Q) On the basis of recent historiography on the Vijayanagara kingdom can we argue that the Vijayanagara State was a war state?
There have been many interpretations of the nature of the Vijayanagara state. For Robert Sewell the Vijayanagara State embodied the old regime which preceded and legitimized the succeeding colonial administration; Vijayanagara kings were therefore oriental despots. These kings relied on religious ritual to cement their relationship with feudal lords who were rooted in a fixed territory. Following Sewell’s ‘Forgotten Empire’ (1900) Krishnaswami Aiyangar’s emphasis on the religious impetus behind the foundation of Vijayanagara had a lasting impact on succeeding perspectives on the kingdom. Partly through his flawed reading of the story of Vijayanagara’s foundation, Aiyangar laid down that Hindu- Muslim conflict led to the establishment of and provided justification for the kingdom. Within this framework the state needed a firm military grounding to act as a bulwark against Muslim threats. In the 1930s Vijayanagara became the subject of study for regional historians. N Venkataramanayya linked Vijayanagara institutions with those of the Telugu Kakatiya kingdom. Significant among these borrowed institutions was the nayankara system of military land tenure. The Vijayanagara state was thus defined by relations among great warrior kings rather than by a centralized administration. Furthermore, the persisting military orientation of the state was seen as particularly important in the context of the ‘heroic struggle to protect dharma from Islam’. Partly drawing from these earlier interpretations, the view of Vijayanagara as a war-state was first explicitly put forward by Nilakanta Sastri. For Sastri the war state of Vijayanagara was borne out of the military threats of advancing Islamic armies. Nayakas or amaras were given control over land (nayakkattanam) to maintain troops for the centre. The political structure of the state was seen as closely resembling a centralizing hereditary monarchy but the intransigence of feudatories along with the constant need to respond to external threats prevented full centralization instead producing the ‘nearest approach to a war-state ever made by a Hindu kingdom’.
The perspectives outlined above which agree upon Vijayanagara’s military orientation, linked to its mission to act as a bulwark against the advance of Islam, have been debunked on two grounds. Firstly the religious mission of Vijayanagara has been refuted. Phillip Wagoner’s work on the origin myth of Vijayanagara as well as his work on the courtly dress and rituals adopted by kings proved Vijayanagara’s wilful participation in the politics of an Islamicate universe. Cynthia Talbot’s analysis of inscriptions showed how religion was not central to definitions of the other and how Muslim states were eventually accepted as a part of the existing balance of power. The argument that threats from Islamic states in particular triggered the need for constant military preparedness thus can no longer hold ground. Furthermore the martial ethos which is evident in Vijayanagara is not seen as a response to Muslim threats but rather as a continuation from earlier systems. Cynthia Talbot’s work on the Kakatiyas of Waranagal is significant in this respect. Secondly complexities seen in the political structure of Vijayanagara have refuted the conception of a war state. The administrative and political structure of the state was not solely rooted in military relations nor did it remain the same throughout the lifespan of the kingdom. Within the framework of these criticisms of Sastri’s description of Vijayanagara as a war state, alternative interpretations of the kingdom can now be traced. The extent to which the state is described as being organized along military lines in each of these recent interpretations must be assessed to fully gauge whether or not Vijayanagara was a war state even while Sastri’s conception has been clearly debunked.
Burton Stein first put forward his analysis of the Vijayanagara state in ‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India’ in which he described the political structure of the state as segmentary. In his later work ‘Vijayanagara’ Stein modified this view drawing attention to changes in the political organization of the state partly precipitated by military and commercial transformations resulting from contact with the ‘gunpowder empires’ of the Middle East and Europe. By analyzing the degree of novelty in the structure of the state, Stein calls into question the importance of the impact of Islamic invasions which was the definitive force behind the creation of the war state for Sastri. The apparent disorder out of which Vijayanagara emerged was not precipitated by Turkic Muslims; rather it reflected political processes which were present throughout the medieval period. Linked to this analysis, Stein points out the presence of Muslims in South Indian society prior to the fourteenth century. For Stein it was a combination of factors which led to a partial displacement of ‘ancient Indian conceptions of polity’. These factors included contact with conceptions of sovereignty held by Muslim rulers, access to hitherto unequalled commercial resources through Indian Ocean trade and exposure to professionalized armies with advanced cavalries. If these factors drove changes, the following questions then need to be answered- what was the previous structure of the state, when did changes take place and what constituted the changes.
