Hampi

Also called: Vijayanagara city, Bisnaga · Topic: Vijayanagara and the Deccan · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 2 "Reshaping India's Political Map"; Class 12, Ch 3 "An Imperial Capital: Vijayanagara"

Meaning

Hampi is the ruined capital of the Vijayanagara Empire (1336–1565 as a capital). It lies on the south bank of the Tungabhadra in Vijayanagara district, Karnataka [4]. It takes its name from Pampadevi, the local mother goddess.

It matters for three reasons:

• It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1986), so it comes up often in heritage questions.
• It shows how historians rebuild a city from ruins, inscriptions and texts.
• It also shows what this evidence cannot tell us.

Explanation

Background: from royal capital to ruins

• Vijayanagara means "city of victory". The name was used for both the city and the empire.
• Its rich princes built Dravidian temples and palaces (the South Indian temple style, with tall gateway towers). Travellers in the 14th–16th centuries admired them [2].
• UNESCO calls it one of the world's largest cities in the 16th century [2].
• 1565: the Deccan Muslim confederacy (an alliance of Deccan sultanates) took the city. It was pillaged over six months and then abandoned [2].

A place that was never fully lost

• "Lost city" is a colonial phrase, not a fact. Outsiders lost track of Hampi, but villagers and priests did not.
• Local people kept calling the place Hampi, after Pampadevi. In this region she is seen as the wife of Shiva.
• The Virupaksha (Pampapati) temple is older than the empire, and worship there never stopped [4].
• The rest of Hampi lay in ruins, but this Dravidian temple to Shiva and Pampa remained a pilgrimage site [4].

How Hampi entered the modern record (1800–1986)

Year	Step	Who / what
1800	First survey map of the site	Colin Mackenzie, an East India Company engineer and surveyor
1836 onwards	Inscriptions collected. These are words carved on stone or copper. Dozens of temple inscriptions were copied	Various scholars
1856	First detailed photographs of the ruins	Alexander Greenlaw
1876	Inscriptions on temple walls recorded in detail	J.F. Fleet
1902	Conservation (repair and protection) begins	John Marshall, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)
1976	Declared a site of national importance	Run jointly by the ASI and the Karnataka state archaeology department
1986	UNESCO World Heritage Site, under criteria (i), (iii) and (iv)	"Group of Monuments at Hampi" [2]

• Mackenzie's "discovery" was mostly local knowledge written down in English.
• His map relied heavily on the memories of the priests of the Virupaksha temple and the Pampadevi shrine.

• His aim was partly practical. Knowing the land, the people and past rulers helped the Company govern and tax better.

• Photographs help as evidence. Greenlaw's photographs show the monuments as they stood in the 1850s, before later collapse, repair or rebuilding.

The big documentation project (from the early 1980s)

• An international project ran for about 20 years.
• Method:
• The site was divided into 25 lettered squares.
• Each square was subdivided twice, giving many small, manageable cells.

• In each cell, teams recorded every structure.

• Result: thousands of structures, roads and bazaars were mapped.

• Clever trick: many streets and bazaars had no walls left. Surveyors traced them from the surviving pillar bases. These stone stumps show where shops and colonnades (rows of pillars) once stood.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from its founding in 1336 until the sack of 1565. The wider era runs from 1336 to 1646.
• Place: about 40 sq km (16 sq miles) on the south bank of the Tungabhadra, in Vijayanagara district, Karnataka. It has more than 1,600 surviving monuments, including palaces, temples, forts, markets, roads, canals, wells and houses [4].
• Main zones: the royal centre, the sacred centre (around temples such as Virupaksha) and the bazaars.
• Key modern figures:
• Colin Mackenzie (c. 1753–1821). He became the first Surveyor General of India in 1815 [3].
• Alexander Greenlaw (photographs, 1856).
• J.F. Fleet (inscriptions, 1876).
• John Marshall (conservation, 1902).

• Historians Fritz, Michell and Nagaraja Rao.

• How we know about Hampi:

• Archaeology and surveys: maps, plans, standing ruins and pillar bases.
• Inscriptions: grants by kings and nayakas (military chiefs who held land). They record gifts to temples and events, so they give dates, names and who paid for what.
• Travellers' accounts: foreign visitors' descriptions of the city's size and wealth.
• Literature in four languages: Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Sanskrit.

• The Mackenzie Collection: manuscripts in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Sanskrit, deposited in the Madras College Library. It covers the Chola, Hoysala and Vijayanagara kingdoms [3].

• Limits of the evidence:

• Mostly stone survives. Fritz, Michell and Nagaraja Rao note that many wooden columns, brackets, beams, ceilings and towers have vanished. These were covered in plaster and painted. The real city was colourful, not bare and grey.
• What the buildings can tell us: how space was laid out, how buildings were made, and which cultures influenced their style.
• What the buildings cannot tell us:
  • what ordinary people thought of the temples and palaces
  • whether ordinary people could enter the royal or sacred centres
  • who built them and what wages they were paid
  • where the stone, timber and lime came from

Don't confuse with

• Hampi vs Vijayanagara Empire: Hampi is the site of the capital city on the Tungabhadra. The empire was the much larger kingdom ruled from it.
• Virupaksha temple vs other Hampi monuments: Virupaksha predates the empire and is still in worship [4]. Most other structures fell into ruin after 1565.
• Colin Mackenzie vs John Marshall: Mackenzie made the first survey map (1800). Marshall started conservation (1902) under the ASI.
• Alexander Greenlaw vs J.F. Fleet: Greenlaw took the first detailed photographs (1856). Fleet recorded the temple-wall inscriptions (1876).

Prelims Hooks

• The name Hampi comes from Pampadevi, the local mother goddess.
• Correct order: Mackenzie's survey map (1800) → inscription collection begins (1836) → Greenlaw's photographs (1856) → Fleet's inscriptions (1876) → Marshall's conservation (1902) → national importance (1976) → UNESCO (1986).
• Hampi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 under criteria (i), (iii) and (iv) [2].
• Colin Mackenzie, an East India Company engineer-surveyor, became the first Surveyor General of India in 1815 [3].
• The documentation project of the early 1980s divided the site into 25 lettered squares, each subdivided twice. Bazaars were traced from surviving pillar bases.
• Trap: the Mackenzie Collection is in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Sanskrit [3]. Vijayanagara literature used by historians is in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Sanskrit. Do not mix up the two lists.

Mains Points

• "Rediscovery" is a colonial word.
• Hampi lived on in local memory and in daily worship at Virupaksha.
• In 1800 it entered colonial record-keeping, and Mackenzie's map was built on what the priests remembered.

• Colonial surveys also served administration and taxation. This is a useful example for GS-I answers on how colonial knowledge-gathering worked.

• Different sources answer different questions.

• Inscriptions give donors, dates and temple grants.
• Travellers give impressions of size and wealth.
• Literature in four languages gives ideas from the royal court.
• Archaeology gives layout and building technique.

• Historians cross-check these sources, because each one is silent on some things.

• Bias in what survives.

• Stone survived; wood, plaster and paint did not. So the city now looks bare and grey, which is misleading.
• Rulers left records about themselves; workers did not. Inscriptions name kings and nayakas, not masons or labourers.
• This makes Hampi a strong example for answers on "history from below" (history of ordinary people) and on the limits of archaeology. Conservation from 1902 to 1986 protects the stone shell, but the lost wooden city can only be imagined.

Read more

• Rediscovery, documentation and the limits of evidence