Royal Imagery and Networks of Power at Vijayanagara: A study of Kingship in South India
Dr Nalini Rao
NEW DELHI, 2010.
Vijayanagara kingship, the conceptual universe within which the rayas of Vijayanagara lived and expressed their ideas of politics and statecraft, remains an enigmatic subject. There is one basic reason for this: there are no contemporary histories or documents which reveal the strnads that constituted the complex fabric of political ideologies glossed under the rubric, kingship. Skinner has argued that it is possible to use what he calls the "intentional method" in order to unpack the linguistic conventions and ideologies which animate political action. The contextual approach favored by medieval western historians on the theme of statecraft does not find favor among historians of medieval South India, priamrily because bgoth the State and the ideologies underpinning it come prefigured in the package known as "Divine Kingship".For a variety of reasons, partly due to the heavy cloud of orientalism hanging on Indic studies, India kings and the normative vocabulary available for describing the actions of kings,are assimilated to notions of divinity,devaraja, rajadharma etc all of which assume an element of sacerdotal power as the constituent element of Indian kingship. Indian kings and their courtly prasasti composers have also conspired to create the image of divine king so beloved of Indian historiography. The genealogies of medieval kings is replete with references to almost every known puranic god who contibute in some measure in gining an air of royal mytique to the king.
Vijayanagara Empire, the last major political formation of Peninsular India before the advent of western military and economic hegemony, left behind a rich set of copper plate records and nearly 3,500 stone inscriptions along with a veritable treasure trove of sculptures, monumental architecture, and a magnificent royal capital--the City of Victory--all of which can be interogated for clues on the ever elusive conundrum of kingship. Nalini Rao has attempted just this in her recent book which is reviewed here.
The book under review essentially deals with the third dynasty and more particularly it centers on the reign of Krishnadevaraya (1509-1529). She surveys the urban context of Vijayangara on the basis of extant secondary sources. The well known visitors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are referred and an attempt is made to identify the public buildings mentioned by early visitors with the archeological evidence which has become available over the past three decades thanks in part to the pioneering work done by thehistorians like M S Najaraja Rao and the achitectural team of George Michell and John Fritz. A question which the author does not raise, but is relevant to the theme of her book is: Why was there a shift from an aggressive Saiva religious cult to Vaishnava religious traditions during the sixteenth century. The legend of Pampakshtra with the marriage of Goddess Pampa to the god Virupaksha which figured prominently both in the local legends and inscriptions attests to the importance of Saivite cultic affiliations in the early history of Vijayanagara. However there seems to have been a shift to Vittala cult and prominent patronage to the Haridasa saits like Purandaradasa in the sixteenth century. A historian working on Vijayanagara kingship must explore this questions. Fortunately there is an unpublished Ph D dissertation which has gone into this question in a thorough manner.
Nalini Rao has drawn attention to 'royal portraits". The well known examples of Krishnadevaraya and his queens in Tirupathi and of the emperor at Chidambaram, Srisailam and Kanchipuram are discussed by the author. However, her discussion of mahanavami as a ritual expression of Vijayangara kingship is almost entirely based on Burton Stein's reconstruction which was published more than 30 years ago and the present author has not broken any new ground. Again her attempt to see kingship in terms of discrete topic like ( 1 )Heroic kingship ( 2) Liberal Kingship ( 3 ) Dharmic Kingship ( 4 ) Religious Kingship and ( 6 ) Ritual Kingship is not very convincing as the rays of Vijayanagara themselves did not distinguish between these different fascets of their kingship. This can easily be proved by an examination of Krishnadevaraya's campaign against the Gajapathis of Orissa in which the king performed all these roles simulataneously and indeed one can say that the Eastern Campaign was more like a pilgrimage than a military adventure.
This work apprently is a Ph D thesis submitted to an American University and from my reading of the text did not find anything substantially new in this work. The inscriptional sources have not been used and even the literary sources are cited rather spottily. However, the photographs are excellent.
