The Jewel of the World
The Jewel of the World: The Empire of Vijayanagar
“Vijayanagar the Magnificent, Vijayanagar the Splendid!
Vijayanagar of the Seven Walls, City of Victories!
Gather all good and beautiful things,
And you have glimpsed the shadow of Vijayanagar.”
-Andreas Kineas, Assistant to the Roman ambassador to Vijayanagar, 1636
“Vijayanagar the Magnificent, Vijayanagar the Splendid!
Vijayanagar of the Seven Walls, City of Victories!
Gather all good and beautiful things,
And you have glimpsed the shadow of Vijayanagar.”
-Andreas Kineas, Assistant to the Roman ambassador to Vijayanagar, 1636
Vijayanagar means the City of Victories, an appropriate name for the mighty metropolis that rules over the richest empire on the planet. At more than 700,000 inhabitants it is the largest city on Earth, overshadowing Luoyang and Constantinople, its only real rivals. It is said, with only slight exaggeration, that every tongue on Earth can be heard within its seven circuits of walls. Certainly it dazzles all who lay eyes on her.
The city is immense, with massive temple complexes that incorporate architectural elements from the various strands that make up the fabric of the empire. The great water tank works that support agriculture in the surrounding countryside also inspire respect. Being an architect or engineer is an important occupation in the great metropolis.
The Emperor Venkata Raya I, scion of the Sangama dynasty that founded the empire near three centuries past, rules the greatest Imperial edifice that southern India has ever seen. From Cape Comorin in the south it stretches to the heights of the Vindhyas in the north, its eastern frontier marked by the Wainganga, Pranahita, and Godavari Rivers. There are tributary states that exist beyond those bounds, but their submission is intermittent. However the lands thus inscribed are firmly under the authority of Vijayanagar.
Given the vastness of the empire and the wide variety of landscapes and people, it is not feasible for it all to be directly ruled by Venkata Raya. The lands of the empire are therefore divided into three tiers. There are first the lands ruled directly by the Emperor. Then there are the lands granted to Nayaks, who rule their holdings as feudal vassals in exchange for providing a set amount of troops on demand. Their holdings are not heritable and revert to the state on the death of the Nayak, with no guarantee that the heir will receive a holding. Admittedly, oftentimes they do, but it is common practice to give them an equivalent holding in a separate region of the empire to avoid families building up local power bases. Finally there are the vassal states proper, who render regular tribute and troops, but which are heritable by the vassal’s family. These are concentrated mainly on the northern and northeast fringes of the empire, with the Roman Kephalate of Surat considered one of these vassals in Vijayanagar’s eyes.
This setup is often called a ‘mixed empire’, with a centralized core surrounded by a large slew of territories ruled intermediately through vassals or tributaries. The Empire of Ethiopia is a much smaller and poorer variant of the same model. The centralized core of Vijayanagar is concentrated on the southern Deccan and the lands of southern India and by themselves provide the bulk of the wealth and power that undergirds the empire.
It is a wealth that staggers all those who see it. It is estimated by the Roman ambassador in 1636 that Venkata Raya’s annual revenues are 4-5 times that of Demetrios III’s, with no one familiar with Vijayanagar arguing those figures. That revenue comes from a variety of sources.
Vijayanagar is sometimes known as the Jewel of the World, an apt title. Prior to their discovery in Africa and Terranova, with the exception of a small seam in Borneo, every diamond in the Old World comes from Vijayanagar, from the great mines at Golkonda. This resource is guarded most assiduously by the Emperors; for any Raja of the empire to enter the citadel of Golkonda is an automatic death sentence. It is not just diamonds; all kinds of gems, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and more flow from the mines, and it is the flow of gems that gives the Vijayanagara their deserved reputation for glittering wealth.
The jewels are what catch the eye, but the real engine of the Vijayanagar economy (outside of agriculture which by necessity is the bulk of any pre-industrial economy) is the textile industry. Cotton is cultivated in prodigious quantities and worked by hundreds of thousands of textile workers. South India already had a well-developed textile industry but it has been reinforced in the last few decades by Bengali immigrants bringing their own skills and expertise. The 1636 ambassadorial figures also estimate that Vijayanagar produces 5 times more cotton textiles than Rhomania does of all textiles combined, and Vijayanagar also produces silks.
These cotton fabrics are the main export, with bolts being used as currency from East Africa to Indonesia. The cotton is sold as bolts or as clothing, either plain or dyed with the many dyes that the empire also produces. Textiles dyed and decorated by the workshops of Vijayanagar and Tirulnevi are especially renowned for their high quality.
Another major export of the empire is metalworks, particularly from Bidar, the former capital of the Deccani Sultans and still a major city with 90,000 inhabitants. The people there produce all sorts of products from cannons and muskets to finely inlaid metal screens.
Trade is also a major part of the economy. There is the internal trade; feeding the City of Victories alone is no small task, it being twice the size of Constantinople and not being a seaside city. Coastal traffic between the various ports, including between the east and west coasts, is thick, the ships crewed and owned by Vijayanagara natives, typically Tamil and Malayalam.
Those two peoples are vital to the running of Vijayanagara trade and maritime traffic. Tamil and Malayalam merchants are prominent in all the port cities and they often act as bankers too. Roman Ship Lords are frequent clients of them in that capacity, and successful foreign merchants have extensive contacts and contracts with their merchant houses. Much of the Taprobane shipyards were constructed with the support of loans from Tamil and Malayalam families.
