Vijayanagar Dynasty

(“City of Victory”) The last of the great
southern Indian Hindu kingdoms,
which took its name from its capital city,
near modern Hampi in Karnataka. The
kingdom was founded in 1336 by
Harihara, a regional governor in the
Tughluq dynasty who broke away to
carve out a kingdom in the central
Deccan plateau. The kingdom went
through several periods of expansion
and decay. In the early fifteenth century
it controlled most of southern India, but
then passed through a period of decline
and loss of territory; this was followed by
renewal in the early sixteenth century,
during the reign of Krishna Deva Raya,
and finally ended after the battle of
Talikota in 1565, in which the ruling
prince Rama Raja was decisively defeated
by a coalition of the sultans from the
northern part of the Deccan. The city of
Vijayanagar was abandoned almost
immediately, and although it has suffered the ravages of time, it still contains
stunning examples of late medieval
Hindu art and architecture.