Vijayanagara Legacies in Mughal Period India

Abstract

By the time of the Mughals, the South Indian Vijayanagara empire was in eclipse, its famed capital city abandoned. Nevertheless, Vijayanagara persisted through both social memory and material legacies. Both as a touchstone for the claims and practices of its successors and as a material agent, Vijayanagara was transformative and productive of the political, economic, and physical landscapes of precolonial peninsular India. Using evidence from archaeology and paleoecology as well as texts, this chapter explores how Vijayanagara elite practices and forms of production created enduring and differentiated patterns of consumption, land use, and social power in peninsular India.