Foreign merchants, be they Ethiopian, Roman, Latin, or natives of the east, simply have to trade with Vijayanagar. Its products are highly valued and the moneys from merchant houses are key to financing the whole Indian Ocean trade network. The seaports of the Empire also provide vital manpower. Just as in Africa, it is common practice for western traders to hire native sailors to bolster their crews, who by this stage are universally known as lascars. They come from all over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and are hired by all parties, even for regular warships when needed, but the majority come from Vijayanagar’s seaports. Given the death rates from diseases for European crews, lascars are essential for European trade in the east. Even the Romans who can draw on native manpower from the territories under their control frequently have recourse to Vijayanagara lascars, given their deserved reputation for seamanship and gunnery.
Just as a Latin or Roman ship trading in Nellore or Kollam may have a diverse crew, so Vijayanagar has a diverse population. Aside from the many peoples who are native to the lands of the empire, no less than 40,000 Rajputs serve in the army, either as Nayaks or retainers to Nayaks. There is no greater honor than to receive a badge of office from the Chakravartin, the Universal Emperor.
Although the Vijayanagara Emperors are firmly Hindu, there is a noticeable Muslim minority, a legacy of the conquest of the Deccan. Islam is tolerated, with mosques and madrasas present even in the City of Victories, with the general rule being that Muslims inside the Empire are alright, although Muslims outside the Empire are typically viewed less favorably. There are many Nayaks who are Muslim, practicing their faith but still serving the Protector of Cows and Brahmins with the cavalry demanded by their investiture.
One factor behind this is that the Islam of the Deccan, with its long contact with Hinduism, has syncretized somewhat with the dominant Hindu faith, much to the horror of more orthodox Muslims from Arabia or the Ottoman Empire. As can easily be attested from viewing any of the mansions of Muslim nobles in the capital, the strictures against human pictorial representation are ignored, often spectacularly in a sensual manner. It is not entirely one way. Festivals that originate in one faith, honoring a holy man, can be celebrated by participants of both, and Sufi Fakirs are recognized as holy men by Hindus who respect their ascetic lifestyle.
The diversity is not just from India’s diverse peoples. Vijayanagar lures many who are not born within the bounds of the subcontinent. Vijayanagar has a ‘Yavana quarter’ for the Romans (and a few Georgians, Ethiopians, and Japanese who’ve been lumped in with them) who have taken up service there, and another foreign quarter for Latins. Most are soldiers, hiring out as mercenaries in service for the Emperor, but some are artisans or officials, drawn by the pay, opportunity, and tolerant atmosphere. In 1640, a fifth of all heartland-born Romans in the east are in the service of the Vijayanagara, not Roman, Emperors.
These immigrants usually come with the intention of staying, intermarrying with the locals and starting families, with many converting to the faiths of their in-laws (90%+ of the immigrants are male). Some of these are very successful, even those who do remain Orthodox. In one case, a Roman convert to Hinduism is a Nayak with a contingent of 2000 horsemen under his banner. The stream of Roman immigrants increases for a short while after the conclusion of Roman participation in the War of the Roman Succession, as discharged Roman soldiers with a taste for the military life travel to Vijayanagar to work as mercenaries.
The Vijayanagar military is noted by many visitors. While the forces of the Nayaks and the vassal states still have a medieval look to them, the regular forces are more modern, with regiments of flintlock-armed infantry backed by field artillery. Uniformed and disciplined, they are a formidable force. One regiment of the military that always catches foreigners’ attention is the so-called Amazon Guard, an all-female regiment including officers which is equipped and uniformed like the other regiments. Often used for palace security, Venkata Raya has expanded its size and derives much pleasure from using it against persons or groups that have particularly annoyed him. Most foreigners have a hard time taking the women seriously at first, but those who’ve seen them in action cannot find fault with their strength, bravery, or skill at arms. [1]
The Vijayanagara navy is also something being noted by foreigners. When the Romans first arrived in India, the Vijayanagara were at a naval nadir due to rebellions in the coastal cities but that issue has been rectified. Drawing on a large and skilled maritime manpower pool, the Vijayanagara are able to field an impressive and capable fleet; the greatest naval defeat of a western power at the hands of a native power was of the Romans by a Vijayanagara fleet in the 1580s.
This is something that especially increased under Venkata Raya’s reign. Sea power is essential to keeping all these foreign powers behaving, protecting the thick coastal traffic, and reminding the Malabar coastal cities, sheltering on the opposite side of the Western Ghats from Vijayanagar, who is supreme. While native shipbuilding techniques still hold true for merchant ships, the Vijayanagara, like the Omani, now copy western designs for their warships. Unlike the Omani, the Vijayanagara have the manpower to build battle-line ships, not just sloops and fregatai. In 1636 the three most powerful warships east of the Cape are the Shiva, Ganesh, and Krishna, all 88-gunners, built specifically to overawe the smaller Roman, Spanish, and Triune warships in Indian waters.
While coastal traffic is extremely important, there is very little overseas maritime traffic that is Vijayanagar-controlled. Given that everyone wants to come to Vijayanagar, there is little incentive to sail out in search of customers. There is some, but usually it is a Tamil merchant purchasing cargo space on a foreign trading vessel. There are some overseas trading communities, particularly in the Hindu polities of Southeast Asia, but none comparable in size to the overseas Chinese communities across Southeast Asia.
Long-distance Vijayanagar maritime activity usually has a political focus as the Emperor maintains contact with the Hindu polities of Island Asia. He has no formal authority over them but is viewed as an exemplar and inspiration for minor Hindu rulers and occasionally provides more tangible aid as well. After the fall of Surabaya, Sanjaya, the ruler of Mataram, received from Venkata Raya a shipment of muskets, two batteries of cannons, and a letter recognizing him as a Maharaja, a gift that reportedly pleased him as much as the capture of Surabaya.
[1] Author’s inspiration from the Zuffur Plutun (Women’s Battalion) of the Nizams of Hyderabad. See White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple, which heavily inspired much of this update in addition to this specific element.