Stein describes the ancient Indian polity as segmentary; a system in which political power was shared between local lords and a ritual sovereign. The state amounted to an aggregate of chieftaincies in which the power of the king extended only over agricultural land directly under his control. The superior standing of the king in relation to these lords was expressed through ritual ‘in dharmic idioms of royal protection and lordly service’. Stein applies this type of organization to the initial phase of the Vijayanagara state. Sovereignty was rooted in the concept of dayada; not only was sovereignty shared but chiefly authority was preserved by recognition from the centre. This structure lasted until the reign of Devaraya the Second in the middle of the fifteenth century. Fitting in with the causes for change elucidated in the above paragraph, access to enhanced military technology and techniques as well as to greater commercial resources from coastal trade enabled Devaraya to strengthen central power. It is in the context of the structural changes that Devaraya attempted to implement that the question of whether or not Vijayanagara can be described as a war state at least during the apogee of kingly power must once again be raised. Under Devaraya the notion of lordship further changed; already the nayaka system had altered pre-existing claims to the land as well as established the importance of royal recognition in legitimizing the authority of the lords. Under Devaraya military service to the king was important in providing land and political powers to soldiers and officers. The amara (derived from the Sanskrit word for war -samara) amounted to a military land right. The amara system, Stein argues, went hand in hand with monetisation from the late fifteenth century onwards. Arjun Appadurai’s work explains the role of the temple in cementing these bonds between kings and subordinates as well as in providing a means through which ‘foreign’ lords could consolidate their position in new localities. Apart from these changes brought in by Devaraya the Second the policies adopted by Krishnadevaraya to deal with external threats and internal rebellions resulted in significant alterations to the organization of the state. Chiefs were kept in check by royal fortresses and military campaigns; Muslim and Portuguese mercenaries as well as recruited forest dwellers became important in carrying this out. Krishnadevaraya thus importantly broadened the military resources of the state. Beyond dependence on the nayakas he raised a rank of lesser chieftains from poligar families who were entirely dependent on their position as military servants under the state. As a consequence of these measures, Stein argues, the Vijayanagara state had become a ‘highly successful conquest state indistinguishable from the sultanates of the time’.
Having thus described the state, however, Stein highlights the obstacles to the maintenance of central power which were imbedded within these changes of the late fifteenth century. According to Stein the ‘fiscal and political reach of the Rayas was both short and erratic’. While it is difficult to determine the exact resources available to Vijayanagara kings it is clear that the flow of revenues to the centre was marginal in comparison to the amount retained by lords. Another impediment to the successful functioning of Vijayanagara as a clearly ordered war state was the character of the nayaka system. The domains of chiefdoms did not always coincide to fixed territorial bases. Control could be established only over certain ‘ethnically defined cores’ beyond which ‘chiefdoms were mosaics of overlapping interests ‘and alliances between small and large chiefs which were often fragile. Furthermore the balance of power could not long remain in the king’s favour. By the reign of Rama Raja in the sixteenth century military commanders who enjoyed lordships were able to acquire enough independent political powers to enable themselves to establish new kingdoms. Throughout much of the sixteenth century ‘community forces’ and the independent authority of lords ‘biased political solutions to local rather than imperial levels of organization’. These limitations resulting in the short lived period during which Devaraya’s policies enjoyed success make the description of Vijayanagara as a war or conquest state questionable. Moreover the authority of the king never had a solely military basis. Commerce constituted an important source of revenue, though it was not tapped into its full potential. Apart from military commanders, merchants who successfully converted their wealth to political power became important subordinates of the Vijayanagara state. Jamal-ud-Din, the son of a Goan ship builder who paid tribute to Harihara the First is an important example. Stein also points towards continuities from the segmentary state system. Despite the nayaka system, looking at the whole course of the kingdom, the relationship between the king and chiefs remained ritual. From Stein’s description of the political organization of the Vijayanagara state we can thus infer that there was no fixed system of administration which can be used to define the entire course of the state. The reign of Devaraya under which centralization resembling that seen in traditional conquest states was ostensibly reached was too brief to allow a tenable definition of Vijayanagara as a war state.
