Krishnadevaraya

Emperor of the Vijayanagar Empire (r. 1509-1529)

• Born: Unknown
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: 1529
• Place of death: Vijayangar Empire (now Hampi, India)

Krishnadevaraya’s reign was marked by a flowering of literature and a strong military. He was a patron of the arts and a poet but also a successful ruler, administrator, and military leader. He defeated hereditary chieftains, aspired to integrate international trade into the Vijayanagar economy, and worked to centralize the empire’s administration.

Early Life

Krishnadevaraya (krish-nah-DAY-vah-ri-ah) was born into an empire whose throne would be usurped in 1505 by his brother, who established Tuluva dynastic rule. The Tuluvas reigned from the time of the usurpation until Rama Raja’s defeat by the Mongols in the Battle of Talikot in 1565. This period was referred to as the third dynasty.

Prior to his accession as king in 1509, Krishnadevaraya was educated in languages, music, and religion. These years enabled him to maintain Telegu and Kannada as court languages written in a common script, known as Vijaya Lipi. He learned the arts of didactic poetry, which he later composed, resulting in one of the few extant Telegu mahakavyas, a particular style of epic poetry. These early years instilled in Krishnadevaraya an appreciation for the fine arts, which would last throughout his reign.

Life’s Work

Krishnadevaraya experienced the greatest threats to a king’s rule in the empire’s history. Shortly after he succeeded his brother as king in 1509, his authority was threatened. The sultanate of Bijapur wanted the territory of Raichur in the northwest. In the northeast, the Gajapatis of Orissa wanted to expand their territory into Krishnadevaraya’s realm. Karnataka chiefs had opposed the Tuluva accession, and under the leadership of the Ummatur, the chiefs worked to expand into Telegu areas. Gangaraja, the leader of the Ummatur chieftains, had built strongholds in the upper Kaveri. From Srirangapattanam and Sivasamudram, Gangaraja discharged campaigns across the Andhra and Karnataka plains, to threaten Vijayanagar on western and southern fronts simultaneously. Gangaraja wished to inhibit communication within the Vijayanagar Empire’s Telegu and Tamil domains.

Krishnadevaraya utilized similar yet overwhelmingly effective tactics against all three of these threats. He combined a series of military campaigns with a policy that reduced the power of the nobles and chiefs dramatically. Militarily, chiefs in the Tungabhadra-Krishna river basin were constrained by an arrangement of royal fortresses. These fortresses were commanded by Brahmans and garrisoned by a diverse array of troops. The troops included both Portuguese and Muslim mercenaries, and foot soldiers recruited from the “forest people” of the nonpeasant communities within the Vijayanagar dominions.

Additionally, Krishnadevaraya developed a system of lower-ranked chiefs, later called poligars by the British, who were dependent on military service under Krishnadevaraya. The poligars were keepers of the Vijayanagar forts and members of the infantry. Gangaraja and Sivasamudram were destroyed in 1512, but Gangaraja’s successor was allowed to rule from Srirangapattanam. Later, this fortress would also fall to Krishnadevaraya. His successes in these territories demonstrated his intelligence as king and enhanced his subjects’ confidence in him. In Virupaksha Temple, six months after his coronation, two titles were added to his monument: “Hindu Sultan” and “fever to the elephants of Gajapati.”

The success of Krishnadevaraya’s political, economic, and administrative strategies depended on areas rich in agriculture, population, and commerce. Resources from these areas made it possible for Krishnadevaraya to control the chiefdoms of the drier areas of Vijayanagar. Vijayanagar’s environment divided into two types soil-rich areas and drier plains and the relationship between these categories provided difficulties and assistance to Krishnadevaraya’s attempts at centralization.

To administer the newly centralized Vijayanagar Empire, Krishnadevaraya developed a system of command. Under Krishnadevaraya, nobles were entrusted with land, which they farmed to their own advantage but paid a fixed annual sum to the Crown. Several of Krishnadevaraya’s military leaders served in this way. Nagama Nayaka, a trusted officer of Krishnadevaraya’s, was not to be trusted, however. Nagama Nayaka’s history survives in chronicles of the rise of the Nayaka kingdom of Madurai. According to these chronicles, Krishnadevaraya had commanded Nagama to perform a task that would defeat a challenge to the king’s authority. After doing so, Nagama proclaimed himself sole ruler of Madurai. His son betrayed Nagama to Krishnadevaraya, displaying loyalty to his king over his father. Because of his honesty, Krishnadevaraya appointed Visvanatha governor of another part of Tamil country. This system was later misrepresented as akin to feudal Europe to support a theme of “backward” Indian history.

The richest provinces of Vijayanagar were not within the Tungabhadra-Krishna basin, which formed the core of the empire. Krishnadevaraya retained the resources of the rich Karnataka maidan (open plains) of the upper Kaveri under a system of tribute, but this wealth was lost by Krishnadevaraya’s successors during the Wodeyar secession, in which the local chiefs separated from the Vijayanagar Empire. Telegu warrior-peasants resided on the agricultural frontiers of Vijayanagar during Krishnadevaraya’s reign, as a result of decades of migrations. These farmers posed a challenge to Krishnadevaraya’s revenue-seeking, regulated regime. Krishnadevaraya elected to rely on other sources for revenue, largely the wet zones of cultivation, which were richer in resources. The Tamil plains provided political assistance and monetary support to Krishnadevaraya but, as with the Wodeyar secession, did not extend greatly to the remaining Tuluvas. As a whole, though, rulers of the areas of cultivation were only slightly more amiable toward Krishnadevaraya.

