A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE: VIJAYANAGAR.* IN days when Madras and the

Deccan have fallen behind the northern districts of India in interest, and perhaps in importance, and when all India south of the Vindhyas has apparently ceased to furnish our novelists with exciting

• d Forgotten Empire : Vidaynna gar. By Robert Sewell, Madras Civil Service (Retired). London Swan Sonnenschein and Co. [16e..]

themes, and our publicists with the material for political speculations, it is well to be reminded that there was a time when the Dravidian races of Southern India, under the leadership of the Kings of Vijayanagar, showed their valour in a hundred fights against the Moslem, and when these Kings in prosperity and opulence rivalled, if they did not excel, the Mogul rulers of Delhi.

Mr. Sewell, of the Madras Civil Service, has done us this kindness, and lovers of all that is brilliant and picturesque in history have good cause to be grateful for this contribu- tion to the history of India. Mr. Sewell, moreover, has been fortunate in discovering new sources of information. Nearly half of his volume consists of a translation of the narratives of Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz, Portuguese traders, who visited Vijayanagar in the height of the city's political and material greatness ; and we may say, without any prejudice to Mr. Sewell's learned and interesting chapters, that we found this the most delightful reading in the whole volume.

Mr. Sewell's translation retains the manner of the six- teenth century, and its language is delightfully re- miniscent of Hakluyt and Purchas. Both narratives are artless enough, but remarkably vivid, and full of splendidly simple descriptions of men and scenes ; and Nuniz not only gives an account of the wars and policy of Krishna Deva Raya which is of great historical value, but also prefaces his narrative with a history of the foundation

and growth of the Vijayanagar Empire. Thanks to Nuniz, the author has been able to give an account of the origin and early years of the Empire which is supported by the evidence

of Ferishtah, the great Moslem historian of the Deccan and of Hindoo traditions.

Vijayanagar, it would seem, was founded circa 1335 Al?.., after the fall of Anegundi, by two brothers of the Kuroba caste named Harihara and Bukka, who in a few years became strong enough to stem the tide of Moslem invasion, which had

threatened to sweep away Hindooism in Southern India. Aided by dissensions among the Moslems, they rapidly became masters of a considerable territory, and were recognised as overlords by most of the Southern Hindoos, who had only too good reason to dread Mahommedan conquest when thecruel- ties of Muhammad Tnghlaq of Delhi were fresh in their minds.

Of this Monarch, whom he calls Tagao Mamede, Nuniz tells many wild and bizarre stories, and the evidence of Ferishtah and Ibn Batuta suggests that he suffered from the mania induced by absolute power, which in earlier days made Nero at once the wonder and the terror of the Roman world. Best known of his insane and cruel freaks is the removal of the inhabitants of Delhi to Daulatabild, a distance of six hundred miles, and of this Dm Batuta, who witnessed the scenes of suffering and death to which this senseless order gave rise, has left us an appalling story :—

"The Sultan ordered all the inhabitants to quit the place (Delhi), and upon some delay being evinced, he made a proclama- tion stating that what person soever, being an inhabitant of that city, should be found in any of its houses or streets should receive condign punishment. Upon this they all went out ; but his servants finding a blind man in one of the houses and a bedridden one in the other, the Emperor commanded the bedridden man to be projected from a Whits, and the blind one to be dragged by

his feet to Da.ulatabid and he was so dragged."

The insane tyranny of Muhammad bore its natural fruit in the rebellion of the Deccan in 1347 A.D., and the establish-

ment of the independent kingdom of the Bahmani Sultans of Kulbarga, who were unable to conquer, though they might at times defeat, the fighting Kings of the line of Harihara; and when this dynasty succumbed to the vigorous and successful

usurper, Narasimha, the Moslem kingdom was breaking up into the five Sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapar, Bidr, Birar, and Golkonda, while the Portuguese had already appeared in Indian waters.

The dynasty of Narasimha culminated in the greatest of the Kings of Vijayanagar, Krishna Deva Raya.„ the victor of Raichfir. He was a just and generous ruler, an indefatig-

able builder of temples and of more useful public works, and a rave and successful soldier. The Portuguese who visited his Court, and took part in his campaigns, were loud in his praise, and the description of the King by Paes deserves to be quoted at some length :— " This king," writes Pam " is of medium height, and fair com- plexion, and of good figure, rather fat than thin ; he is the most feared and perfect king that could possibly be, cheerful of disposi-

tion and very merry He is one that seeks to honour foreigners, and receives them kindly, asking about all their affairs, whatever their condition may be He is a great ruler and a man of much justice, but subject to sudden fits of rage, and this is his title Crisnarao king of kings, lord of the greater lords of India, lord of the three seas and of the land.' He has this title because he is by rank a greater lord than any, by reason of what be possesses in armies and territories, but it seems that he has (in fact) nothing, compared to what a man like him ought to have, so gallant and perfect is he in all things."

