Vijayanagara Karnataka India

The empire of Vijayanagar (named for its capital Vijayanagar, "City of Victory," in present-day Karnataka), founded in 1336, had expanded rapidly toward Madurai in the south and Goa in the west and exerts intermittent control over the east coast and the extreme southwest.

Vijayanagar rulers closely follow Chola precedents, especially in collecting agricultural and trade revenues, in giving encouragement to commercial guilds, and in honoring temples with lavish endowments.

Added revenue needed for waging war against the Bahmani sultans is raised by introducing a set of taxes on commercial enterprises, professions, and industries.

Political rivalry between the Bahmani and the Vijayanagar rulers involves control over the Krishna-Tunghabadhra river basin, which shifts hands depending on whose military is superior at any given time.

The Vijayanagar rulers' capacity for gaining victory over their enemies is contingent on ensuring a constant supply of horses—initially through Arab traders but later through the Portuguese—and maintaining internal roads and communication networks.

Merchant guilds enjoy a wide sphere of operation and are able to offset the power of landlords and Brahmans in court politics.

Commerce and shipping eventually pass largely into the hands of foreigners, and special facilities and tax concessions are provided for them by the ruler.

Arabs and Portuguese compete for influence and control of west coast ports, and, in 1510, Goa passes into Portuguese possession.

Saluva Timmarusu or simply Timmarasa, who had served as the prime minister of Krishna Deva Raya, had also served as prime minister under Viranarasimha Raya.

He belongs to a Niyogi Telugu Brahmin family.

The later writings of Portuguese traveler Fernão Nunez suggest that Vira Narasimha, while on his death bed in 1509, had ordered Timmarasa to blind his half brother Krishna Deva Rraya to ensure that his own minor son of eight years would become king of the empire.

Timmarasa had instead presented the king with a pair of she-goat eyes in order to satisfy the wish of the dying king.

This way Timmarasa ensured that Krishnadevaraya became the successor.

However, there is no record to suggest anything but a friendly relationship between the two half brothers and that the coronation of Krishna Deva Raya had been a smooth one.

In 1524, Krishnadevaraya crowns his minor son Yuvaraja.

A few months later the prince falls ill and dies of poisoning.

Accusing Timmarusu for this crime, Krishnadevaraya has the entire family of the minister blinded.

It is said the King later released Timmarusu, on knowing that the conspiracy to kill his own son was hatched by the Gajapathis of Orissa, who belong to the great Solar Dynasty or Surya Vamsi clan of Orissa and did not want their princess Jaganmohini to wed Krishadevaraya, as they believed he was not of pure blue blood.

The Gajapathis had had to agree to this marriage, however, owing to Krishnadevaraya's victory over them.

Krishanadevaraya's parents, Narasa Nayaka, a chieftain from Dakshina Kannada and Nagaladevi, a chieftain's daughter from Uttara Kannada, are not from the royal family of Vijayanagara, the Sangama Dynasty).

The king later deplores and relents of his own actions with Timmarusu, who, on being released, will spend the rest of his life begging in …

… to ascend the throne at Vijayanagara.

Although he probably is not as dissolute a ruler as the Portuguese traveler and writer Fernão Nunes will later describe him to be, the severe challenges he faces will make a successful reign difficult.

Krishna Deva's death has precipitated renewed attacks by Bijapur, Golconda, and Orissa and a revolt by the king's minister, Saluva Viranarasimha, and the southern chieftains of …

The Hindu Vijayanagara kingdom under Krishnadevaraya, who dies in 1529, has developed into one of the world’s great trading centers, despite internal opposition and invasions from northeastern Hindu kingdoms.

Krishnadevaraya has worked with Portuguese allies to take control of the Bahmani successor state of Bijapur.

Achyutadevaraya succeeds him.

Achyuta has dealt successfully with all the state’s enemies until the late 1530s, when he is imprisoned by Aliya Rama Raya, the chief minister, with whom he had agreed to share power.

Opposition by some of the nobles to Achyuta's imprisonment, combined with a revolt in the south, lead to his release and the beginnings of civil war; but the new ruler of Bijapur, Ibrahim 'Adil Shah, after early attempts to create divisiveness in Vijayanagar, arbitrates a settlement between Achyuta and Rama Raya.

Under the settlement, Achyuta virtually hands over his sovereignty to the regent, retaining nominal kingship.

The city of Vijayanagar itself contains numerous temples with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster of shrines for the deities.

Most prominent among the temples is the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers.

Temples continue to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, but these activities are based more on tradition than on contemporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar ruler—Harihara I—was a Hindu who converted to Islam and then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.)

The temples sponsor no intellectual exchange with Islamic theologians because Muslims are generally assigned to an "impure" status and are thus excluded from entering temples.

When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate combine their forces and attack Vijayanagar in 1565, the empire crumbles at the Battle of Talikot.

Vijayanagara, the capital city of the Vijayanagara empire and a bulwark of Hindu civilization in South India, has flourished between the fourteenth century and sixteenth centuries.

The reign of Vijayanagara’s Emperor Achyuta ends in 1542 with about the same external boundaries of the kingdom as in 1529, but the internal struggle with the regent Rama Raya plus the activities of other nobles and chieftains have weakened the hold of the center over some of the provinces.

The process of decentralization had set in again, but now the strongman who will pull the kingdom together is already on the scene.

Rama Raya brings himself to the undisputed pinnacle of power when he defeats his rival in the succession struggle following Achyuta's death and crowns his own candidate, Achyuta's nephew Sadasiva.

Vijayanagar's relations with the Deccan sultanates are most crucial during the period of Rama Raya's rule.

Vijayanagar has usually competed on a more than equal basis and in the same system of state rivalries with the five Muslim states, at least since the time of Krishna Deva Raya, who died in 1529.

Thus, an invasion from Bijapur is repulsed in 1543.

Sadasiva has from the first been kept under guard; Rama Raya, together with his brothers Tirumala and Venkatadri, rules the Vijayanagara kingdom.

Rama Raya is able to control, although not to subdue entirely, rebellious nobles in the east and the extreme south.

He also concludes a treaty in 1546 with the Portuguese, whose settlements have been expanding and who have caused no small amount of damage to indigenous settlements over the past few years.

Rama Raya had aided Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar in taking a fort from Bidar in 1548.

After seven or eight years of rule, Rama Raya also assumes royal titles.