The Forgotten Empire

Some time back a good friend (yes, the same guy) left an offline message for me – refer to this link, there is an e-book on Vijayanagar Empire that might interest you. It led to the Gutenberg Project and I downloaded a text file and I was immediately welcomed to what they called as Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts. The notepad file flabbergasted me…no smell of new paper, no pictures, no maps, not even formatting to distinguish one chapter from other. So the file was left on the desktop as it is – forgotten. But later, I mustered enough courage to start reading this file and learnt much about the forgotten empire.

The book was published sometime in late 1800s. Robert Sewell, the author, was an administrative officer in the British India. The book heavily relies on accounts of the chroniclers Firishtah in Adil Shah’s court and Fernao Nuniz and Domingo Paes – Portuguese travelers. Some accounts of Nikitin, the Russian traveler, are also included. However, the entire history is a political discourse – concentrating on wars, who won, who lost and so on. Also, the author finds it difficult to place the historical records to dates. The Hindu, Hijri (Muslim) and Julian Calendars are routinely referred and some analysis and crosschecking of records have helped. In absence of carefully written historical references, finding the correct period of reigns of various monarchs of Vijayanagar has also been difficult. Spellings of the names of the kings (how hard is Virupaksha?!) and places (Raichur, anyone?) also have Farsi and Portuguese flavors, sometimes making it difficult to identify the right one!

What is sorely missing is; how and what made the Vijayanagar Empire so prosperous. The author mentions the architecture of the city was better than any of the contemporary European capitals was. There are references to many festivals being celebrated with great pomp. There are references to usage of abundant gold and diamonds, references to the great architecture of the city and a carefully chosen location. Although more information would have been helpful. A legend goes that the deity in Pandharpur was originally meant to be installed in Vijayanagar, but a war thwarted those plans and then He never left the Bhima for the Tungabhadra. The city was located on the south bank of the Tungabhadra sheltered by wild rocky terrain on one side and a bend in the river making enemy access to the city difficult. The empire was able to maintain huge armies (500 elephants, 6600 horses and 11lak (1,110,000) infantry). One of the kings is also exaggerated to have 400 wives, who all burnt themselves on his funeral pyre upon his death!

The origin of the empire is also interesting – a modest beginning and under duress from Muslim invasion. The kingdoms of Devgiri, Warangal and Dwarsamudra were defeated by the raiding Muslim armies. The northern India was under Muslim hegemony. Much pillage happened in the valleys of the Krishna, the Bhima and the Tungabhadra. It was with this background that the three Hindu principalities, two of them already defeated – Warangal and Dwarsamudra and Anegundi came together to form Vijayanagar. A minister of the sate of Anegundi, Harihar Deva, rose to be the chief, founded the city of Vijayanagar and established himself with the aid of his religious teacher Madhavacharya. The smaller southern kingdoms fell in line accepting the suzerainty of Vijayanagar (not clear exactly how or if there was any resistance).

In keeping their faith with politics of division, the Vijayanagar Empire may also have been responsible for allowing the Portuguese to develop a very strong foothold in Goa, but the references are sketchy.

The splinters of Bahamani Sultanate often fought with Vijayanagar, either together or separately, with Bijapur and Ahmednagar being on the forefront. But the fighting mainly happened in the doab between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra. The capital city was at the northern edge of the empire and entire south was under uniform control and was never pillaged by the Muslim armies. The deltas of the Krishna, the Godavari and the Kaveri were not disturbed. People must have been able to carry on with the agricultural and related commercial/industrial activities and help spiral the economy northwards.

The collapse of the empire was very dramatic. While directing a war, the king accidentally slipped and was attacked and the army panicked losing control over an otherwise winnable war. The city of Vijayanagar was eventually pillaged by the invading armies of Adil Shah and was abandoned by its residents. And although the lineage continued afterwards for some time, they never returned back to the city or were able to recover. When it happened, even the Portuguese economy is said to have suffered, for so much was the volume of the commerce between the two. This also paved way to further Muslim expansion to south giving a stronger foothold to the Nizam and other smaller rulers.

Today the city lies in ruins of whatever is left. I am not sure if the ASI takes care of this treasure for ASI can be rarely trusted with such things. My next mission now is to look for social and economical history of the empire and that period but before that, there is an interlude for Stewart Gordon.

जिवतीची गोष्ट

आम्ही पुण्याला आल्यावर आईनी काही देवही बरोबर आणले. न सांगो, कदचित अनुग्रह होऊनही जाईल!