Krishnadevaraya’s Brahman minister attempted to gain from international trade along the coast, and Krishnadevaraya accorded great economic and ideological importance to this endeavor. His Telegu epic poem,Āmuktamālyadā (1520), conveyed these ideas and demonstrated his proficiency as a scholar and artist and his military and administrative talents. In this poem, he states that import and export are essential to the growth of a kingdom. Demonstrating considerable insight into the wider world, he recognized the need to care for foreign sailors in a manner suitable to their nationalities. Shrewdly, he promoted a need to monopolize elephant and horse trade on the peninsula with the Portuguese and Muslims. He did indeed interact with Portuguese and Muslim traders, as explorers’ accounts show.

Unfortunately, despite his eloquent ideals, there is no evidence that Vijayanagar realized any great profits from international trade. Had theĀmuktamālyadā been actualized, Krishnadevaraya’s plans for a centralized kingship would have had sufficient resources to succeed. The only resources regularly utilized by Krishnadevaraya were in the Tungabhadra-Krishna basin, which had a population of about 2 million people and encompassed 30,000 square miles. It extended from the Kannada-speaking districts (modern Bellary) to the Telegu-speaking districts (modern Kurnool).

In the middle of dry fields were small pockets of production, which were derived from tank irrigation. The soil was ideal for cotton, and some of the best peninsular pasturages for cattle and sheep were also in the Vijayanagar heartland. These resources were enough to maintain an affluent kingdom and to build scores of temples and monuments but not to meet the lofty goals set forth in theĀmuktamālyadā. Krishnadevaraya’s aspirations to a perfectly regulated, centralized Vijayanagar were not to be fully realized because of a need for greater resources.

Significance

Krishnadevaraya’s campaigns brought wealth and great honor to Vijayanagar. By defeating ancient chiefdoms surrounding Vijayanagar, he consolidated the power of the empire. His system of administration, while not wholly successful, was innovative and well organized, and it formed the basis for many of successor states after 1565. His successors were less competent than he, but Krishnadevaraya’s systems of poligars endured well through the British Raj.

His poetry remains among the foundational texts of late medieval Telegu literature, and his ability to excel in a variety of areas contributed to his personal greatness and his ability to elevate Vijayanagar.

Bibliography

Filliozat, Vasundhara. The Vijayanagara Empire: As Seen by Domingos Paes and Fernao Nuniz, Two Sixteenth Century Chroniclers. New Delhi, India: National Book Trust, 1977. Domingos Paes and Fernao Nuniz, Portuguese explorers who visited Vijayanagar during Krishnadevaraya’s reign, offer an ample descriptive panegyric of Krishnadevaraya, depict the court, and report on the organization of the Krishnadevaraya government.

Karashima, Noboru. Towards a New Formation: South Indian Society Under Vijayanagar Rule. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Not strictly a biography of Krishnadevaraya, this work describes the social history of Vijayanagar.

Kulke, Hermann, ed. The State in India, 1000-1700. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1995. This work depicts a variety of Indian states in the medieval and early modern period through 1700, including Vijayanagar at its zenith.

Rao, M. Rama. Krishnadevaraya. New Delhi, India: 1971. Rao’s biography remains the foremost authority on Krishnadevaraya and is the clearest secondary source about his time.

Sarasvati, Rangasvami. “Political Maxims of the Emperor-Poet Krishnadeva Raya.” Journal of Indian History 4, no. 3 (1925). This article remains among the foremost translations and analyses of Krishnadevaraya’s own writings, especially theĀmuktamālyadā.

Sastri, K. A. Kilakanta, and N. Venkataramanayya. Further Sources in Vijayanagara History. Madras, India: University of Madras Press, 1946. This multivolume set includes translations of texts from and relating to Krishnadevaraya’s reign and provides contextual documents for the reigns of other Vijayanagar rulers.

Stein, Burton. The New Cambridge History of India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Volume 1 of this multivolume set centers on the empire from 1509 to 1565 and the reigns of Krishnadevaraya and Rama Raja. Stein offers a valuable account of the state of the city and empire during Krishnadevaraya’s reign and also a fairly detailed representation of Krishnadevaraya’s political and military legacies.

Wagoner, Phillip B. Tidings of the King: A Translation and Ethnohistorical Analysis of the “Rāyavācakamu.” Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993. The Rāyavācakamu, written about ninety years after Krishnadevaraya’s reign, is one of the Nayaka epics chronicling his reign. Wagoner translates sixteenth century Telegu remarkably well, and he offers astute analyses of the climate in which the Rāyavācakamu was written, its communication of the memory of Krishnadevaraya, and the possible links between the epic and the actual history.