A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India c17.s5: Political Effects of the Battle
A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India c17.s5
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Political Effects of the Battle
c17.s5.1
And yet it had far-reaching effects. The Hindu victory so weakened the power and prestige of the Âdil Shâh that he ceased altogether to dream of any present conquest in the south, and turned his attention to cementing alliances with the other Muhammadan sovereigns his neighbours. The victory also caused all the other Muhammadan Powers in the Dakhan seriously to consider the political condition of the country; and this eventually led to a combination without which nothing was possible, but by the aid of which the Vijayanagar Empire was finally overthrown and the way to the south opened. It furthermore greatly affected the Hindus by raising in them a spirit of pride and arrogance, which added fuel to the fire, caused them to become positively intolerable to their neighbours, and accelerated their own downfall.
c17.s5.2
It equally affected the fortunes of the Portuguese on the coast. Goa rose and fell simultaneously with the rise and fall of the second Vijayanagar dynasty; and necessarily so, considering that its entire trade depended on Hindu support; for the king of Portugal was never well disposed towards his hereditary enemies, the "Moors." This is a point frequently left unnoticed by writers on Portuguese colonial history. The two most recent authors of works on the subject, Mr. Danvers ("The Portuguese in India") and Mr. Whiteway ("The Rise of Portuguese Power in India"), pay very little attention to the internal politics of the great country on the fringe alone of which the Portuguese settled, and on the coast of which their vessels came and went. Mr. Danvers devotes one short paragraph to the battle of Raichûr,¹ and another² to the destruction of Vijayanagar. Mr. Whiteway does not even allude to the former event, and concludes his history before arriving at the date of the latter. Yet surely it is easy to see that the success or failure of maritime trade on any given coast must depend on the conditions prevailing in the empire for the supply of which that trade was established. When Vijayanagar, with its grandeur, luxury, and love of display, its great wealth and its enormous armies, was at the height of its power, the foreign traders were eminently successful; when Vijayanagar fell, and the city became desolate and depopulated, the foreign traders had no market for their goods, and trade decayed. So that this great Hindu victory at Raichûr deserved a better fate than to be passed over by the historians as if it had been an event of small importance.
c17.s5.3
¹ Vol. i. p. 347.
c17.s5.4
² Vol. i. p. 533.