Day 3 - Exploring Hampi

DAY 3 - EXPLORING HAMPI

Imagine this, in the ancient days Ramayana & Mahabharata were only folklore that was known across the masses. In those days any association of a place within the gamut of narration meant rich turnover for the local Brahmins & temples donation box. Hampi in the ancient days was known for being the place where Shiv married Parvati. It was also known as Kishkinda, the capital city of Vanar kings where Sugreev ruled & also the birthplace of Hanuman. If you are saying "what crap" do remember they did not have google search & wikipedia in those days. So a myth or a reality nobody could say. Those days people were simple & hence they believed in everything.

Now lets zoom ahead a couple of millennia into mid 1300's where one of the 5 sons of Sangama goes to Shankaracharya's mutt (Ashram) in Mangalore & becomes known forever as Vidhyaranya - A Forest of knowledge. (Vidhya = Knowledge, Aranya = Forest) Vidhyaranya moves away from the mutt to Hampi to set up a kingdom to take on the Moguls who were on a looting spree & making their life miserable. He invites his 2 strongest brothers Harihara & Bukka to come & rule this kingdom. These kings made this a stronghold of prosperity that would last two & a half centuries. The choice for the next king was never by birth but a selection committee who elected the strongest, shrewdest & ablest amongst them to rule. This selection of the ablest proved to be their plus point and the people who were governed by these kings reaped prosperity. The kingdom of Vijaypura was ruled by four kingdoms in the span of 2 centuries they were the Sangama Dynasty, Saluva Dynasty, Tuluva Dynasty, Araveedu Dynasty.

According to the historians the land was so prosperous & safe that gold was the coinage of the kingdom & it truly was the golden period. It had diamond repository & diamond market, the only such market in those days. One can imagine the loss of wealth in Christopher Columbus coffers had he known of its existence. The diamonds & gold were measured in cups - half cup/full cup. The standard weights & measures did not come in play yet. The traders flocked this kingdom to sell their wares thanks to the safety & protection accorded to them. Traders came distant lands of China, Persia, Mongolia, Portugal & Arabia to sell horses. The kingdoms best offence & defence stratagem involved cavalry thus importance to swift & sturdy horses.

Krishna Deva Raya is the most successful & famous king of Hampi. During his time the 5 mogul sultanates who were constantly fighting amidst themselves for supremacy & power. They were Bijapur Sultanate, Gulbargha Sultanate, Golconda Sultanate (Hyderabad), Didar Sultanate and Ahmadnagar Sultanate. This king was responsible in engineering infighting amongst the sultanates. This made him powerful & single handedly not a single sultanate stood chance to defeat him in battle. His palace was a kilometre long building & had aqueducts to bring in water to his palace. It was made of thick Sandalwood. (Which when destroyed took 6 months to burn down leaving a fragrant smoke of destruction) It had doors made of stone that required elephants to open & close them. (It was opulence at its zenith... I wonder if they took crap in gold bowls & scrubbed their arse with diamonds to clean the shit hanging)

After Krishna Deva Raya his step brother became the king and it prospered for another 12 years. Krishna Deva Raya's son was killed by a minister (no idea why but one can imagine the intricate palace politics for power) & hence the selection committee of gurus/guru decided the next king to take the step-brothers place. This is where for once in 250 years a power hungry man Ramaraya stepped in to be the king of the land using deceit & power. This man Ramaraya may have wielded power but was a weak as a king. He lacked the administrative acumen desired of a ruler or the cunning strategy to keep enemy at bay. He strength to the throne lay in the fact that his first wife was the daughter of king Krishna Deva Raya. Meanwhile the sultanates were fed up of fighting amongst themselves as the wealth was never with them, it was always in Hampi. So the 5 Sultanates ganged up to fight against a common enemy the kingdom of Vijaypura or Hampi. The Sultan of Bhamani gave his daughter in marriage to the king as his second wife. This woman was a spy for the Sultanates & she did more harm than good. She divulged all the state secrets & defence lapses in its protective perimeter.

The fall of Vijaypura, Hampi had four main factors leading to its ruins.

1. Ramaraya was a weak king at 55 yrs of age he lacked the strength or acumen to take on enemy troops in battle. He was accustomed to the soft life of a king & forgotten to hone his hard warrior lifestyle.
2. The second queen of Ramaraya was a spy of the sultan who gave away all the secrets of defence & governance.
3. The King chose to fight with the Sultan of Bijapur 200 kms from Hampi & this was due to lack of strategy. Thus the troop were easily vanquished in an alien land called Rakkasa Tangadi (Tilikota) in 1565.
4. Advancement in warfare Technology was overlooked. While the 5 sultanates were purchasing cannons as a great offence & defence weapon the Hampi kings stuck in with having powerful cavalry & kept purchasing horses. Eventually both the horses & warrior found that the cannons had more destructive ability than one could imagine.

Once the battle was lost in Talikota & the king was killed it was a matter of time the sultans were expected to descend on the city to loot and destroy. Generals Tirrumala & Venkatadari immediately left for Hampi & they amassed 900 elephants most of the diamonds from the city repository & moved 250kms away in present day Tamil Nadu to establish Vijaynagri in Pennconda & Chandragiri. These kingdom lasted another century before it was again defeated in battle. Thus came the end to the of the great kingdom of Vijayapura.

These kings that ruled Hampi built 3000 temples over two and a half century. One of the kings had defeated the Orrisa king and built a chariot temple based on the Konark temple. The same temple had a statue of Vitthal which was eventually moved to Pandharpur, resides till date revered in all its pomp and glory. One of Pt. Bhimsen Joshi's classical rendition to lord Vitthal hails him as the lord of Karnataka the lord of Vijayapura. (Its ok if you cannot recall who he is, I Can only describe this man had a voice that could speak to your soul) The reason for the deity to be moved to Pandharpur was done to avoid its destruction by the sultans while looting the temple for its wealth. They did not want the locals to stay or worship in the region so 99% of the temple deities were destroyed and broken. This eventually made the people move away from Hampi & the city was a forgotten ruin.