Featured Image: The Vitthala temple at Hampi
When the Emperor Krishnadeva Raya ascended to the throne of Vijayanagara on the Śrī-Jayantī day of Śaka 1432, he was faced with the arduous task of building a much-needed centralized power-centre and a strong imperial authority. The realm and the body politic was no longer as it had been more than a century and a half ago in the days of the Empire’s founders, the brothers Harihara and Bukka. It would transform some more in the reign of this peerless sovereign.
Krishnadeva Raya knew that powerful ministers and warlords could potentially threaten the monarch, leading to political and military conflict. His father — a powerful warlord from coastal Karnataka and a generalissimo of the hosts of the Saluva Emperor — had ruled as Regent, before Krishnadeva Raya’s brother had ascended to the throne. All this was mired by conflict, as such situations are wont to.
As Emperor, Krishnadeva Raya’s reign too would face opposition from his chiefs. However, he sought to ensure that this did not happen, and – even if it did – to ensure that he came out on top.
Efforts aimed at a consolidation of power
After his ascension in 1509 CE, Krishnadeva Raya took steps to consolidate power with the imperial office as well as to cultivate a more personal ― as opposed to an institutional ― loyalty among his nobles and chieftains.
Brahmins were appointed as durga-daṇḍanāyaka~s (“commanders of fortresses”) and to other important military commands. The forts not only acted as defenses against external aggressors and as a line safeguarding the supply chain required during military campaigns, but also constrained the Vassal Lords and other minor chieftains by surrounding their territories at key geographical and strategic locations.
Brahmins and non-kinsmen of the Emperor ― since empowering contending claimants to the throne with garrisons and resources might end disastrously ― were sometimes appointed to important governorships as well.
An interesting side-note here is that, in similar fashion to Vijayanagara, the participation of Brahmins in military functions gets very much amplified in the Maratha Empire. The Peshwas come to dominate the Maratha State and take it to new heights.
Chieftains of a lesser rank called Pāl̥ēgāra~s or the ‘Poligars’ were installed. These chieftains were dependent upon the military service they gave to the Emperor. The numerous Pāl̥ēgāra families maintained the Empire’s forts and provided auxiliaries in times of war.
Another cadre of chiefs (oḍeya) or imperial agents was established and they were granted a small estate or a fortress. Their duty, mainly, was to collect revenue from the peasants and noblemen in a particular territory. They also supplied tribute and soldiers as deemed necessary by the Emperor or his ministers. Descendants of one such oḍeya whose headquarters were the Srirangapattana fortress in the Upper Kaveri would one day become the Wodeyar rulers of Mysuru. Agents located in coastal areas were also used to procure warhorses and firearms for the Emperor’s armies.
These agents were meant to extend a centralised imperial authority and carry out the Emperor’s writ across the length and breadth of the country. Sometimes they would be representatives of the Emperor when he made a grant or an endowment to a temple or a monastic institution. Over a period of time, some of these agents themselves become quite powerful, thus subverting their original purpose.
The State had already been using mercenaries, and the practice was continued. Mercenaries would also form a part of the garrisons in forts, apart from the auxiliaries provided by the hill-folk or forest-folk.
By these measures Krishnadeva Raya sought to curtail the power of older warrior-noble families and build a large centralised State.
Krishnadeva Raya’s reign saw a rather steady ― as steady as can be expected ― flow of resources into the capital and the imperial treasury, enough to crush rebellious Lords and battle rival monarchs alike.
However, these measures were insufficient in the long run and lasted only as long as an Emperor capable of willing his subordinates to bend to his ― what may have been seen as egregious ― demands sat on the throne.
The lone Emperor against the manifold noble clans
The problem was that resources were being extracted from the richer and more agriculturally-suited lands of the Deccan, the ports and harbours which brought in commerce via international trade, the fertile coastal plains and river basins et cetera, and were being transported across large distances to the dry interior on the militarily advantageous elevated Deccan plateau. The inhabitants and Vassal-Lords of the richer provinces would naturally not have been happy. Less so, in fact, when the Emperor commanded his vassals to mobilize their men to fight his wars.
Mercantile and artisanal guilds were a good and typically dependable source of tax and tribute too. But revenue from the guilds was mostly devoured by the local rulers. The guilds themselves were mostly localised: they operated under the protection and partonage of the local rulers and were largely limited to operating within a particular geography. Long gone were the days of the Guptas, the Rashtrakutas and the Cholas, when the ships of the guilds commanded the seven winds on the seven oceans and oversaw trade and industry from the Dweepa Sukhadhara to the island-kingdoms of Champa, Kambujadesha, Suvarnabhumi, Singhasri and Srivijaya.
