The Empire of Vijayanagara was the last flicker of Hindu State and administration in India. The Empire played an important role in the history of medieval India, not only for its victorious army, progressive foreign relations and sound administration, but also for its patronage to art, culture, literature and religion.
The present work is a history of the Vijayanagara Empire during the rule of its third dynasty, i.e. since 1530.
The work is divided into three parts, dealing with (1) principal events in the history of Vijayanagara between 1529 and 1943, (2) System of administration under which the Empire of the Rayas was governed in the sixteenth century and (3) religious and social conditions. The work is based on authentic source materials, viz. inscriptions and literature. The inscriptions used for this research fall in to two classes, (1) those copied by the Epigraphy Department and (2) those that included in the Mackenzie Manuscripts. The texts of the inscriptions, some of which are still unpublished, have been diligently scrutinized and interpreted. Among the contemporary literary creations, relevant portions of the prabandhas and kavyas have been compared with the inscriptions and Portuguese records. Works of the Muslim historians have also been occasionally consulted.
This monograph embodies the result of investiga-tions begun during the last two years of my service in the Madras Christian College. It was in the summer of 1929, while preparing my lectures on the History of Vijayanagara for the Honours students, that I, at first, became interested in the subject. I discovered that the subject needed thorough investigation, notwith-standing the labour of several eminent scholars. As I proceeded with the study, the field of my investigation widened, and the number of problems that had to be tackled increased. Therefore, the work could not be finished as early as I expected.
The present work consists of three parts. The first part narrates the principal events in the history of Vijayanagara between 1529 and 1543. The second describes the system of administration under which the empire of the Rayas was governed in the sixteenth century; and the third deals with the religious and the social conditions of the same period. The solutions offered to the problems discussed in this volume are often tentative in character, and may have to be modified in the light of future research.
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