Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c26.20

c26.20

Within the walls of the citadel at Vijayanagar there are the remains of certain buildings, obviously of a secular order, in which only the lower portions have escaped the destruction wrought by the conquerors of the city after the fateful battle of Talikota in 1565. Yet so beautiful are these coursed and moulded terraces that if their superstructures now overthrown and broken were in any way their equal, they fully justify the eulogies of those who, visiting the city in its prime, described it in such glowing terms. Two of these substantial masonry basements stand out above all others, the larger, known as the King's Audience Hall, and another rather smaller called the "Throne Platform", or by some the "House of Victory", as it is recorded that it was erected in commemoration of Deva Raja's return from his conquest of Orissa in 1513. Both terraces seem to have been surmounted by pillared pavilions above which rose pyramidal roofs, the whole structure, according to the contemporary accounts, being several stories in height. It is also not unlikely that these royal pavilions when in use were the Dravidian equivalent to the two large halls which invariably found a place in the design of the imperial palaces in India and Persia, later to be known as the Diwan-i-Am and the Diwan-i-Khas, or halls of Public and Private Audience respectively. The platform of the King's Audience Hall, which may have been the Diwan-i-Am, still retains the sockets of its pillars, and there appear to have been ten rows of these, each row containing ten pillars, so that it was a "Hall of a Hundred Pillars". Fragments of these lie around from which it seems that they had cylindrical shafts, bracket capitals, and square bases Three spacious stages, one above the other, diminishing as they rise, make up the solid foundation of this terrace, up which mount fine flights of steps, with the retaining walls decorated by means of mouldings and string-courses, broad, bold and precise, to conform with the monumental character of the building of which they formed such a substantial part.