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

The only fault that Paes could find in Krishnadeva was that he was ‘subject to sudden fits of rage,’ and he sometimes, though rarely, treated fallen enemies with unbecoming contempt. Thus, after his 1520 campaign, in which he captured Raichur from Adil Shah, the sultan of Bijapur, he treated the sultan’s envoy with utter disdain, and to his plea that the conquered territories might be restored to the sultan, he haughtily replied that if the sultan came and kissed his feet, he will return the lands.

Such insulting behaviour was however unusual in Krishnadeva, for he was normally mature, sober and thoughtful in all his conduct, in his private as well as public life. And there is a fair amount of data about the private life of the raja, unlike about most other kings of the age. ‘This king has twelve lawful wives, of whom there are three principal ones, the sons of each of these three being heirs of the kingdom, but not those of the others,’ reports Paes. These principal wives are in all respects provided everything equally by the raja ‘so that there may never be any discord or ill feeling between them; all of them are great friends, and each one lives by herself.’

Paes also reports on the king’s daily routine: ‘This king is accustomed every day to drink a three-quarter pint of oil of gingili (sesame) before daylight, and he anoints himself all over with the said oil; he covers his loins with a small cloth and takes in his arms great weights made of earthenware [and exercises with them], and then, taking a sword, he exercises himself with it till he has sweated out all the oil, and then he wrestles with one his wrestlers. After this labour he mounts a horse and gallops about the plain in one direction and another till dawn … Then he goes to bathe, and a Brahmin bathes him …’ After this morning exercise routine, the raja goes to a pavilion to attend to public business.

KRISHNADEVA DIED IN 1529 and was succeeded by Achyuta, his designated heir, but his succession set off family tensions, with Krishnadeva’s son-in-law, Ramaraya, proclaiming Krishnadeva’s infant son as king, and seeking to rule the kingdom in the infant’s name. This could have led to a civil war, but Achyuta reconciled Ramaraya by sharing power with him. This arrangement however did not last long, and presently, when Achyuta was away from the capital on a campaign, Ramaraya took full control of the government, and he seized and imprisoned Achyuta when he returned to the capital. This was followed by a confusing period of usurpation, counter-usurpation and provincial rebellions, which was, strange though it might seem, brought to an end by Adil Shah, the sultan of Bijapur, who arrived in Vijayanagar as an invader to take advantage of the disarray in the kingdom, but stayed on to affect reconciliation between Achyuta and Ramaraya. By this agreement Ramaraya recognised Achyuta as the king of Vijayanagar, and Achyuta in turn granted Ramaraya full autonomy in his fief. The terms of this agreement were faithfully observed by both princes, and Achyuta ruled in peace till his death in 1542. Adil Shah got a large sum of money, twelve elephants and some horses as his reward for arranging the reconciliation.

Achyuta on his death was succeeded by his minor son Venkata, with his maternal uncle Tirumala ruling the kingdom on his behalf, as his regent. This was followed, as usual in similar situations in Vijayanagar history, by a prolonged and confusing tussle between various contenders for power, in which Adil Shah also got repeatedly involved, as previously. In the course of this turmoil Tirumala strangled Venkata, his ward, slaughtered many members of the royal family, and ascended the throne himself. But his reign was short-lived, for presently Ramaraya advanced against him with an army. Faced with immanent deposition, Tirumala, according to Ferishta, ‘shut himself up in the palace, and, becoming mad from despair, blinded all the royal elephants and horses, also cut off their tails, so that they might be of no use to the enemy. All the diamonds, rubies, emeralds, other precious stones, and pearls, which had been collected [by the Vijayanagar rajas] in the course of many ages, he crushed to powder between heavy millstones, and scattered them on the ground. He then fixed a sword blade on a pillar in his apartment, and ran his breast upon it with such a force that it pierced through and came out at the back, thus putting an end to his existence.’

Ramaraya then raised Sadashiva, a nephew of Achyuta, to the throne, and himself ruled the state as its de facto king. He held Sadashiva under close guard, but kept up the pretence of subservience to the raja by periodically going to prostrate before him. ‘Ramaraaje now became roy of Beejanuggur without a rival,’ states Ferishta. And he then came to be known as Bade Ramaraya: Ramaraya the Great.

During Ramaraya’s de facto rule there was a substantial increase in the number of Muslim officers in high positions in Vijayanagar, in administration as well as in the army. And just as Adil Shah had previously involved himself in the internal affairs of Vijayanagar, now Ramaraya began to intervene in the tussles between the Deccan sultanates, sending his army into their territories. He also engaged in complex diplomatic manoeuvres to prevent the sultanates from uniting and threatening Vijayanagar. In the same aggressive spirit, he sent a military contingent deep into South India, to deal with the rebels there and to extend his dominance right up to Kanniyakumari, at the very tip of India, where he had his army set up a victory tower, to symbolise his absolute dominance in the peninsula. He also conducted a successful campaign to subdue the Portuguese who had, in Goa as well as in San Thome, presumed to take law into their own hands, looting temples and converting Hindus to Christianity.

These aggressive military activities of Ramaraya however constituted only one aspect of his reign. He, like several other Vijayanagar rulers, was a highly cultured man, and a zealous patron of artists and writers, and under his patronage several writers, in Telugu as well as in Sanskrit, flourished in his court. He was also a keen builder, and some of the finest temples of the Vijayanagar period were built by him. And he, though a staunch Vaishnavite himself, was, again like several other Vijayanagar kings, quite tolerant and liberal in religious matters, and treated all people fairly, irrespective of their religious and sectarian affiliation.

THE AGGRESSIVE MILITARY campaigns of Krishnadeva and Ramaraya shifted the balance of power in the peninsula in favour of Vijayanagar. While previously the rajas were invariably the losers in their wars with the sultans, now they were invariably the winners, especially after the Sultanate splintered into five independent kingdoms. This military dominance of Vijayanagar threatened the very survival of the peninsular Muslim kingdoms, and induced them finally to unite against Vijayanagar. In the ensuing battle, the battle of Talikota, Vijayanagar was decisively defeated by the sultans, never again to rise to prominence.

The specific circumstances that led to the battle are not known. Ferishta attributes it to the arrogant and insulting conduct of Ramaraya towards the Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan, and to the atrocities his troops committed in those kingdoms, desecrating or destroying mosques, butchering Muslims and molesting their women. This was the normal mode of conduct of most medieval Indian armies in enemy territories, and in any case these excesses were no different from the excesses committed by the sultanate troops in the Vijayanagar territory. Ramaraya does not seem to have had any religious motive in his military campaigns, but was only seeking to establish the political dominance of Vijayanagar in the peninsula. Similarly, the objective of the sultanates in uniting against Vijayanagar was not religious, but political, to ensure their survival as independent kingdoms, though a religious colouration was also given to the campaign by the sultans, to rouse the valour of their soldiers. The sultans, according to Ferishta, felt that the king of Vijayanagar, ‘who had bound all the rajas of the Carnatic to his yoke, required to be checked and his influence removed from the countries of Islam, in order that their people might repose in safety from the oppression of unbelievers, and their mosques and holy places no longer subject to pollution from infidels.’