Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c9.s2.128

v1.c9.s2.128

The splendour of the capital, its vast extent, and its huge battlements—about which we shall have something to say in the course of this chapter—make it impossible for us to believe that it could ever have been constructed within the course of a few months. There cannot be a doubt that it took a long time for the monarchs to complete the construction of the capital. We infer this from a copper-plate grant dated A.D. 1378 which describes the capital in the following terms: "Having conquered all the world, he (Bukka) built a splendid city called the City of Victory, (vijatva viśvaṁ vijayābhidhānaṁ viśvottaraṁ yō nagarīṁ vyadhatta).⁴ Its fort walls were like arms stretched out to embrace Hēmakūṭa. The points of its battlements like its filaments, the suburbs like its blossom, the elephants like bees, the hills reflected in the water of the moat like stems,—the whole city resembled the lotus on which Lakshmī is ever seated. There, with the Tuṅgabhadra as his foot-stool, and Hēmakūṭa as his throne, he (Bukka) was seated like Virūpāksha for the protection of the people of the earth".⁵ This very capital in A.D. 1368 is called merely the *New Capital*; but in A.D. 1378 it is called the *Supreme City*. The engraver's astonishment at its beauty and size, barring its reference to the deities, is faithfully corroborated by foreign travellers, whose accounts may help us to understand why it was called the *Supreme City* in A.D. 1378. That our surmise about the completion of the capital in A.D. 1378 is correct is further borne out by an inscription of the times of Harihara Rāya II, dated A.D. 1380, which narrates that that monarch was ruling "amid the society of persons ever devoted to works of merit" from his "new capital and the chief cities Vijayanagara".¹ Even in about A.D. 1397 it was called "the new great royal city Vijayanagara".²