The City of Vijayanagar in the Reign of Deva Raya II.(A.D.1420(?),1443)
Deion given by Nicolo to Bracciolini --The capital --Festivals --Immense population --Abdur Razzak's deion --His journey --The walls --Palaces --The Mint --Bazaars --The great Mahahnavami festival.
It will be well to suspend our historical narrative for a time in order to acquire some idea of the appearance and condition of the great city of Vijayanagar in these days.We have already noticed that as early as 1375A.D.Sultan Mujahid of Kulbarga had heard so much of the beauty of this capital that he desired to see it,and it had grown in importance and grandeur during the succeeding half-century.About the year 1420or 1421A.D.there visited Vijayanagar one Nicolo,an Italian,commonly called Nicolo Conti or Nicolo dei Conti,and if he was not the earliest European visitor,he was at least the earliest that we know of whose deion of the place has survived to this day.His visit must have taken place shortly after the accession of Deva Raya II.Nicolo never apparently wrote anything himself.His stories were recorded in Latin by Poggio Bracciolini,the Pope's secretary,for his master's information.Translated into Portuguese,they were re-translated from the Portuguese into Italian by Ramusio,who searched for but failed to obtain a copy of the original in Latin.This original was first published in 1723by the Abbe Oliva of Paris under the title P.BRACCIOLINI,DE VARIETATE FORTUNAE,LIBER QUATUOR.
Nicolo,on reaching India,visited first the city of Cambaya in Gujarat.After twenty days'sojourn there he passed down the coast to "Pacamuria,"probably Barkur,and "Helly,"which is the "Mount d'Ely"or "Cabo d'Eli"of later writers.Thence he travelled inland and reached the Raya's capital,Vijayanagar,which he calls "Bizenegalia."[125]He begins his deion thus:--"The great city of Bizenegalia is situated near very steep mountains.The circumference of the city is sixty miles;its walls are carried up to the mountains and enclose the valleys at their foot,so that its extent is thereby increased.In this city there are estimated to be ninety thousand men fit to bear arms."I must here interpose a correction.There were no "mountains"properly so called at Vijayanagar;only a confused and tumbled mass of rocky hills,some rising to considerable altitude.The extent of its lines of defences was extraordinary.Lofty and massive stone walls everywhere crossed the valleys,and led up to and mounted over the hillsides.The outer lines stretched unbroken across the level country for several miles.The hollows and valleys between the boulder-covered heights were filled with habitations,poor and squalid doubtless,in most instances,but interspersed with the stone-built dwellings of the nobles,merchants,and upper classes of the vast community;except where the elaborately constructed water-channels of the Rayas enabled the land to be irrigated;and in these parts rich gardens and woods,and luxurious crops of rice and sugar-cane,abounded.Here and there were wonderfully carved temples and fanes to Hindu deities,with Brahmanical colleges and schools attached to the more important amongst their number.
As to the appearance of the scenery,I cannot do better than quote the deion given in 1845by a distinguished South-Indian geologist,Lieutenant Newbold:[126]--"The whole of the extensive site occupied by the ruins of Bijanugger on the south bank of the Tumbuddra,and of its suburb Annegundi on the northern bank,is occupied by great bare piles and bosses of granite and granitoidal gneiss,separated by rocky defiles and narrow rugged valleys encumbered by precipitated masses of rock.Some of the larger flat-bottomed valleys are irrigated by aqueducts from the river....The peaks,tors,and logging-stones of Bijanugger and Annegundi indent the horizon in picturesque confusion,and are scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins of the ancient metropolis of the Deccan,which are usually constructed with blocks quarried from their sides,and vie in grotesqueness of outline and massiveness of character with the alternate airiness and solidity exhibited by nature in the nicely-poised logging stones and columnar piles,and in the walls of prodigious cuboidal blocks of granite which often crest and top her massive domes and ridges in natural cyclopean masonry."The remains of palaces,temples,walls,and gateways are still to be seen,and these abound not only on the site of Vijayanagar proper,but also on the north side of the swiftly rushing river,where stood the stately citadel of Anegundi,the mother of the empire-city.The population of this double city was immense,and the area occupied by it very extensive.From the last fortification to the south,beyond the present town of Hospett,to the extreme point of the defences of Anegundi on the north,the distance is about twelve miles.From the extreme western line of walls in the plain to the last of the eastern works amongst the hills lying in the direction of Daroji and Kampli the interval measures about ten miles.Within this area we find the remains of the structures of which I have spoken.The hovels have disappeared,and the debris lies many feet thick over the old ground-level.But the channels are still in working order,and wherever they exist will be found rich crops,tall and stately trees,and a tangle of luxuriant vegetation.On the rocks above are the ruins of buildings and temples and walls,and in many places small shrines stand out,built on the jutting edges of great boulders or on the pinnacles of lofty crags,in places that would seem inaccessible to anything but monkeys and birds.