As Vijayanagara slowly transformed into what Nilakantha Sastri called a “Hindu war state” and what Stein called a “conquest state”, there was also a booming cash economy. Taxes and endowments were now in cash, not in kind. The beneficiaries of land grants increasingly get the money income generated from the land, instead of the produce or output from the land.
While there had been waves of migration happening in the Deccan since the 12th or 13th century, Vijayanagara saw not only a migrating warrior-class but also a migrating peasantry attached to these warriors. They settled in sparsely inhabited districts of the various provinces. With imperial consent, they also settled in revolt-prone provinces so as to dissuade a malcontent vassal from revolt by keeping him occupied with settling the migrants.
With all the wars that Vijayanagara was fighting and the resultant loss in elite and literate manpower, the existence of a permanent quasi-bureaucratic system dedicated to revenue-collection and general upkeep of the country would not have been possible. Thus, large-scale, community-level tax-farming by the Emperor and his vassals cannot be ruled out. The revenue collection was done at points of production, in markets, along important roads, in ports and so on. A fixed sum was paid over to the imperial treasury.
All these factors, among others, made the local ruler, and not the Emperor, the guarantor of the rights of communities and individuals within his territory. The masses would, in all likelihood, have been more loyal to the subordinate governor or the Vassal-Lord than the Emperor.
According to one estimate, Krishnadeva Raya had roughly 200 subordinate Vassal-Lords and Governors under him. His empire comprised an area of approximately 220,000 sq. km.
Another issue that Krishnadeva Raya faced was the conflict between vassals who ruled provinces of unequal size. The unequal size of the vassal territories meant that there were large disparities between the power wielded by different chiefs. A more powerful nobleman could continue low-scale aggression against a relatively weaker nobleman. This would force the latter to seek an alliance with a distant but powerful noble elsewhere in the Empire. Neighbouring chiefs who had nothing to do with a conflict would be drawn to it since a conflict affected the complex and precarious balance of political power in the region. Often, the Emperor would sanction punitive campaigns and demands over his erring subordinates, but it did not make much difference. Imperial resources were spent quelling internal wars rather than fuelling the war machine against the Sultans.
The granting of a military fief or a lordship was also done by the Emperor. Lordships were doled out as prizes. This Vijayanagara tradition predates the Tuluva Emperor in question, but he continued this. This meant that as long as the Empire kept winning battles and conquered more and more forts and lands, his military generals, commanders and captains expected to be rewarded in cash and in territory. While innovative and essential in keeping the mighty and costly war-machine running, this was not exactly conducive for the creation of a centralised State.
A delicate balance disturbed due to happenstance and internal strife
Of course, the size of the territories ruled by each subordinate also determined how much revenue the Lords handed over to the Emperor and how many men they mobilized for the Emperor’s wars. One must always keep in mind that these Vassals were highly competitive. More men dying for the Emperor meant fewer men available when the Lords fought one another. Krishnadeva Raya and other monarchs had to delicately balance their imperial overlordship over powerful noble families who enjoyed certain ancient rights and privileges, and not just individual Lords and governors.
Vassal-Lords often formed coalitions based on kinship, marital ties and lobbied for their kin to be appointed to important posts, such as governorships or a military command over an important fort. Dissatisfied Lords were well capable of delaying revenue payment to the Emperor, and could potentially refuse or delay troop-mobilization in times of war. At the very least, they could (and often did) harass other weaker Lords. While Krishnadeva Raya did punish problematic vassals, he could not be very harsh and exacting, since this might anger his other Vassal-Lords and due the fact that such punishments meant that resources would be spent on internal foes rather than being expended fighting the Sultanates or the Gajapati. This fact regarding the spending of military resources takes on great significance when we remind ourselves that the Sultans waged a regular, annual and religiously obligatory war upon Vijayanagara.
As the Lords themselves were from old and noble families, they commanded great loyalty among their retainers, the latter also being more dependent on the Lord. The Emperor was a rather distant figure seated in the Capital, seen either during a war or when he visited a prominent local temple to gift endowments.