Noburu Karashima and Y Subbarayalu posit the definition of Vijayanagara as a feudal state. Like Stein, however, this understanding of the structure of the state is not applied to its entire course. The nayaka system constituted a form of feudalism from the middle of the fifteenth century to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Karashima defines a feudal state as one in which local magnates possess rights over the land and peasants (who enjoy control over the means of production) and these magnates are integrated into a hierarchical political system which is held together by a certain ideology. Through a detailed assessment of the frequency of the occurrence of certain terms in inscriptions, Karashima argues that nayakas were feudal lords enjoying authority by paying homage to the king. The political structure he delineates is extremely organized; the division and collection of taxes is clearly defined by the king and military offices were combined with administrative ones. Thus in opposition to Stein’s argument stressing the independent authority of nayakas, Karashima maintains that they were bound by and well integrated within the defined systems of revenue collection. Nayakas also come to control the temple networks and means of production for Karashima. Conversely Stein argues that local lords encouraged internal networks of exchange through markets (pettai) and fairs (sandai). The relevance of Karashima’s feudal hypothesis for the Vijayanagara state within the broader context of the applicability of the label ‘war state’ to the empire lies in the fact that besides military bonds Karashima emphasises administrative and revenue systems in giving the state cohesion.
The various perspectives on the structure of the Vijayanagara state outlined above illustrate the difficulty of ascribing a single definition of political organization to the kingdom. The shifting balance of power between the king and the nayakas makes it difficult to apply a homogenous definition to the state. The work done by Sanjay Subrahmanyam in defining the new modes of political expression and the new bases of political power used by the nayakas towards the end of the sixteenth century is important in proving that the existence of the nayaka system is not enough to define Vijayanagara as a war state. ‘Nayaka kingship’ is applied to the later period of the Vijayanagara state in which nayakas successfully established independent kingdoms which were ostensibly derived from the authority of the king. Using the Telugu chronicle of the Tanjavuri Andhra Rajula Carita as a source, Subrahmanyam infers that state formation undertaken by the nayakas was rooted in control over liquid money, mobility, identification with religious deities and the maintenance of vertical linkages with the Vijayanagara overlord. The nayaka system of much of the sixteenth century was more of a reflection of decentralized political systems than a centrally organized war state therefore. The reasons for the decline of Vijayanagara are important in refuting the notion that military defeat amounted to the destruction of the kingdom as a war state. Subrahmanyam and Stein’s work proves that the causes for the weakness of the centre lay within the political structures of the kingdom. The ascendancy of independent nayakas rather than overall military weakness debilitated the state in the latter half of the sixteenth century.
The arguments of Stein, Karashima and Subrahmanyam – while providing different interpretations of the political organization of the state- thus mark a departure from Sastri’s perspective of a war state created out of religious motivations. While there is no clear consensus on ways of understanding the nayaka system, two important points are apparent; firstly the nayaka system had antecedents prior to the Muslim invasions and secondly the nayaka system existed throughout fluctuating levels of central control. Thus Vijayanagara cannot be termed under the label war state solely on the basis of the existence of the nayaka system. Apart from the historiography of Sastri, Stein, Karashima and even Subrahmanyam which seeks to categorize the state by examining its political organization, recent historiography has brought to light alternative ways of defining the state. The work done by Carla Sinopoli and Philip Wagoner is important in this respect. Sinopoli looks at material sources to identify the ways in which the state projects itself. In the process she delineates the character of identity formation within and beyond Vijayanagara. Wagoner looks at dress as a mode of political expression thus identifying the political outlook of the state. Their work is relevant in illustrating how war was only one aspect of the network of political relationships Vijayanagara was engaged in. Furthermore, the imperial identity of Vijayanagara was not religious or solely martial in character.
Bibliography
- Karashima, Noboru. 2002. ‘A Concordance of Nayakas: The Vijayanagara Inscriptions in South India’. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- Rao, V N., Shulman, David. And Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1992. ‘Symbols of Substance, Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamil Nadu’. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- Stein, Burton. 1989. ‘Vijayanagara’. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Sinopoli, Carla. 2000. ‘From the Lion Throne: Political and Social Dynamics of the Vijayanagara Empire’. JSTOR.
- Lawrence, Bruce and Gilmartin, David. 2000. ‘Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia’. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.