Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c5.19

c5.19

The contribution of Vijayanagar to art and architecture was not inconsiderable. These kings were great builders. During their time were constructed many strategical fortresses, big palaces, spacious temples with huge towers rising into the sky, remarkable not only for the massiveness of their size but also for the details of decoration, sculpture and painting they contain. Many of these works are perfect specimens of art. The scenes from the Rāmāyaṇa painted on the walls of the inner prākāra of the Rāmasvāmi temple at Kumbakōṇam in the Tanjore district are sure to evoke the unstinted admiration of any person who visits the place. The most striking of the monuments are the romantic ruins of Hampi now “an open air museum of Hindu monuments”, which recall to mind the glories of what was once a great and flourishing city. There are also many other monuments which stand to this day, in different degrees of dilapidation, to speak of the wealth and prosperity of the empire of Vijayanagar. A few of them are the forts of Penugoṇḍa, Candragiri, Vellore and Jiñji, the thousand and hundred-pillared maṇṭapas at Kāḷahasti, Tiruvaṇṇāmalai, the towers at Cidambaram, Tiruvaṇṇāmalai and Madura, and the huge palaces and halls at the last mentioned place. The accounts of the contemporary travellers like Abdur Razāk and Paes which describe the paintings and sculpture at the imperial court of Vijayanagar clearly show that the allied arts of sculpture and painting had attained a high degree of perfection under the Rāyas.