Journey
Vijayanagara patronage
Vijayanagara's kings endowed shrines across the whole south, in every sect, and recorded it on the walls — which is why the empire is unusually well documented. The endowments were also policy: a temple that took imperial money became an imperial institution, with the accounts inscribed where anyone could read them.
Stops (11)
- Hampi / Vijayanagara · the capital
The capital on the Tungabhadra, built over ground the Ramayana calls Kishkindha, whose rulers bankrolled temples the length of the peninsula. Hampi behaves less like a single tirtha than like a switchboard: the inscriptions on its walls and on walls a thousand kilometres away record the same treasury paying out.
- Krishnadevaraya · r. 1509–1529
The reign in which the endowment programme reached its widest extent: the Tirumala gopuram gilded, the Vitthala complex extended, grants recorded at Srisailam, Kalahasti, Kanchipuram and Srirangam, and eight Telugu poets kept at court. He also visited Tirumala seven times and left copper-plate records of each visit. His portrait statues with his queens stand inside the Tirumala complex, which is unusual for a donor.
- Hampi Vitthala complex · 1513 onward
The Vitthala complex at Hampi, with the stone chariot and the colonnade of piers that ring at different pitches, going up in Krishnadevaraya's reign and after, and never finished. Work stops mid-course, so the unfinished carving is the clearest physical record anywhere of a court that ceased to exist in one season.
- Kishkindhā · Kishkindha
The epic region where Rama meets Hanuman and Sugriva, which Anegundi across the river from Hampi is the strongest candidate for. Founding an imperial capital on identified epic ground is a claim rather than a coincidence, and the Ramachandra temple in the royal enclosure is where the claim is stated.
- Tirupati · the gilded gopuram
Tirumala, the most heavily endowed Vishnu shrine in India, whose Vijayanagara-period grants are recorded in hundreds of inscriptions on its walls. Krishnadevaraya gilded the gopuram and gave jewelled ornaments that are still in the temple treasury, and the statues of him and his queens stand inside the complex. The jewelled ornaments he gave are still in the temple treasury and the grants are cut into its walls.
- Kālahasti / Srikālahasti · Srikalahasti
The wind-element shrine on the Swarnamukhi, endowed by Vijayanagara and rebuilt in part under it, and the subject of the court poet Dhurjati's temple-purana in Telugu. Imperial money, imperial epigraphy and imperial literature arrive at the same shrine in the same reign. The lamp in the inner sanctum flickers in still air, which is why this is the wind element among the Pancha Bhuta Sthalams, and the town's kalamkari is drawn with a pen for temple cloth rather than printed for export.
- Srisailam/ Sri Shailam · Srisailam
The Mallikarjuna jyotirlinga on the Nallamala hills above the Krishna, where the outer prakara wall and much of the sculpture belong to Vijayanagara patronage. Endowing a jyotirlinga on the empire's northern frontier is a border statement as much as a religious one. The shrine also holds one of the eighteen Maha Shakti Pithas in Bhramaramba, so a jyotirlinga and a pitha share one enclosure on the empire's northern frontier.
- Shringeri Śāradā Pīṭham · Sringeri
The southern Shankara matha, continuously endowed from the fourteenth century, whose head Vidyaranya is named in the tradition of the empire's own founding. The relationship runs both ways: the matha legitimised the dynasty and the dynasty funded the matha, and the grants are on record. It is one of very few institutions from the empire that has run continuously since it fell, and its grants are on record from the fourteenth century.
- Shrīvilliputtūr · Srivilliputtur
Andal's town, whose twelve-tier gopuram is now the Tamil Nadu state emblem and whose Vijayanagara grants are inscribed on its walls. Krishnadevaraya's own Telugu poem retells Andal's life, so the empire endowed the shrine and wrote the literature about it. The empire endowed the shrine and its emperor wrote the literature about the saint born in it, which is patronage operating in both directions at once, and the gopuram is now the Tamil Nadu state emblem.
- Madurai Meenakshi · Madurai
The Meenakshi temple city, held for Vijayanagara by its Nayaka governors, who became independent as imperial authority receded and then rebuilt the temple on a far larger scale in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The gopurams that define it are Nayaka work paid for out of Vijayanagara's devolved revenue. The Nayaka gopurams that define the city are built with revenue that stopped being remitted to Hampi.
- Thanjavur Brihadishvara · Thanjavur
The Chola imperial temple, five centuries old by the time Vijayanagara reached it, re-endowed and repaired under the empire and then under its Nayaka and Maratha successors. The habit of recording endowments on temple walls is Chola in origin, and Vijayanagara continued it at a greater geographical spread. Vijayanagara continued the habit at a far wider geographical spread than the Cholas ever reached.