A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c17.63

c17.63

Krishnadeva Rāya was a great builder and added much to the beauty and amenities of the capital. At the beginning of his reign he built a new gōpura (tower) and repaired another in the temple of Virūpāksha. In 1513, as already mentioned, he erected the shrine of Krishnasvāmi to house worthily the image of Bālakrishna he had brought from Udayagiri. With the aid of a Portuguese engineer, whose services he borrowed from the Governor-General of Goa, he improved the irrigation of the dry lands round about Vijayanagar. He added a beautiful suburb to the capital on its southern approaches, and called it Nāgalāpūr in honour of his mother Nāgalā Devī; the new city's water supply came from the new tank which was under construction at the time Paes visited the city. The temple of Viṭṭhalasvāmi on the river bank was also embellished by Krishna Rāya; it marks the extreme limit in the 'florid magnificence' to which the Vijayanagar style advanced. Work on it continued for many years afterwards, and was perhaps only stopped when the Mussalmans destroyed the city in 1565. The enormous statue of Narasimha, hewn out of a single boulder of granite, that lay near the south-western angle of the Krishnasvāmi temple was one of the latest monuments of the reign (1528). Though much mutilated, it is still a striking object amongst the ruins of the city.