Of his mode of life Pees gives us an interesting descrip- tion :- " This king is accustomed every day to drink a quartilho ' (three quarter pint) of oil of sesamum before daylight, and anoints himself all over with the said oil ; he covers his loins with a cloth and takes in his arms great weights made of earthenware, and then, taking a sword, he exercises himself with it all he has sweated out the oil, and then he wrestles with one of his wrestlers. After this labour he mounts a horse and gallops about the plain in one direction and another till dawn, for he does all this before daybreak. Then he goes to wash himself and after he is washed he goes to where his pagoda is, inside the palace, and makes his orisons according to custom. Then he despatches his work with those men who bear office in his kingdom, and govern his cities, and his favourites talk with them."

The wealth and general prosperity of the Empire were re- markable, and the population enormous. The King brought a trained force of seventy thousand infantry and seven thousand horse, with over three hundred war-elephants, into action at Raichfir, besides the "lashkar," or national levy, and the troops and war-elephants maintained by his feudatories. Nuniz expressly states that the contingents of eleven out of the two hundred great nobles and under-Kings between whom the Empire was divided amounted to a hundred and eighty thousand armed men, with large numbers of elephants. The trade of the Empire was considerable, and a well-devised system of irrigation added enormously to the fertility of the country, while the diamond mines on the north bank of the Krishna and at Vajra Kurfir were in those days the richest in the world ; every stone of over twenty-five carats in weight was sent to the Rya for his own personal use, and we learn from Pass and Nuniz that the Mahhnavami festival was celebrated in the Royal Palace with dazzling magnificence. The ladies of the Court and the Queen's maids of honour were literally clothed in jewels. They wore On their high caps flowers made of large pearls ; collars on the neck with jewels of gold very richly set with many emeralds and diamonds and rubies and pearls, and besides many strings of pearls, and others for shoulder belts ; on the lower part of the arm many bracelets with half the upper arm all bare, having armlets of precious stones ; on the waist many girdles of gold and of precious atones, which girdles

hang almost as far as half the thigh ; besides these belts (worn over rich silk robes)they have other jewels and many strings of pearls round the ankles, for they wear rich anklets even of greater value than the rest. They carry in their hands

vessels of gold as large as a small cask of water in all (there are) perhaps sixty women fair and young from sixteen to

twenty years of ago. So great is the weight of the brace- lets and gold and jewels carried by them, that many cannot support them, and women accompany them, assisting them by supporting their arms. These women are maids of honour to the queens ; on each day of these nine days of the feast, one of the queens sends, each on her own day, her ladies with the others." In 1530 the splendid and gallant Krishna Raya died, and the

good fortune of the Empire died with him. His successor, Achyuta Raya, to Krishna's one weakness—arrogance- added a host of his own vices. He was cowardly, sensual,

and cruel, suspicious of his nobles and feudatories, and in matters of State influenced by none but his brothers-in-law, o2 whom Nuniz naïvely remarks that " they are men very evilly

disposed and great Jews." His foreign policy was pusillanimous to a degree. He surrendered the fortress of Raichftr to the Adil Shah of Bijapflr, but gained nothing thereby but the veiled hatred of his subjects and the open contempt of the Moslems. In the reign of his successor, the powerless Sadfisiva, the crash came. The five Moslem rulers of the Deccan, alarmed by the arrogance of Rims Biqa, the real ruler of Vijayanagar, formed a coalition, and at Talikota overthrew the Hindoos with frightful slaughter. In one day the Empire fell. Rama Rays, was executed by the Moslems, who had seized him during the battle ; his surviving brother Tirumala fled with the helpless King, some of the Crown jewels, and the remnant of the army to the fortress of Pennakonda, and the great defenceless city suffered all the horrors of a prolonged and barbarous sack. With the fall of Vijayanagar fell the prosperity of Goa, the city with which Vijayanagar had long traded. With the Empire breaking up, and the great feudatories everywhere setting up independent kingdoms, and with brigand bands roaming in all directions, trade languished and died. The Kings and nobles, "rich," as Sassetti relates, " not with rich- ness like ours, but with richness like the Grassi and the others of old days," were ruined, and the revenue of Goa fell from a hundred and twenty thousand to six thousand ducats. The ruins of the great city are still among the wonders of Southern India. They mark the fall of Hindooism in the Deccan before the iconoclastic Moslem, a fall which endured for a century and more, till the wild Mahratta horsemen of Sivaji led the Hindoo reaction. But the Mahratta Empire, like that of the Sikhs, was an Empire of iron compared with the golden splendour of the great Kings of Vijayanagar.