Place · Vijayanagara successor states · India
The Nāyaka successor states
Also known as Nayaka states, Madurai Nayak, Thanjavur Nayak, Gingee Nayak, Keladi Nayaka
The provincial governors — Madurai, Thanjavur, Gingee, Keladi — who became independent as Vijayanagara collapsed after Talikota, and who carried the empire's temple-building programme on at their own capitals for another century and a half. Most of what Tamil Nadu's temple cities now look like is their work rather than the empire's.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The Nayakas are the reason the gopuram outgrew the sanctum: their patronage went into outer enclosures, thousand-pillar halls, processional streets and painted ceilings rather than into new central shrines, so a Pallava or Chola foundation now reads as seventeenth-century from outside.
Connections (2)
- Power passed toMadurai Meenakshi
The Nayakas — Madurai, Thanjavur, Gingee, Keladi — were Vijayanagara's provincial governors who became independent as the empire collapsed after Talikota, and they carried on its building programme at their own capitals for another century and a half. Madurai's temple city with its fourteen gopurams and its mandala street grid is largely their work, which is why Tamil Nadu's temple landscape looks imperial although the empire had already gone.
- Imperial administration ofOve Gjedde
Gjedde's treaty of November 1620 was made with Raghunatha Nayak of Thanjavur, one of the Telugu warrior houses that had ruled the Tamil country since Vijayanagara's collapse at Talikota. The Nayaka granted a village and an annual rent, not sovereignty, and Danish Tranquebar was legally a tenancy under a south Indian kingdom for its first century.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nayak dynasty”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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