Dr Nalini Rao
NEW DELHI, 2010.
Vijayanagara kingship, the conceptual universe within which the rayas of Vijayanagara lived and expressed their ideas of politics and statecraft, remains an enigmatic subject. There is one basic reason for this: there are no contemporary histories or documents which reveal the strnads that constituted the complex fabric of political ideologies glossed under the rubric, kingship. Skinner has argued that it is possible to use what he calls the "intentional method" in order to unpack the linguistic conventions and ideologies which animate political action. The contextual approach favored by medieval western historians on the theme of statecraft does not find favor among historians of medieval South India, priamrily because bgoth the State and the ideologies underpinning it come prefigured in the package known as "Divine Kingship".For a variety of reasons, partly due to the heavy cloud of orientalism hanging on Indic studies, India kings and the normative vocabulary available for describing the actions of kings,are assimilated to notions of divinity,devaraja, rajadharma etc all of which assume an element of sacerdotal power as the constituent element of Indian kingship. Indian kings and their courtly prasasti composers have also conspired to create the image of divine king so beloved of Indian historiography. The genealogies of medieval kings is replete with references to almost every known puranic god who contibute in some measure in gining an air of royal mytique to the king.
Vijayanagara Empire, the last major political formation of Peninsular India before the advent of western military and economic hegemony, left behind a rich set of copper plate records and nearly 3,500 stone inscriptions along with a veritable treasure trove of sculptures, monumental architecture, and a magnificent royal capital--the City of Victory--all of which can be interogated for clues on the ever elusive conundrum of kingship. Nalini Rao has attempted just this in her recent book which is reviewed here.
The book under review essentially deals with the third dynasty and more particularly it centers on the reign of Krishnadevaraya (1509-1529). She surveys the urban context of Vijayangara on the basis of extant secondary sources. The well known visitors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are referred and an attempt is made to identify the public buildings mentioned by early visitors with the archeological evidence which has become available over the past three decades thanks in part to the pioneering work done by thehistorians like M S Najaraja Rao and the achitectural team of George Michell and John Fritz. A question which the author does not raise, but is relevant to the theme of her book is: Why was there a shift from an aggressive Saiva religious cult to Vaishnava religious traditions during the sixteenth century. The legend of Pampakshtra with the marriage of Goddess Pampa to the god Virupaksha which figured prominently both in the local legends and inscriptions attests to the importance of Saivite cultic affiliations in the early history of Vijayanagara. However there seems to have been a shift to Vittala cult and prominent patronage to the Haridasa saits like Purandaradasa in the sixteenth century. A historian working on Vijayanagara kingship must explore this questions. Fortunately there is an unpublished Ph D dissertation which has gone into this question in a thorough manner.
Nalini Rao has drawn attention to 'royal portraits". The well known examples of Krishnadevaraya and his queens in Tirupathi and of the emperor at Chidambaram, Srisailam and Kanchipuram are discussed by the author. However, her discussion of mahanavami as a ritual expression of Vijayangara kingship is almost entirely based on Burton Stein's reconstruction which was published more than 30 years ago and the present author has not broken any new ground. Again her attempt to see kingship in terms of discrete topic like ( 1 )Heroic kingship ( 2) Liberal Kingship ( 3 ) Dharmic Kingship ( 4 ) Religious Kingship and ( 6 ) Ritual Kingship is not very convincing as the rays of Vijayanagara themselves did not distinguish between these different fascets of their kingship. This can easily be proved by an examination of Krishnadevaraya's campaign against the Gajapathis of Orissa in which the king performed all these roles simulataneously and indeed one can say that the Eastern Campaign was more like a pilgrimage than a military adventure.
This work apprently is a Ph D thesis submitted to an American University and from my reading of the text did not find anything substantially new in this work. The inscriptional sources have not been used and even the literary sources are cited rather spottily. However, the photographs are excellent.
