NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part II, Chapter 7

Vijayanagara Administration and Hampi

Vijayanagara was governed through military chiefs holding land in return for troops, a system called amara-nayaka. Its capital, now the ruins of Hampi, shows this clearly - a heavily fortified city where the royal and the sacred centres stand apart.

The amara-nayaka system

• The king granted a territory called amaram to a military commander, the nayaka.
• The nayaka collected the revenue of that area, kept part of it, maintained a fixed number of horses, elephants and soldiers, and sent tribute to the king.
• He also had to attend the court personally with gifts, especially at the Mahanavami festival, which was the annual reaffirmation of loyalty.
• The office tended to become hereditary, and in the seventeenth century many nayakas set up independent kingdoms - Madurai, Tanjavur and Gingee.
• Historians see a resemblance to the Delhi Sultanate's iqta, though the amaram was rooted in local landholding rather than in a bureaucratic assignment.

Village and revenue

• The ayagar system gave each village a set of twelve hereditary functionaries - accountant, watchman, blacksmith, potter and others - paid by tax-free land.
• Revenue was collected in cash as well as kind, and taxation was heavy because the army was large and constantly at war.
• There were taxes on land, on professions, on marriages and on grazing, with a separate irrigation tax.
• Kings invested in water works - the Kamalapuram tank and the great aqueducts that brought water into the city.

How Hampi is laid out

Imagine a valley of grey granite boulders with a river along the north. The whole city sits inside seven rings of fortification built of huge stone blocks fitted without mortar, so the walls follow the natural rock. The outermost walls enclose not just buildings but fields and reservoirs, so a besieged city could feed itself. Inside, two areas stand apart. To the north lies the sacred centre along the river, crowded with temples and pillared streets where pilgrims and traders met. To the south is the royal centre, a walled zone of platforms, halls and enclosures, entered through gateways that force a visitor to turn sharply so no straight rush is possible.

Monuments of Hampi

• The Virupaksha temple is the oldest and still in worship; Krishnadevaraya added its tall gateway.
• The Vitthala temple has the famous stone chariot and pillars that produce musical notes when struck.
• The Mahanavami Dibba is a great stone platform from which the king watched the nine-night festival, with processions, wrestling and the display of the army.
• The Lotus Mahal and the elephant stables combine arches and domes with Indian pillars - evidence of Indo-Islamic influence in courtly, not religious, buildings.
• Temple gateways grew into towering rayagopurams, often taller than the shrine itself, marking the temple visible from far off.
• The Group of Monuments at Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The site was identified in the nineteenth century by the engineer and antiquarian Colin Mackenzie.