South India under Vijayanagara: Art and Archaeology, Edited by Anila Verghese and Anna L. Dallapiccola, Oxford, Rs 1,450

Medieval ruins in India invariably bring to mind, and with good reason, the splendours of the Qutb Minar, Fatehpur Sikri, Taj Mahal and other monuments of the Turko-Afghan and the Mughal periods. Hampi in Karnataka is rarely at the top of anyone’s mind in this particular context. Yet, in Hampi is located the remains of the Vijayanagara Empire, which from the 14th to the 16th centuries held sway over large parts of peninsular India.

One reason for this could be the fact that Hampi is not easy to access. But the deeper reason for the relative neglect of Hampi, one suspects, is the overwhelming emphasis on the history of North India in most conventional histories of India. The view from Delhi dominates not only the contemporary view of India but the historical one as well.

The lure of Hampi begins not with the monuments but the landscape in which the ruins are situated. In some obscure moment of geological time and through a process known only to students of geology, this terrain through which the river Tungabhadra makes its way to the river Krishna is dotted with hillocks on which are piled boulders of astonishing shapes and sizes.

This book, as its title indicates, looks at the art and archaeology of Vijayanagara. The aim of this collection to which 21 scholars have contributed is to reveal many facets of the new kind of work, much of it interdisciplinary, that has been done in the last three decades in Hampi and in the wider area of the Vijayanagara Empire.

In the opening chapter, Carla Sinopoli writes how the dedication of a community of scholars who have analysed texts and material remains has thrown light on the complex history of the empire and on the religious practices of the people who inhabited it. It was agriculture that provided the economic basis of the urban growth and the imperial expansion. It is now established that the core of the empire was surrounded by a “densely inhabited agricultural landscape’’. There prevailed, when the empire was at its height, an intensive investment in various strategies of agricultural production by both local communities and the urban elite.

The temples and the religious monuments were linked with the local belief that the region was none other than Kishkinda of the Ramayan. This association was critical when the kings of Vijayanagara tried to legitimise their authority. Art, its patronage and power came together and the scale and the beauty of some of the buildings demonstrate this.

One important essay in this volume notes, “The art history of the Vijayanagara period differs from other phases of Indian art history on account of the concentrated efforts made during this period for the promotion of dharma.’’ Without quarrelling with this generalization, it needs to be pointed out that a sister essay in this volume which analyses the sculptures on the great stone platform in the royal centre makes the point that even though this platform is associated with the annual celebration of the Mahanavami festival, its unusual sculptural programme is “totally devoid of sacred imagery’’.