This volume presents a comprehensive account of the Vijayanagara Empire and Hampi-Vijayanagara site through a study of archaeology, photography, painting, sculptures, inscriptions, coinage, conservation and heritage, and existing scholarship.

Written About A.D. 1520 To 1522 And A.D. 1535 To 1537 Respectively.

The study of specialized craft production has a long tradition in archaeological research. Through analyses of material remains and the contexts of their production and use, archaeologists can examine the organization of craft production and the economic and political status of craft producers. This study combines archaeological and historical evidence from the author's twenty years of fieldwork at the imperial capital of Vijayanagara to explore the role and significance of craft production in the city's political economy of the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. By examining a diverse range of crafts from poetry to pottery, Sinopoli evaluates models of craft production and expands upon theoretical and historical understandings of empires in general and Vijayanagara in particular. It is the most broad-ranging study of craft production in South Asia, or in any other early state empire.

"In the year 1336 AD, two brothers Harihara and Bukka Raya, founded a kingdom on the banks of the Tungabhadra River at a place called Hampi. Over the next 3 centuries, it would grow to become one of the mightiest empires in the world, the Vijayanagara Empire. An empire dazzling in it's achievements, in it's riches, in it's arts. From it's founding, to it's fall after the Battle of Tallikota to the heights it achieved under Sri Krishna Deva Raya, City of Victory aims to recreate the splendor and glory of one of the most magnificent empires ever."--Amazon.

The South India story attempted here is of a peninsular region influenced by the oceans, not by the Himalayas. Yet it is more than that. It is a story of facets of four powerful culturesKannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, to name them in alphabetical orderand yet more than that, for Kodava, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya and Tulu cultures have also influenced it, as also other older and possibly more indigenous cultures often seen as tribal, as well as cultures originating in other parts of India and the world. With South Indias Malayalam region being (in modern times) the most balanced in terms of religion and also the most literate, its Kannada zone occupying South Indias geographical centre and containing the sites of the Vijayanagara kingdom and also the kingdom of Haidar and Tipu, its Telugu portion the largest in area and holding the most people, and its Tamil part the most Dravidian and possessing the oldest literature, the four principal cultures are, unsurprisingly, competitive. But they are also complementary. This is a Dravidian story, and also more than that. It is a story involving four centuries, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth, yet other periods intrude upon it...

It is the sixteenth century in South India and the Vijayanagara Empire is in the throes of a succession struggle that threatens to disrupt the peace of the realm. Far away from the chaos, the splendorous estate of Madhuvana sits in relative heaven where its seventy-year-old patriarch, Rajanna, has just died. After elders decree that his widows are to perform an ancient ritual in which a widow is cremated alive, the lives of three people intersect. Aadarshini is Rajanna’s twenty-two-year-old third wife and mother of his heir. Azam Khan is Rajanna’s trusted bodyguard, left rudderless after the death of his master. Prabhakara Swami is the enigmatic temple priest who holds the strings that control the fates of others. When Aadarshini is thrust into a forbidding darkness, she discovers what it means to become the hero of her own story as destiny tosses her around like a straw in the wind. While events in the capital close in around her, she must seize her fate and overpower not just those who want to see her down, but also her inner demons. In this intriguing historical thriller, the widow of a South Indian patriarch embarks on a journey of self-discovery to take control of her destiny and survive in an uncertain world.

The Vijayanagara rajas ruled a substantial part of the southern peninsula of India for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century. During this epoch the region was transformed from its medieval past toward a modern colonial future. Concentrating on the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history of Vijayanagara, this book details the pattern of rule established in this important and long-lived Hindu kingdom that was followed by other, often smaller kingdoms of peninsular India until the onset of colonialism. Through an analysis of the politics, society, and economy of Vijayanagara, the author addresses the central question of the extent to which Vijayanagara, as a medieval Hindu kingdom, can be viewed as a prototype of the polities and societies confronted by the British in the late eighteenth century. The book thus presents an understanding and appreciation of one of the great medieval kingdoms of India as well as a more general assessment of the nature of the state, society, and culture on the eve of European colonial rule.