Founding of the Vijayanagara Empire (1336) and Hampi

The Vijayanagara Empire was founded in 1336 by two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in what is now Karnataka, South India. Rising amid the collapse of Delhi Sultanate rule in the south, their small kingdom became the most powerful state in southern India for more than two centuries. Its capital, Vijayanagara, the “City of Victory”, whose ruins stand at Hampi, was among the largest and richest cities of its time.

Background: the Deccan in crisis

In the early 14th century the armies of the Delhi Sultanate swept through southern India. Between 1307 and 1323 they defeated the major Hindu dynasties of the south: the Yadavas of Devagiri, the Kakatiyas of Warangal, the Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra and the Pandyas of Madurai. Under Muhammad bin Tughluq, who even moved much of his court to Daulatabad in 1327, Delhi tried to govern this vast region directly.

Its hold soon weakened. Revolts broke out across the south in the 1330s. Governors in Madurai declared independence in 1335, local chiefs threw off Delhi’s control in Telangana, and the Hoysala king Veera Ballala III fought to restore his power. The small kingdom of Kampili, near the Tungabhadra, had been conquered by Tughluq forces around 1327 after it sheltered a rebel cousin of the sultan.

For the peoples of the south, these decades were a time of upheaval. Old royal houses had been destroyed, temple endowments disrupted and revenue diverted to distant Delhi. Local warrior chiefs, merchants and temple institutions looked for new leaders able to restore order, and several competing powers emerged from the wreckage of Tughluq rule.

Who were Harihara and Bukka?

The founding brothers were two of the five sons of Sangama, which is why their line is known as the Sangama dynasty. Their origins are disputed, and historians have argued about them for more than a century.

One view, based on later traditions, holds that they were Telugu-speaking officers who served the Kakatiyas and then the ruler of Kampili. When Kampili fell they were captured, taken to Delhi and converted to Islam, then sent back by Muhammad bin Tughluq to govern the region. Once there, they renounced Islam with the help of the Hindu sage Vidyaranya and declared independence.

A second view sees them as Kannada-speaking commanders in the service of the Hoysala king Veera Ballala III, posted to guard the northern frontier, who filled the vacuum after the Hoysalas collapsed in the 1340s. The conversion story appears only in sources written long after the events, and many historians treat it with caution.

The founding of the kingdom (1336)

The traditional foundation date is 1336. By the mid-1330s Harihara was exercising royal authority over the Tungabhadra region from Anegondi on the north bank of the river. The new city of Vijayanagara was laid out on the south bank, among granite hills that formed natural defences.

The site had deep religious significance. Known as Pampa-kshetra, it was associated with the goddess Pampa and the god Virupaksha, a form of Shiva, and with places in the epic Ramayana, which locates the monkey kingdom of Kishkindha in this landscape. The Virupaksha temple, whose core predates the empire, became the royal shrine. Later tradition gave Vidyaranya, associated with the monastery of Sringeri, a central role in inspiring the foundation, and the city was sometimes called Vidyanagara in his honour, though the extent of his role is debated.

Stone inscriptions and copper-plate grants are the main evidence for these early decades. A well-known inscription of 1346 records Harihara and his brothers celebrating their conquests at the Sringeri monastery, which shows that by then they controlled much of the former Hoysala heartland.

Harihara I ruled until 1356. He did not at first claim the highest imperial titles, but he steadily extended his control over former Hoysala lands and the coasts.

Expansion and rivalry with the Bahmanis

Bukka Raya I (reigned 1356-1377) turned the kingdom into a major power. After the death of the last Hoysala king in the 1340s, the brothers absorbed most Hoysala territory. Bukka’s son Kumara Kampana led a campaign into the Tamil country in the 1360s and 1370s, defeating the Madurai Sultanate and restoring temples there. His wife Gangadevi celebrated the campaign in a Sanskrit poem, Madhura Vijayam (“The Conquest of Madurai”).

Bukka’s son Harihara II (reigned 1377-1404) was the first of the line to use full imperial titles such as Maharajadhiraja. By then Vijayanagara controlled most of India south of the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers.

To the north, rebels against Delhi founded the Bahmani Sultanate in 1347. For the next century and a half the two powers fought repeatedly, especially over the fertile Raichur Doab, the land between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers. The wars were costly, but they did not prevent Vijayanagara from growing rich on agriculture, temple economies and trade through ports on both coasts.