इतक्या दिवसांनी पोरग हाती लागल्यावर मग काय - श्रावण-बिवण आगदी यथोचित सुरु झाला. मला जास्त हौस खाण्याची, म्हणून मग पोट-भक्ति आलिच ओघनी...काय विचारु नका - डावाच्या चतुर्थीला रव्याचे लाडू, नाग पंचमीला मोदक, शिळसप्तमीला सांजणी आणि आळूच्या वड्या आणि वगैरे वगैरे. ही सवय आजीनी लावली - श्रावणी शनिवारी आळणी स्वयंपाक - मुगाच्या आणि तुरीच्या डाळी ची खिचडी, बाजरीचे रोटगे आणि माठाची भाजी, जन्माष्टमी ला भरलेली केळी.... मग जिवतीच वाण पण व्हायलाच पाहिजे, शुक्रवारी! कणिक आणि गूळ, जायफळ घालून केलेल्या आरत्या हे मुख्य आकर्षण, ओल्या नरळाचे कानवले आणि हरबऱ्याची ऊसळ पण आणि खजूऱ्या.

पुण्यात मात्र जिवतीच्या कागदावर आई खुश नव्हती...पण डोंबिवली मधली आजीच्या वेळची फ्रेम तुटायला आलेली. पुण्यात तो पॅटर्न मिळत नाही, डोंबिवलीतच मिळणार. मग या वेळी डोंबिवली मध्ये आठवण करून दिली, पाहिजे तसा फोटो घेण्याची. गद्रेच्या दुकानात जावून खास जिवतीचा कगद मागितला. पण तोच प्रकार. मग त्याला सांगितल, "आहो, ती एकच देवी असते ना, मुलं वगैरे बरोबर घेवून, तशी जिवती पाहिजे." मग त्याची ट्यूब पेटली - "हा, म्हणजे, सीकेप्यांची जिवती पाहिजे का?" मग त्यानी वरून कुठूनतरी तो ठसठशीत जिवती चा कागद काढला.

हिरवी नऊवारी साडी, भरपूर दागिने, एका हातात अमृताचा कलश, दुसऱ्या हातात पाळणा आणि त्यात एक मुल झोपलेले, पायाशी चार मुलगे आणि एक मुलगी असा भरगोस परिवार, सोबतीला वरच्या कोपऱ्यात चंद्र, सुर्य - अगदी लहानपणी बघितली होती तशीच.

मग लगेच कागदाची फ्रेम करायला टाकली. आता श्रावण कधी सुरु होतो त्याची वाट बघयची! कागदा वरच्या माहिती प्रमणे हा कागद १९३० पसून तसाच आहे, जरा सुद्धा बदल नाही. ह्यावर्षी नक्की आरत्या आणि खजूऱ्या चांगल्या लागणार!

टीप: तसा मी जात-पात मानत नाही, पण खाण्या पिण्या साठी कधी कधी होत अस. तसा मी देव पण मानत नाही, पण श्रीयुत गंगाधर टिपरे मधला शिऱ्या म्हणतो तस, मी नमस्कार करून, आईला, आबांना समधान मिळणार असेल, तर तस करूयात, त्यातलाच हा प्रकार.

So, What’s Happenin’?

Long time, no blog…been really busy with work and a short vacation too. Yeah, this blog was on vacation and it did not tell anyone! Well, it was a short but welcome break from the rut. As you may have guessed it, I did not do anything! So, what does really not doing anything mean? Something, actually….

I had gone to my ancestral home in Dombivli. Ancestral because my father bought it when I was in second standard and I lived there until the twelfth, then off again and on again. Dombivli has changed so much, but the persistent humidity that makes your skin sticky, hasn’t. Neither has the claustrophobic, crowded, full of people, bhajiwallas, temperamental electricity, blaring horns. But everything seems to have grown in proportions to the population and everything bursting at seams. The swamps and moors have been taken over by concrete monstrosity. The Hyacinth is gone!

So, apart from cussing and fuming about the humidity, what did I do? Well, nothing. If it makes you feel jealous, here’s what I did – wake up at my time in the morning. Read DNA (I have given up on TOI, but then that is for another post) for a good 3-4 hours, catch up on family gossip, eat, chat (not the computer kind), nap in the afternoon, chat some more, roam around on crowded streets, eat and sleep. With the exception of reading some random stories from I Thought My Father was God (Good book, read it if you get a chance) and some Agatha Christie, nothing much! Of course, there were trips to the Fish Market and sampling some “rainy season only, wild vegetables”. Ah ha, the smell of raw fish – Bombay duck, Paplet (not pomfret), Tarlee and Ravas what more could I ask?