Vijayanagar, Hampi

Books by
Usha Alexander

Books by
Namit Arora

Vijayanagar, Hampi, Karnataka, India (site museum)

"I then visit the breathtaking ruins of Vijayanagar in Hampi, Karnataka. Once the capital city of the Vijayanagar Empire (c. 1336–1565), it was famed for its wealth, military prowess and cosmopolitanism. How did it acquire all the riches that foreign travellers gushed about? Was Vijayanagar a self-conscious bastion of Hinduism heroically resisting Islam for centuries, as Hindu nationalists claim? What is its legacy in south India? For such questions and a sense of its rulers, economy, trade, social customs and festivals, I lean on both scholars and visitors like Abdur Razzaq of Persia, Niccolo de Conti of Italy, and Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz of Portugal. Near Hampi, I also meet Krishna Devaraya, eighteen generations apart from his famous namesake and royal ancestor."

—From the Introduction of Namit Arora's Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization, forthcoming from Penguin India.


Pictures from Nov 2018 coming soon ...


All pictures below are from my 2005 visit to Hampi
Vittala Temple	Stone Chariot	Main Temple	Musical pillars
Carvings	Courtyard	Krishna Temple	Pillared hall
Narasimha	Virupaksha Temple	Courtyard	Gopuram
Baby elephant	Stepped tank	Hazari Rama Temple wall	Local woman
Lotus Mahal	Lotus Mahal	Courtyard	Elephant stable
"In the South there is the great city of Vijayanagar. In the early sixteenth century, it was twenty-four miles round. Today, four hundred years after its total sacking, even its ruins are few and scattered, scarcely noticeable at first against the surrealist brown rock formations of which they seem to form part. The surrounding villages are broken down and dusty; the physique of the people is poor. Then abruptly, grandeur: the road from Kampli goes straight through some of the old buildings and leads to the main street, very wide, very long, still impressive, a flight of stone steps at one end, the towering gopuram of the temple, alive with sculpture, at the other. The square-pillared lower storeys of the stone buildings still stand; in the doorways are carvings of dancers with raised legs. And, inside, the inheritors of this greatness: men and women and children, thin as crickets, like lizards among the stones." [--VS Naipaul, An Area of Darkness, p218, 1962-64]