Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c16.t5.7

c16.t5.7

The size of the city has been variously estimated. Nicolo dei Conti remarks that the walls of the city of Vijayanagar were carried up to the mountains and enclosed the valleys at their foot and that by that reason the extent of the city was increased, and its circumference was sixty miles.⁴¹ Abdur Razāk says that the distance between the northern and southern gates of the outer fortress was two statute parasangs and the same was also the distance between the eastern and western outer gates.⁴² Paes thinks that the circumference of the city was twenty-four leagues⁴³ and says that the first serra was two leagues away from the capital. According to Caesar Frederick it was twenty-four miles. From these widely contradictory statements of the different writers it is difficult to estimate the exact size of the capital. However it appears that the accounts of Nicolo dei Conti and Paes are highly exaggerated with regard to the size of the city. It is highly improbable that the size was so big, for, if it had really been so, the distance between the centre of the capital and the first line of fortifications must have been about eighteen to twenty miles. It is probable that both the chroniclers wrongly took into account the mountain fortresses and the fortifications outside the main fortifications of the capital and calculated the circumference to be more than sixty miles. Abdur Razāk’s statement that the diameter of the city was fourteen miles can be well compared with the modest estimate of the circumference of the city by Caesar Frederick. Sewell says: "From the last fortification in the south beyond the present town of Hospet, to the extreme point of the defences of Anegundi on the north the distance is about twelve miles. From the extreme western line of walls in the plain to the last of eastern works amongst the hills lying in the direction of Daroji and Kampili the interval measures about ten miles. Within this area we find the remains of the structures of which I have spoken."⁴⁴ Thus the area occupied by the present ruined site of the capital of Vijayanagar also shows that the estimates of Abdur Razāk and Caesar Frederick are nearer the truth than the estimates of Nicolo dei Conti and Paes.