara masters, Nagama against Krishnadevaraya and Chellappa against Achyutadevaraya.
  • 4 - Political economy and society: the sixteenth century
    pp 72-108
  • View abstract

    Summary

    By the late fifteenth century, medieval political, social and economic institutions in the older settled, coastal parts of the southern peninsula had been weakened and no longer were the model of society that the Vijayanagara state had ostensibly been created to defend. Tamil country was the major imperial frontier during the sixteenth century, the processes of change there are analysed in recent work of Karashima, Subbarayalu, and Ludden. Lordships in sixteenth-century Tirunelveli reflected the distribution of its varied peoples in Vijayanagara times. In mixed-cropping zones, including the greater part of the Vijayanagara heartland, the potential for reliable irrigation was achieved by tank reservoirs and wells. Mixed and dry-cropping zones contributed major commodities as cotton and indigo to the peninsular economy. During the Vijayanagara period the pace of commercialisation had quickened led by two factors: overseas trade and the deliberate policy of territorial magnates of augmenting their money revenues through customs fees.
  • 5 - Imperial collapse and aftermath: 1542–1700
    pp 109-139
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Throughout Vijayanagara history Muslim warriors played a part of coalition building. Art and architectural historians speak of a 'Vijayanagara temple style' whose features distinguish it from all others. The very first datable shrines constructed at Hampi during the first dynasty of Vijayanagara were devoted to Jaina deities. Rama Raja had launched new imperial initiatives on two fronts. Early in his regency, he sought a more secure imperial presence in the far south where nayaka control over Madurai was being consolidated. Patrimonialism and trade became the two historical motifs of the last phase of Vijayanagara. A distinction less fully developed by Subrahmanyam and others pertains to the fiscal implications of there being two fundamental production zones in the peninsula. On the riverine plains and along the coasts there were established production and crafting centres which permitted lucrative revenue-farming contracts.
  • 6 - Conclusion
    pp 140-146
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Vijayanagara epoch saw the transition of South Indian society from its medieval past to its modern future. During the time that the rayas were peninsular overlords and their capital the symbol of vast power and wealth, south Indian society was transformed in several important ways. In the beginning, the Vijayanagara kingdom was not very different from its medieval predecessors, Hoysalas and Kakatiyas. But one difference there was, and it explained why the latter two kingdoms were replaceable. That was the urgency to develop better military means to cope with Muslim newcomers to the peninsula. Krishnadevaraya cast aside the ancient Chola and Pandya kings in the South and installed military commanders who not long after established centres of sovereignty opposed to his successors. The Vijayanagara transformation of the old regime out of which its early rulers emerged was not complete by the late seventeenth century, but it was an irreversible change from that old order.
  • Bibliographical essay
    pp 147-152
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the kingdom or empire of Vijayanagara. It presents literary sources from the Vijayanagara period, ranging from complete translations to abbreviated summaries. Two types of general works on the Vijayanagara kingdom may be distinguished: one that attempts to cover all major aspects of the history of the kingdom and another that treats some specific aspects over the entire history. Sewell's contributions to the opening of Vijayanagara history are better represented in other of his works upon which other early historians substantially drew and through which the first generation of Indian historians of the kingdom became familiar with modern, European historical methods. The defeat of Vijayanagara and the sack of the city in 1565 by the confederacy of sultanate forces ushered in a period of extended chaos and decline that is treated both generally and in terms of Tamil country by R. Sathianathaier, Tamilaham in the Seventeenth Century.
References

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