Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): a contribution to the history of India , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Introductory remarks - Sources of information - Sketch of history of

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947400
Langue	English

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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Introductory remarks — Sources of information —Sketch of history of
Southern India down to A. D. 1336 — A Hindu bulwarkagainst Muhammadan
conquest — The opening date, as given by Nuniz,wrong — "Togao
Mamede" or Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi — His careerand character.
In the year 1336 A. D. , during the reign of EdwardIII. of England, there occurred in India an event which almostinstantaneously changed the political condition of the entiresouth. With that date the volume of ancient history in that tractcloses and the modern begins. It is the epoch of transition fromthe Old to the New.
This event was the foundation of the city andkingdom of Vijayanagar. Prior to A. D. 1336 all Southern India hadlain under the domination of the ancient Hindu kingdoms, — kingdomsso old that their origin has never been traced, but which arementioned in Buddhist edicts rock-cut sixteen centuries earlier;the Pandiyans at Madura, the Cholas at Tanjore, and others. WhenVijayanagar sprang into existence the past was done with for ever,and the monarchs of the new state became lords or overlords of theterritories lying between the Dakhan and Ceylon.
There was no miracle in this. It was the naturalresult of the persistent efforts made by the Muhammadans to conquerall India. When these dreaded invaders reached the Krishna Riverthe Hindus to their south, stricken with terror, combined, andgathered in haste to the new standard which alone seemed to offersome hope of protection. The decayed old states crumbled away intonothingness, and the fighting kings of Vijayanagar became thesaviours of the south for two and a half centuries.
And yet in the present day the very existence ofthis kingdom is hardly remembered in India; while its oncemagnificent capital, planted on the extreme northern border of itsdominions and bearing the proud title of the “City of Victory, ”has entirely disappeared save for a few scattered ruins ofbuildings that were once temples or palaces, and for the long linesof massive walls that constituted its defences. Even the name hasdied out of men's minds and memories, and the remains that mark itssite are known only as the ruins lying near the little village ofHampe.
Its rulers, however, in their day swayed thedestinies of an empire far larger than Austria, and the city isdeclared by a succession of European visitors in the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries to have been marvellous for size and prosperity— a city with which for richness and magnificence no known westerncapital could compare. Its importance is shown by the fact thatalmost all the struggles of the Portuguese on the western coastwere carried on for the purpose of securing its maritime trade; andthat when the empire fell in 1565, the prosperity of Portuguese Goafell with it never to rise again.
Our very scanty knowledge of the events thatsucceeded one another in the large area dominated by the kings ofVijayanagar has been hitherto derived partly from the scatteredremarks of European travellers and the desultory references intheir writings to the politics of the inhabitants of India; partlyfrom the summaries compiled by careful mediaeval historians such asBarros, Couto, and Correa, who, though to a certain degreeinterested in the general condition of the country, yet confinedthemselves mostly to recording the deeds of the European colonisersfor the enlightenment of their European readers; partly from thechronicles of a few Muhammadan writers of the period, who oftenwrote in fear of the displeasure of their own lords; and partlyfrom Hindu inscriptions recording grants of lands to temples andreligious institutions, which documents, when viewed as statepapers, seldom yield us more than a few names and dates. The twochronicles, however, translated and printed at the end of thisvolume, will be seen to throw a flood of light upon the conditionof the city of Vijayanagar early in the sixteenth century, and uponthe history of its successive dynasties; and for the rest I haveattempted, as an introduction to these chronicles, to collect allavailable materials from the different authorities alluded to andto weld them into a consecutive whole, so as to form a foundationupon which may hereafter be constructed a regular history of theVijayanagar empire. The result will perhaps seem disjointed, crude,and uninteresting; but let it be remembered that it is only a firstattempt. I have little doubt that before very long the wholehistory of Southern India will be compiled by some writer giftedwith the power of “making the dry bones live; ” but meanwhile thebones themselves must be collected and pieced together, and my dutyhas been to try and construct at least the main portions of theskeleton.
Before proceeding to details we must shortly glanceat the political condition of India in the first half of thefourteenth century, remembering that up to that time the Peninsulahad been held by a number of distinct Hindu kingdoms, those of thePandiyans at Madura and of the Cholas at Tanjore being the mostimportant.
