Unity in adversity

January 1565. On the banks of the Tungabhadra stood the powerful Vijayanagar army with 70,000 cavalry and nine lakh infantrymen. Facing it in battle was an unstable coalition of the Deccan sultans—Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, Adil Shah of Bijapur, Qutb Shah of Golconda, Imad Shah of Berar and Barid Shah of Bidar.

These men had almost as many differences, if not more, between them as they had with Rama Raya of Vijayanagar. But, for the first and only time in history, they rallied forces, using their religion as the binding factor, to take on an empire which, even though past its pinnacle, was still a glory that the peninsula would never again behold. A glory that can only be understood in part from gazing at Hampi, which was plundered, burnt and abandoned almost immediately after the battle, leaving ruins frozen in time.

The Battle of Talikota it is called, though history has obscured the coordinates of the spot where the battle was actually fought. Accounts of contemporaries, as well as later writers, have embellished the stories so much that it is difficult to sift fact from fiction. However, even in its barest version, the story is fantastic.

Rama Raya was only a regent, who had wrested power from the king. He was in his 80s at the time, though exaggerated accounts talk of him as being 96 with the sprightliness of a 30-year-old. Among his adversaries was Ali Adil Shah I, fifth sultan of Bijapur, who had been symbolically adopted by Raya’s wife as her foster-son, after the death of her own son. But these were times when blood much thicker in kinship had been shed for a crown; a symbolic relation proved no shield.

Initially, it seemed as if with the numerical strength, the battle would be in favour of Vijayanagar. In fact, so confident was the Raya that he toured the battlefield in an open litter, to boost the morale of his men. At one point, he even seated himself on a bejewelled throne, ready to hand out fistfuls of coins to the worthy, on the battlefield itself.

The Nizam Shahi faction, however, put coins to more innovative and deadly use. They fed bagfuls of copper coins into their cannons, sending forth shots of molten rain, killing 5,000 in the Raya’s army. The shots fell close to the Raya, and he realised it was time to move to the relative safety of his litter. But, as he scrambled, a battle-crazed elephant from the Nizam Shahi army broke loose and headed his way. The Raya’s palanquin bearers fled, leaving their precious charge to be trampled upon, says one account. Other stories say he was captured and taken to the Nizam Shah, who had him beheaded before foster son Adil Shah could come to the spot.

“Usually people believe Vijayanagar to be a ‘Hindu empire’ standing up against the might of ‘Islamic power’,” says Manu Pillai, author of Rebel Sultans, a treatise on medieval Deccan rulers. “This is an over-simplification. Vijayanagar was a place where its emperors from 1352 onwards styled themselves ‘Hindu Sultans’. Thousands of Muslims served in its armies, and there is inscriptional evidence of a celebrated general, Ain-ul-Mulk Gilani, organising grants of land for 80 Brahmins.

“Its rulers wore clothes inspired by Persian fashions, had Turks and Arabs carved into temple columns, and on an occasion, one emperor confidently suggested to the king of Portugal that their two states get into a marital alliance. Travellers have left fascinating accounts of the city itself, with its fortifications, palaces and public buildings, its courtesans and traders. Essentially, Vijayanagar marked a period of great cultural accomplishment in south India, nourished not only by local traditions, but also by international influences.”

So, what would have happened if Vijayanagar had won that January day? According to Pillai, the Raya could have brushed aside the Deccan sultans as vassals. Not that the sultanates lasted long anyway; the Mughals gobbled them up within a century. But, since these sultans used to have individual alliances with Vijayanagar before their grand alliance, they might have sought the latter’s help against the Mughals. Either way, if Vijayanagar had survived, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb would not have faced the Deccan sultanates, but this powerful empire. “Of course, this is all speculation,” says Pillai. “For all we know, if not in 1565, Vijayanagar could have disintegrated in the next century due to internal factors, weak rulers, and other such problems that afflicted all empires everywhere eventually.”