Journey
Domingo Paes — a Portuguese eye on Vijayanagara (c. 1520)
A Portuguese horse trader out of Goa, not an envoy, who walked into Vijayanagara about 1520 and described a city as large as Rome with more people in it than he could count. His account of the bazaars, the chariot festival and the Mahanavami is the fullest description anyone left of the living capital.
Stops (5)
- Lisbon · home · the Tagus
The Casa da Índia in Lisbon held the crown monopoly on everything the carreira brought back, and Paes came east on that trade as a private man rather than an official. His chronicle survives only because it was bound up with Fernão Nunes's in a single Portuguese manuscript, and the Casa's own archive burned in the 1755 earthquake.
- Old Goa · Goa, the horse trade
Goa, the seat of the Estado da Índia and of the Portuguese horse trade — the animals Vijayanagara needed for its cavalry were the reason Paes had business inland at all. He was a horse trader rather than an envoy, which is why his description is of markets, prices and processions rather than of policy.
- Hampi / Vijayanagara · Vijayanagara, c. 1520–22
Vijayanagara at its peak under Krishnadevaraya. He describes a city “as large as Rome and very beautiful to the sight”, with more people in it than he could count, an irrigation system, a bazaar street of jewellers, and a king who received him. It is the fullest description anyone left of the living capital.
- Hampi Vitthala complex · the bazaar and the chariot
The temple and bazaar quarters along the Tungabhadra — the colonnaded market streets and chariot-festival grounds he describes are the ruins now walked at Hampi. He counted the shops, described the women's quarters and the Mahanavami platform, and gave measurements that archaeologists have used to identify particular buildings. His measurements have been used to identify particular buildings in the ruins.
- Krishnadevaraya · the king he saw
He describes Krishnadevaraya in person — the build, the smallpox scars, the daily routine of oil, exercise and audience — which makes him the only source for what any Vijayanagara emperor actually looked like. Forty-three years later the city he describes was sacked and never reoccupied. Forty-three years after he described the city, it was sacked over five months and never reoccupied.