Krishnadeva Raya died on the fifteenth day of the Śukla pakṣa of the Kārtika month, Śaka 1451 (the date corresponds to 17 October, 1529 CE). The night of his death was even marked by a lunar eclipse. His reign had lasted twenty years.
Through his military campaigns and by instituting a degree of centralisation in the empire, Krishnadeva Raya had attempted to bring together a bunch of southern polities who had previously been only united 400-500 years ago, under the banner of the Rashtrakutas. The Lords, thus subjugated, had been used to their independence all this while.
The Lords of the Tamil lands seem to have particularly resisted Vijayanagara’s attempts at becoming a centralised State: Did they perhaps remember Chola imperium and were unwilling to submit to another power? Or did they find the tax-agents of the Emperor to be villains?
Tamil inscriptions mention the ‘Oḍḍiyan galabai’, a reference to the raids and invasions of the Odias. Gajapati Kapilendra’s son Hamvira and grandson Kapileshwara had after all occupied their lands only a few decades ago, bringing great devastation, and Vijayanagara had been helpless to stop the Odia Hosts. Perhaps the Tamils wanted nothing to do with the Odia-Vijayanagara wars.
Or did they simply dislike the imposition of a central authority with its demands for cash revenue and levies for an unceasing war?
There is reason to believe that they also resented non-Tamil migrants either fleeing the Sultanates or being settled in Tamil lands by Vijayanagara.
Another important fact is that the Lords of Ummattur (who had even risen in rebellion only to be subsequently crushed by Krishnadeva Raya) had extended their power from southern Karnataka to Andhra lands, cutting off the core of the Vijayanagara territories from the Tamil heartland. This seems to have prevented the Tamil heartland from becoming more integrated with the Empire, despite the larger political reality of the time greatly affecting the region. With the Emperor and his authority rendered even more distant, the Tamil Vassal-Lords thus retained a greater sense of autonomy and made considerable gains in the territories they governed.
The dangers of assassination and usurpation by a kinsman were more acute than ever after the death of Krishnadeva Raya. In a few years, his son-in-law Rama Raya established himself as Regent and was Emperor in all but name. He began ruling in his name sometime around 1550 CE, after deposing Emperor Sadashiva Raya.
Under Rama Raya, the Nayaka ruler of Madurai and his son together held sway over a principality of the size of nearly 93,000 sq km. Almost half of the total area of the Empire was now effectively under a single Vassal. No efforts were made to deflect the consolidation of Nayaka authority, suggesting that such a large and independent authority in distant Tamil country was not seen as a threat to or a departure from the political arrangements thought proper and desirable in the past.
He removed Brahmin commanders from their posts and appointed his brothers, sons and other kinsmen to high offices. In fact, he had been doing this even before he became the Emperor, while he was still Regent. These Brahmin men were trained in scribal, accounting, and military skills. They had stood above the framework of kinship affinities and allegiances of territorial chieftaincies in the core of the kingdom. This had made them particularly suitable administrative and military instruments for Krishnadevaraya’s daunting task of establishing royal authority in the empire.
Rama Raya, by nurturing familial ties and patrimonialism, had actively reversed many of Krishnadeva Raya’s centralising policies which were meant to consolidate imperial authority over his Vassals. After replacing commanders with his kinsmen, he gave more autonomy to the Telugu warrior-chiefs on whom his power depended. A swathe of policies geared towards decentralisation disturbed not only the balance of power between the imperial office and the Vassal-Lords but also the power equations between the Lords themselves, effectively ending Krishnadeva Raya’s project of creating a centralised Empire.
For twelve years after Krishnadeva Raya’s death, he had campaigned for the throne. After becoming Emperor, however, he was unable to revive the very policies of centralisation he had earlier undermined.
However, Rama Raya was still pursuing the same aggressive military policy against the Sultans to the north. He even ‘mentored’ a Muslim prince or two, playing one Sultanate against the other and arbitrating disputes between them. Incidentally, this was what Krishnadeva Raya had done as well.
Rama Raya’s commanders waged war for small tracts of land in the north and the loot that came with plundering the cities of the Sultanates, in a bid to push Vijayanagara’s frontiers further northward.
His ruthless, even daring, diplomatic and military manoeuvers worked for twenty years. But Rama Raya was now old. He was eighty. His fall came in the fateful battle fought at Talikota in 1565 CE. Vijayanagara became a rump state, and the Aravidu successors of Rama Raya were unable to bring it to glories past. The Empire then devolved into the four major Nayaka Kingdoms and other smaller principalities.
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