Hampi (Vijayanagara)

Hampi is a tiny village on the Tungabhadra river, among the ruins of Vijayanagar, the capital of the Vijayanagara empire.¹² The city was founded in 1336, and it was destroyed after the battle of 1565.²³ See Vijayanagara.

The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 describes Vijayanagar as the capital of the empire of that name.¹² It lay on the bank of the Tungabhadra, in the Hospet taluk of the Bellary district.¹² According to the gazetteer, “The only part of it now inhabited is the tiny hamlet of Hampi”.¹² The remains of the great city “are often called ‘the Hampi ruins.’”¹² They cover 9 square miles, but the forts and outposts of the city took in a far larger area.¹²

The gazetteer calls the site “a strangely wild place to have been the birthplace and capital of an empire”.¹² It is a country of granite hills and piled boulders.¹² Through them run the walls, streets, palaces and temples of the city.¹²

According to the gazetteer, the city was founded in 1336.²³ It mattered in South Indian history because it was “a stronghold of the Hindus”.²³ For two and a half centuries, it “successfully opposed the southward movement of the Musalman arms”.²³

After the battle of 1565, the king fled to Penukonda with 550 elephants laden with treasure.²³ Then “the victorious Musalmans arrived at Vijayanagar, and for five months they employed themselves in deliberately destroying everything destructible within the city”.²³ Two years later, the traveller Cesare de’ Federici found the houses standing empty.²³ See Talikota and Penukonda.

The gazetteer singled out these buildings:³

• the palace enclosure, the Queen’s Bath and the Elephant Stables
• the Hazara Ramasvami temple, “supposed to have been the private place of worship of the kings”, with its carved scenes (reliefs) from the Ramayana
• the monolithic Narasimha, carved from a single rock
• the great temple of Pampapati, whose tall tower “was built by Krishna Deva, who did more than any of his line to beautify the capital”³

The head of the Brahmanical establishment (the temple’s Brahmin priests) at the Hampi temple told Robert Sewell about the tower.⁴ He said that Krishnadeva Raya “celebrated his accession by erecting the great tower at the entrance of the temple”.⁴

A. H. Longhurst wrote an illustrated guide to the buildings for visitors.⁵ Its preface to the second edition is dated 1925.⁵ It uses the photographs of the Southern Circle of the Archaeological Survey.⁵ See Krishnadeva Raya and Achyuta Raya.

Footnotes

1. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 465 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 466 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

3. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 467 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

4. Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar) (1900), p. 123 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

5. A. H. Longhurst, Hampi Ruins Described and Illustrated, 3rd ed. (1933), preface to the second edition, pp. iii–iv (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³