Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c7.s1.2

v1.c7.s1.2

The terror which shook the country to its very foundation was entirely foreign; the measures adopted to meet and rout it were purely indigenous. It is in the explanation of these two that I intend to dwell on the Muhammadan conquest of southern India in the latter half of the thirteenth, and in the early years of the fourteenth, centuries; and on the remedies which the Hindus took not only to ward off the worst danger they ever had, but to stop its progress for centuries to come. The former will take us into the study of the political situation in southern India in the first quarter of the fourteenth century; and the latter into the study of the manner in which the Hindus of those times led their lives. It is only when we have understood these two points that we shall be able to appreciate the remark that "the history of Vijayanagar is a subject of considerable interest in the annals of India, as the last barrier that was opposed to Mohamedan invasions, and that preserved the southern part of the Peninsula from foreign rule until a very modern period";¹ and that the Vijayanagara age marks only "a fresh instance of Hindu vitality", in the direction of creating an empire "which was at once a centre of both political and literary life."²