Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
another packed oven on wheels deposited me in a forlornly beautiful
town called Cuddapah, on the banks of the Penneru River: ancient
ornate temples, stone ghats leading down to a broad expanse of lazy
cobalt water that slid through and fed the land like a great artery.
Nothing had changed here in several hundred years.
The whole area south of the vast Krishna River - a natural boundary
delineating South India proper, everything between the Deccan and
Sri Lanka - was once the seat of an enormous and now largely
forgotten empire. The Venkatagiri rajas, I later learned, had once
been part of this, vassals to monarchs who controlled an area larger
than the Austrian empire, ruled from the city of Vijayanagar, 'City of
Victory.' Numerous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European
visitors declared it a marvel with which no Western capital could
compare in size, prosperity, and magnificence.
It was founded in
AD
1336, when Edward III reigned in England, a
date that marks the transition of ancient India into modern India.
Before this time the whole of the southern subcontinent was
dominated by Hindu kingdoms so old that their origins are lost in
the miasma of time. We know of them only through references in
Buddhist edicts carved in rock 1,600 years earlier: the Pandiyans,
lords of Madura; the Cholas, also great temple builders and based at
Tanjore; and many others, among the least of which were the rulers
of Venkatagiri. But this often glorious past, in its old form, vanished
forever with the founding of Vijayanagar.
The empire arose for pragmatic reasons. Muslim leaders persisted
in their efforts to conquer all of India, and even stepped them up,
their feared and hated forces massing just north of the Krishna River.
The feuding Hindu principalities forgot their differences out of
sheer terror, uniting under the leadership of the warrior-kings of
Vijayanagar, who for the next 250-odd years held the enemy at bay,
becoming the saviors of the South.
All that now remains of the City of Victory is the ruins lying
forsaken near the tiny village of Hampi. Even the name Vijayanagar
has vanished from memory. The first Western contact was
commercial and indirect; the Portuguese on the western coast battled
various forms of opposition solely to secure Vijayanagar's maritime