The rivalry was not purely religious. Vijayanagara recruited Muslim soldiers and cavalry, imported horses through Arab and later Portuguese traders, and adopted features of Deccan sultanate court dress and architecture.

The capital at Hampi

Over two centuries Vijayanagara grew into a vast city of temples, palaces, markets, irrigation canals and fortifications. It was divided into a sacred centre around the Virupaksha temple and the river, and a royal centre of palaces, halls and enclosures. Foreign visitors left vivid descriptions: the Italian Niccolò de’ Conti around 1420, the Persian envoy Abdur Razzaq in 1443, and the Portuguese Domingo Paes and Fernão Nunes in the 16th century. Paes compared the city’s size with Rome.

Population estimates for its peak around 1500 range from about 200,000 to 500,000 people, which would place it among the largest cities in the world at the time. Its greatest ruler, Krishnadevaraya (reigned 1509-1529), of the later Tuluva dynasty, built or extended many of its monuments.

The empire’s government combined royal authority with powerful local commanders. Under the later rulers many territories were assigned to nayakas, military chiefs who collected revenue and maintained troops for the king. Temples were major landholders and centres of local economic life, and royal grants to them were recorded in thousands of inscriptions in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Sanskrit.

Learning flourished from the start. Sayana, traditionally described as Vidyaranya’s brother, wrote influential Sanskrit commentaries on the Vedas under the patronage of the early Sangama kings. Later courts supported poets in Kannada and Telugu, and Krishnadevaraya himself composed the Telugu poem Amuktamalyada.

Architecture developed a distinctive style, with huge temple gateway towers (gopurams), pillared halls carved with rearing horses and mythical beasts, and royal buildings such as the Lotus Mahal that combined South Indian and Indo-Islamic features. Canals and tanks, some still in use, carried water from the Tungabhadra to the fields and the city.

Key people

• Harihara I (reigned 1336-1356): co-founder and first ruler of the Sangama dynasty.
• Bukka Raya I (reigned 1356-1377): co-founder, who consolidated and expanded the kingdom.
• Vidyaranya: scholar and later head of the Sringeri monastery, traditionally credited with inspiring the foundation.
• Kumara Kampana: Bukka’s son, conqueror of the Madurai Sultanate.
• Muhammad bin Tughluq (reigned 1325-1351): Delhi sultan whose failing control of the south created the opportunity for the brothers.

The fall of the city

In 1565 an alliance of the Deccan sultanates that had succeeded the Bahmani state defeated the Vijayanagara army at the Battle of Talikota. The regent Aliya Rama Raya was killed, and the victors sacked and largely destroyed the capital over the following months. The empire survived under the Aravidu dynasty, ruling from Penukonda and later Chandragiri and Vellore, but declined steadily and had broken apart by the mid-17th century.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Vijayanagara was a purely Hindu bulwark against Islam. Religion mattered to the empire’s identity, but its rulers fought Hindu as well as Muslim rivals, employed Muslim soldiers and borrowed widely from sultanate culture.
• Myth: the founding story is fully documented. The year 1336 and the role of Vidyaranya come largely from later inscriptions and traditions; contemporary evidence is limited, and the brothers’ origins are still debated.
• Fact: Hampi’s ruins are real and extensive. The Group of Monuments at Hampi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 and covers more than 4,000 hectares.

Timeline

• c. 1327: Kampili conquered by the forces of Muhammad bin Tughluq.
• 1335: Madurai breaks away from Delhi.
• 1336: traditional date of the founding of Vijayanagara by Harihara and Bukka.
• 1347: Bahmani Sultanate founded in the northern Deccan.
• 1356: Bukka Raya I succeeds Harihara I.
• c. 1370-1378: Kumara Kampana defeats the Madurai Sultanate.
• 1377: Harihara II takes the throne and full imperial titles.
• 1509-1529: reign of Krishnadevaraya, the empire’s high point.
• 1565: Battle of Talikota and sack of the capital.
• 1986: Hampi inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

The founding of Vijayanagara reshaped South India. For more than two centuries it gave the region a powerful state that sponsored Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Sanskrit literature, temple building and long-distance trade. The ruins of Hampi remain one of the most remarkable archaeological landscapes in the world.