Place · Vijayanagara hill fort
Chandragiri Fort
The Vijayanagara successors' last working capital, a granite hill near Tirupati with a Raja Mahal and Rani Mahal of the Indo-Islamic Vijayanagara manner — and the court from which the East India Company was granted the strip of coast it built Madras on, in 1639.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 13.586, 79.320
Worth knowing
So the charter for the first English settlement on the Coromandel was issued by the last Vijayanagara court, from a fort it had retreated to after losing two capitals. The grant was made to Francis Day by Peda Venkata Raya, and Fort St George went up the following year.
Connections (3)
- Power passed toGingee Fort
Gingee was a Nayaka seat under Vijayanagara's Chandragiri court and passed to Bijapur in 1649, which is the moment the empire's southern authority visibly ends. Shivaji's brother Venkoji held it for the Marathas from 1677 and Zulfikar Khan took it for the Mughals in 1698 after a siege of years. Four sovereignties in fifty years on one set of hills.
- Successor capital ofPenukoṇḍa
Penukonda from 1565 and Chandragiri from about 1592 are the Aravidu retreat, each move further south and east as Bijapur and Golconda pressed down. Both are hill forts rather than cities. The 1639 grant of Madraspatnam to the East India Company was issued from the second of them, so Fort St George rests on a title from a fort the empire had shrunk into.
- Power passed toWarangal Fort
Warangal was annexed by Delhi in 1323 and its city dismantled; Chandragiri was the last capital of the empire that eventually inherited the Telugu country. Between them the plateau passed from Kakatiya to Tughlaq to Bahmani to Vijayanagara to the Qutb Shahis in two centuries, and the four free-standing gateways at Warangal that now lead nowhere are the clearest monument to that.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Chandragiri”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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