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An Imperial Capital : Vijayanagara
Colin Mackenzie
Born in 1754, Colin Mackenzie became famous as an engineer, surveyor and cartographer. In 1815 he was appointed the first Surveyor General of India, a post he held till his death in 1821. He embarked on collecting local histories and surveying historic sites in order to better understand India’s past and make governance of the colony easier. He says that “It struggled long under the miseries of bad management .... before the South came under the benign influence of the British Government”. By studying Vijayanagara, Mackenzie believed that the East India Company could gain “much useful information on many of these institutions, laws and customs whose influence still prevails among the various tribes of natives forming the general mass of the population to this day”.
Questions:
(i) Why did Colin Mackenzie become famous?
(ii) Why did he embark upon collecting local histories and surveying historic sites?
(iii) How did Mackenzie collect more information about Hampi?
(iv) Explain how it enabled the scholars to study about Hampi.
(i) Colin Mackenzie became famous because he was a great man, playing different roles as an engineer, surveyor and cartographer. In 1815 he was appointed the first Surveyor General of India, a post he held till his death in 1821.
(ii) Colin Mackenzie embarked on collecting local histories and surveying historic sites in order to better understand India’s past and make governance of colony easier. He believed that by studying Vijayanagra the British East India Company could gain much useful information on many of institutions, laws and customs whose influence still prevailed among the various tribes of natives forming the general mass of the population of that day.
(iii) Mackenzie collected more information about Hampi through embarking on collecting local histories, interacting and hold conversation with elderly people, priests, having some old and written books or record papers and survey historic sites in order to better understand India’s past.
(iv) The facts and knowledge collected by Colin Mackenzie and his colleagues about Hampi the scholars of that time and of later time studies and collected more local historical information about the remains of ancient buildings, temples and surveyed historical sites, brought in light by the Department of Surveyor General of India.
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What have been the methods used to study the ruins of Hampi over the last two centuries? In what way do you think they would have complemented the information provided by the priests of the Virupaksha temple?
How were the water requirements of Vijayanagara met?
What do you think were the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing agricultural land within the fortified area of the city?
What do you think was the significance of the rituals associated with the Mahanavami dibba?
Fig. 7.33 is an illustration of another pillar from the Virupaksha temple. Do you notice any floral motifs? What are the animals shown? Why do you think they are depicted? Describe the human figures shown.
Discuss whether the term “royal centre” is an appropriate description for the part of the city for which it is used
What does the architecture of buildings like the Lotus Mahal and elephant stables tell us about the rulers who commissioned them?
What are the architectural traditions that inspired the architects of Vijayanagara? How did they transform these traditions?
What impression of the lives of the ordinary people of Vijayanagara can you cull from the various descriptions in the chapter?
On an outline map of the world, mark approximately Italy, Portugal, Iran and Russia.Trace the routes the travellers mentioned on p.176 would have taken to reach Vijayanagara.
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