Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

BUKKA DIED IN 1377, and was succeeded by his son Harihara II, who assumed the grand title, Rajadhiraja, King of Kings, which was not entirely unjustified, considering the vastness of the kingdom he ruled over. But the title was more than a mere status posture; it was also an expression of the raja’s aggressive military policy. He launched a number of military campaigns against his neighbouring kingdoms, in most of which he was victorious; his army is said to have invaded even Sri Lanka and exacted tribute from its king. And he, like nearly every king of Vijayanagar, battled repeatedly with the Bahmani Sultans. Under him the territory of Vijayanagar expanded eastward into Kondavidu and westward into Konkan, and this enabled him to dominate the immensely profitable overseas trade through the eastern and western peninsular ports, the revenue from which significantly added to the resources of his kingdom.

Harihara II reigned for 28 years, and died in 1404. His death was followed by a two-year-long succession struggle between his three sons, in which his youngest son, Devaraya I, emerged victorious. The sixteen years of Devaraya’s reign were marked by continuous wars — with the Bahmani Sultanate, with the Velamas of Rachakonda and the Reddys of Kondavidu. He is also known to have invaded Kerala and subjugated several chieftains there. Because of these victories over tough adversaries, or because he was addicted to wildlife hunting, Devaraya bore the sobriquet Gajabetekara: Hunter of Elephants.

But there was much more to Devaraya’s reign than his military campaigns. He was, like his grandfather Bukka, an ardent patron of scholars, writers and artists, whom he often honoured by literally showering them with gold coins and gems. He himself was reputed to have been a distinguished scholar, and under him Vijayanagar became the main centre of Hindu culture in peninsular India. Devaraya also undertook several major public works, such as the construction of a massive dam across Tungabhadra, and a 24-kilometre-long aqueduct from the river to his capital, to provide water for the city. He also built several waterworks to irrigate farmlands.

There is much confusion about the immediate successors of Devaraya, but it seems likely that he was succeeded by his son Ramachandra, whose reign lasted only for about six months. He was succeeded by his brother Vijaya. But Vijaya had no interest at all in governance, and he left it to his son Devaraya to run the government, and this prince eventually succeeded him to the throne. Devaraya II ‘was of an olive colour, of a spare body, and rather tall,’ states Abdur Razzak, the Persian envoy in peninsular India, who saw him in 1443. ‘He was exceedingly young, for there was only a slight down upon his cheeks, and none upon his chin. His whole appearance was very prepossessing.’ Devaraya II, like several of his predecessors, was a keen patron of literature, and his court was adorned by the celebrated Telugu poet Srinatha.

The main occupation of Devaraya II, as that of most other Vijayanagar kings, was to wage wars against his neighbours, particularly against the Bahmani Sultanate. But he had no success against the Sultanate — in fact, according to Ferishta, the raja, defeated by Sultan Ahmad Shah, had to agree not to molest the sultan’s territories thereafter, and to pay him an annual tribute.

The raja then, according to Ferishta, ‘called a general council of his nobles and principal Brahmins’ to inquire why Vijayanagar invariably lost its wars with Bahmani, and was reduced to paying tribute to it, even though its territories, population and revenue far exceeded those of the Sultanate, ‘and in like manner its army was far more numerous.’ After due deliberation, the council concluded that the victory of Bahmani was due to the superiority of its cavalry and archers. Devaraya then gave orders to recruit a large number of Muslims into his army, and he ‘allotted to them jagirs, erected a mosque for their use in the city of Vijayanagar, and commanded that no one should molest them in the exercise of their religion. He also ordered a copy of the Koran to be placed before his throne, on an ornate desk, so that Muslims might perform the ceremony of obeisance before him, without violating their religious regulations. He also made all Hindu soldiers learn the discipline of the bow … [from Muslim soldiers, so that he at length came to have in his army] 2000 Muslims and 60,000 Hindus well skilled in archery, besides 80,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry, armed in the usual manner with pikes and lances.’ These changes considerably enhanced the military might of Vijayanagar and enabled it to become, during the reigns of Krishnadeva and Ramaraya, the dominant power of peninsular India.

Devaraya died in May 1446. ‘In the evil year Kshaya, in the wretched second [month] Vaisakha, on a miserable Tuesday, in … [the dark fortnight], on the fourteenth day, the unequalled store of valour, Devaraya, alas, met with death,’ states an inscription at Sravana Belgola.

THE DEATH OF Devaraya was followed, as on the death of several other Vijayanagar kings, by a period of chaos and succession struggles. His four successors were all effete and utterly incompetent to meet the challenges faced by the kingdom. They would be the last rulers of the Sangama dynasty, and during their rule the kingdom suffered a substantial loss of territory — it lost large tracts of its eastern districts to the king of Orissa, and on the west coast it lost Goa and its adjoining areas to the Bahmani sultan. The loss of Goa was a major blow to Vijayanagar, for it was heavily dependent on Goa for the import of horses from the Middle East, which its army critically needed.

The last two kings of the Sangama dynasty were depraved, wicked scamps. According to Fernao Nuniz, a Portuguese trader who spent some three years in Vijayanagar in the mid-sixteenth century, Virupaksha, the penultimate king of the dynasty, ‘cared for nothing but women and to fuddle himself with drink.’ And his life ended bizarrely, murdered by one of his sons. This prince then, disdaining to ascend the throne himself, raised one of his brothers, Praudha Devaraya, to the throne. But this raja proved to be even more wicked and dissolute than his father, and he immediately freed himself from the debt of gratitude he owed to his parricide brother by assassinating him, and then plunged into a life of wanton debauchery. But before he could do much harm, he was deposed by Saluva Narasimha, one of the leading provincial chieftains of the kingdom, who then ascended the throne. Devaraya offered no resistance to the usurper, but cravenly fled from the capital on the approach of Narasimha. Thus ended, around 1486, the rule of the Sangama dynasty.

Narasimha, who had his fief at Chandragiri in southern Andhra Pradesh, had functioned as a virtually independent ruler for quite some years, and had over the years considerably expanded the territory under his control. Because of the misrule of the last couple of kings of the Sangama dynasty, several provincial chiefs of Vijayanagar, particularly in the southern and eastern provinces of the kingdom, transferred their allegiance to Narasimha. So his position on his accession to the throne was quite strong, though he, like most other rulers of the kingdom, inevitably had to face several internal challenges.

Narasimha ruled for about five years, during which he was engaged in a number of battles, against his adversaries in the kingdom, and to protect the Vijayanagar territory from rival kingdoms. He was mostly successful in these campaigns. But the Saluva dynasty he founded barely survived him. Though Narasimha had two sons, they were too young to rule at the time of his death, so he on his deathbed he entrusted them — and the kingdom — to the care of his trusted minister, Narasa Nayaka, requesting him to rule as the regent till the boys came of age.