The year 1001 A. D. saw the first inroad into Indiaof the Muhammadans from over the north-west border, under theirgreat leader Mahmud of Ghazni. He invaded first the plains of thePanjab, then Multan, and afterwards other places. Year after yearhe pressed forward and again retired. In 1021 he was at Kalinga; in1023 in Kathiawar; but in no case did he make good his foothold onthe country. His expeditions were raids and nothing more. Otherinvasions, however, followed in quick succession, and after thelapse of two centuries the Muhammadans were firmly and permanentlyestablished at Delhi. War followed war, and from that periodNorthern India knew no rest. At the end of the thirteenth centurythe Muhammadans began to press southwards into the Dakhan. In 1293Ala-ud-din Khilji, nephew of the king of Delhi, captured Devagiri.Four years later Gujarat was attacked. In 1303 the reduction ofWarangal was attempted. In 1306 there was a fresh expedition toDevagiri. In 1309 Malik Kafur, the celebrated general, with animmense force swept into the Dakhan and captured Warangal. The oldcapital of the Hoysala Ballalas at Dvarasamudra was taken in 1310,and Malik Kafur went to the Malabar coast where he erected amosque, and afterwards returned to his master with enormous booty. [6] Fresh fighting took place in 1312. Six yearslater Mubarak of Delhi marched to Devagiri and inhumanly flayedalive its unfortunate prince, Haripala Deva, setting up his head atthe gate of his own city. In 1323 Warangal fell.
Thus the period at which our history opens, aboutthe year 1330, found the whole of Northern India down to theVindhya mountains firmly under Moslem rule, while the followers ofthat faith had overrun the Dakhan and were threatening the southwith the same fate. South of the Krishna the whole country wasstill under Hindu domination, but the supremacy of the olddynasties was shaken to its base by the rapidly advancing terrorfrom the north. With the accession in 1325 of Muhammad Taghlaq ofDelhi things became worse still. Marvellous stories of hisextraordinary proceedings circulated amongst the inhabitants of thePeninsula, and there seemed to be no bound to his intolerance,ambition, and ferocity.
Everything, therefore, seemed to be leading up tobut one inevitable end — the ruin and devastation of the Hinduprovinces; the annihilation of their old royal houses, thedestruction of their religion, their temples, their cities. Allthat the dwellers in the south held most dear seemed tottering toits fall.
Suddenly, about the year 1344 A. D. , there was acheck to this wave of foreign invasion — a stop — a halt — then asolid wall of opposition; and for 250 years Southern India wassaved.
The check was caused by a combination of small Hindustates — two of them already defeated, Warangal and Dvarasamudra —defeated, and therefore in all probability not over-confident; thethird, the tiny principality of Anegundi. The solid wall consistedof Anegundi grown into the great empire of the Vijayanagar. To thekings of this house all the nations of the south submitted.
If a straight line be drawn on the map of India fromBombay to Madras, about half-way across will be found the RiverTungabhadra, which, itself a combination of two streams runningnorthwards from Maisur, flows in a wide circuit north and east tojoin the Krishna not far from Kurnool. In the middle of its coursethe Tungabhadra cuts through a wild rocky country lying about fortymiles north-west of Bellary, and north of the railway line whichruns from that place to Dharwar. At this point, on the north bankof the river, there existed about the year 1330 a fortified towncalled Anegundi, the “Nagundym” of our chronicles, which was theresidence of a family of chiefs owning a small state in theneighbourhood. They had, in former years, taken advantage of thelofty hills of granite which cover that tract to construct a strongcitadel having its base on the stream. Fordable at no point withinmany miles the river was full of running water at all seasons ofthe year, and in flood times formed in its confined bed a turbulentrushing torrent with dangerous falls in several places. Of theAnegundi chiefs we know little, but they were probably feudatoriesof the Hoysala Ballalas. Firishtah declares that they had existedas a ruling family for seven hundred years prior to the year 1350A. D. [7]
The chronicle of Nuniz gives a definite account ofhow the sovereigns of Vijayanagar first began to acquire the powerwhich afterwards became so extensive. This account may or may notbe accurate in all details, but it at least tallies fairly with theepigraphical and other records of the time. According to him,Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi, having reduced Gujarat, marchedsouthwards through the Dakhan Balaghat, or high lands above thewestern ghats, and a little previous to the year1336 [8] seized the town and fortress of Anegundi.Its chief was slain, with all the members