Vijayanagara and Bahmani Kingdoms: Rulers and Wars

The Vijayanagara and Bahmani kingdoms are the two great powers of medieval South India. They rose within eleven years of each other in the fourteenth century, faced each other across the Krishna and the Tungabhadra for almost two hundred years, and between them shaped the forts, temples, mosques and languages of the Deccan. Examiners like the topic because it offers clean pairs to test: founder and year, capital and river, ruler and title, traveller and the court he saw.

Foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire

Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by two brothers, Harihara I and Bukka Raya I, sons of Sangama. They built their capital on the southern bank of the Tungabhadra river, in the boulder-strewn country that is today Hampi in Karnataka. Tradition credits the sage Vidyaranya of Sringeri with guiding the brothers, and the empire took Virupaksha, a form of Shiva, as its tutelary deity; royal orders were signed Shri Virupaksha. The name Vijayanagara means the city of victory.

Four dynasties ruled the empire in turn. The Sangama dynasty held power from 1336 to 1485, the Saluva dynasty from 1485 to 1505, the Tuluva dynasty from 1505 to 1570 and the Aravidu dynasty from 1570 to about 1646. Saluva Narasimha ended Sangama rule, and Vira Narasimha of the Tuluva line was followed by his half-brother Krishnadevaraya.

Krishnadevaraya and the height of the empire

Krishnadevaraya ruled from 1509 to 1529 and is treated in every textbook as the greatest Vijayanagara king. He wrote Amuktamalyada, a Telugu poem on statecraft and devotion, and kept at his court the Ashtadiggajas, eight Telugu poets. The foremost of them was Allasani Peddana, author of Manucharitam, honoured as Andhra Kavita Pitamaha. The king himself carried the titles Andhra Bhoja and Yavanaraja Sthapanacharya. He raised the Vitthalaswamy and Hazara Rama temples at his capital and founded the suburb of Nagalapuram in memory of his mother Nagala Devi.

Administration, revenue and coins

The empire was held together by the nayankara system. Military chiefs called amara-nayakas were assigned land, the amaram, out of whose revenue they maintained horses, elephants and foot soldiers for the king and sent him tribute. At the other end of the ladder stood the ayagar system: each village was served by a body of hereditary functionaries, paid with tax-free plots rather than salaries. The chief gold coin was the varaha, which European visitors called the pagoda; smaller denominations included the fanam and the copper jital.

Foreign travellers who saw the Deccan

The Bahmani Kingdom

The Bahmani kingdom was founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, remembered in the chronicles as Hasan Gangu. He was raised to the throne by the Amiran-i-Sadah, the centurion nobles of Daulatabad who rebelled against Muhammad bin Tughlaq. His capital was Gulbarga, renamed Ahsanabad. In 1425 Ahmad Shah Wali moved the capital to Bidar, renamed Muhammadabad, where it stayed. The kingdom was first divided into four provinces, the tarafs of Gulbarga, Daulatabad, Berar and Bidar.

Firuz Shah Bahmani, who ruled from 1397 to 1422, was the most learned of the line and married a daughter of Deva Raya I. Humayun Shah, who ruled from 1458 to 1461, earned the title Zalim, the cruel, for his savagery. The kingdom was weakened throughout by the quarrel between the Deccanis, the old settled nobility, and the Afaqis or Pardesis, the newcomers from Persia and Arabia.

Mahmud Gawan and the fall of the Bahmanis

Mahmud Gawan, a Persian merchant who rose to be wazir under Muhammad Shah III, was the ablest administrator the Deccan saw before the Mughals. He held the title Malik-ut-Tujjar, chief of merchants. He cut the four tarafs into eight so that no governor grew too strong, measured land for revenue, and built in 1472 a three-storeyed madrasa at Bidar faced with coloured tiles, its library famous across the Islamic world. The Deccani faction forged a letter to prove him a traitor and he was executed in 1481. Within a decade the kingdom broke into five Deccan sultanates: Bijapur under the Adil Shahis, Ahmadnagar under the Nizam Shahis, Berar under the Imad Shahis, Bidar under the Barid Shahis and Golconda under the Qutb Shahis.

The Battle of Talikota, 1565

Vijayanagara and the Bahmanis fought for three prizes: the Raichur doab between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra, the Krishna-Godavari delta, and the Marathwada country with its ports. The contest was settled on 26 January 1565 at Talikota, also called Rakshasi-Tangadi, where the combined armies of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar destroyed the Vijayanagara army of Aliya Rama Raya. The capital was sacked and never reoccupied. The Aravidu dynasty ruled on from Penukonda and later Chandragiri, but the empire never recovered.

Art, architecture and language

Vijayanagara architecture is known for the towering rayagopuram, the kalyana mandapa or marriage hall, monolithic pillars carved as rearing animals, and the separate amman shrine for the goddess. At Hampi stand the Virupaksha temple, the Vittala temple with its stone chariot and musical pillars, the Lotus Mahal, the Elephant Stables and the Hazara Rama temple; the Group of Monuments at Hampi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Bahmani building is best seen in the Jama Masjid at Gulbarga, whose courtyard is unusually roofed over, and in the fort and madrasa at Bidar. The Bahmani court also nursed Dakhini, the southern form of Urdu, as a literary language.