Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. What was the karnataka samrajyamu?
Answer: The name contemporaries gave to the Vijayanagara Empire; the term “Vijayanagara Empire” was coined later by historians.
Q. From which Delhi Sultanate system is the amara-nayaka system believed to be derived?
Answer: From the Delhi Sultanate’s iqta system.
Q. In which year, and between which sides, was the battle of Rakshasi-Tangadi fought?
Answer: In 1565, between Vijayanagara and the combined armies of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda.
Q. What was the Kamalapuram tank built for?
Answer: To irrigate nearby fields and to supply water by channel to the “royal centre”.
Q. What does the title Hindu Suratrana literally mean?
Answer: “Hindu Sultan”; it is a Sanskritisation of the Arabic term Sultan.
Q. In which year was Hampi declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Answer: In 1986.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Name the four ruling dynasties of Vijayanagara in order.
Answer: Sangama (until 1485), Saluva (1485-1503), Tuluva (from 1503, Krishnadeva Raya’s dynasty), and Aravidu (from 1542).
Q. What were Krishnadeva Raya’s principal military achievements?
Answer: He acquired the Raichur doab (1512), subdued the rulers of Orissa (1514) and inflicted severe defeats on the Sultan of Bijapur (1520); he also built fine temples and gopurams.
Q. What is a raya gopuram, and what did its scale signify?
Answer: A raya gopuram was a royal gateway to a temple, often dwarfing the tower on the central shrine, announcing the temple’s presence from a distance and signalling the ruler’s command of resources, skill and technique.
Q. Describe the size and appearance of the mahanavami dibba.
Answer: The mahanavami dibba is a massive platform rising from a base of about 11,000 sq ft to a height of 40 ft; there is evidence it once supported a wooden structure, and its base is covered with relief carvings.
Q. Distinguish between the Kamalapuram tank and the Hiriya canal.
Answer: The Kamalapuram tank irrigated nearby fields and supplied the royal centre by channel; the Hiriya canal, drawing from a dam across the Tungabhadra, irrigated the valley separating the sacred centre from the urban core.
Q. State any two differences between the Virupaksha and Vitthala temples.
Answer: The Virupaksha temple’s earliest shrine dates to the ninth-tenth centuries and houses the kingdom’s guardian deity; the Vitthala temple’s principal deity, Vitthala, is a form of Vishnu imported from Maharashtra, and one of its shrines is uniquely built in the shape of a stone chariot, which Virupaksha does not have.
3 3-Mark Questions
Q. Describe the amara-nayaka system.
Answer: The amara-nayaka system, likely derived from the Delhi Sultanate’s iqta system, gave amara-nayakas territory to govern on the raya’s behalf. They collected taxes from peasants, craftspersons and traders, retained part of the revenue for themselves and for maintaining a fixed contingent of horses and elephants, and used some revenue for temples and irrigation. They sent annual tribute and appeared personally at court; kings occasionally asserted their control by transferring them from one place to another.
Q. What methods have been used to study the ruins of Hampi over the last two centuries?
Answer: Colin Mackenzie’s first survey map in 1800, initially based on the memories of priests of the Virupaksha temple; photographers documenting the monuments from 1856; epigraphists collecting temple inscriptions from 1836; combining these with foreign travellers’ accounts and Telugu-Kannada-Tamil-Sanskrit literature; and, from the 1980s, an intensive grid-square mapping survey.
Q. How were the water requirements of Vijayanagara met?
Answer: The city lies in a natural basin formed by the Tungabhadra, in one of the most arid zones of the peninsula, so rainwater had to be stored and conducted to the city. Embankments built along the streams flowing down from the hills created reservoirs of varying sizes. The Kamalapuram tank (early fifteenth century) irrigated nearby fields and was conducted by a channel to the royal centre; the Hiriya canal, drawing water from a dam across the Tungabhadra, irrigated the valley between the sacred centre and the urban core. Wells, rainwater tanks and temple tanks probably served ordinary town dwellers.
Q. What were the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing agricultural land within the city’s fortified area?
Answer: Advantage: a besieged Vijayanagara could sustain itself with food grown inside its own walls during a long siege, instead of relying only on stored granaries, the more usual defence. Disadvantage: it was a far more expensive strategy, since the fortification walls had to run a much longer perimeter to enclose farmland as well as buildings.
Q. Explain the significance of the rituals associated with the mahanavami dibba.
Answer: The rituals here likely coincided with Mahanavami, the ten-day autumn festival known elsewhere as Dusehra, Durga Puja or Navaratri: worship of the image and the state horse, animal sacrifice, dances, wrestling, and processions of caparisoned horses, elephants and chariots, ending in a final army inspection where nayakas and subordinate kings presented gifts and tribute. It was an occasion for the king to publicly display his prestige, power and suzerainty.
Q. Describe the nature of the relationship between Vijayanagara and the Deccan Sultanates.
Answer: It is wrong to assume the two were locked in constant religious hostility. Krishnadeva Raya supported rival claimants within the Sultanates and took the title “establisher of the Yavana kingdom”; the Sultan of Bijapur once helped resolve a Vijayanagara succession dispute. Talikota happened because of Rama Raya’s own shifting alliance policy, not because of any permanent state of war.
4 4-Mark Questions
Q. Distinguish between the royal centre, sacred centre and urban core.
Answer: The royal centre, in the south-west, held over 60 temples and about 30 palace complexes, including the mahanavami dibba and the Lotus Mahal. The sacred centre held the Virupaksha temple and the Pampadevi shrine, on the city’s rocky northern end, where pre-existing Jaina temples also stood. The urban core held the bazaars, the Muslim traders’ quarter and ordinary housing, of which almost nothing survives. A second line of fortification went round the inner core of the urban complex, and a third surrounded the royal centre, where each set of major buildings had its own high walls.
Q. Evaluate Colin Mackenzie’s contribution to the study of Vijayanagara.
Answer: Mackenzie, an East India Company engineer, brought the ruins of Hampi to light in 1800 and prepared the site’s first survey map, drawing his early information from the memories of the priests of the Virupaksha temple. In 1815 he was appointed the first Surveyor General of India, a post he held till his death in 1821. He collected local histories and surveyed historic sites to understand India’s past and make governance of the colony easier, and believed that studying Vijayanagara could give the Company “much useful information” on institutions, laws and customs, showing that his work was driven by both genuine historical curiosity and colonial administrative interest.
Q. Explain the role of trade in the Vijayanagara economy.
Answer: Cavalry warfare made imported horses from Arabia and Central Asia essential; Arab traders and kudirai chettis controlled this trade until 1498, when the Portuguese became major players. Vijayanagara’s own markets in spices, textiles and precious stones were themselves a mark of the city’s status, and that trade revenue fed the state’s prosperity directly; Krishnadeva Raya himself advised, in the Amuktamalyada, that a king should actively encourage such trade.
5 5-Mark Questions
Q. Discuss whether the term “royal centre” is an appropriate description for the part of Vijayanagara it names.
Answer: In favour: the royal centre held over 60 temples and about 30 palace complexes, a clear concentration of the ruling elite’s presence and power; ceremonial platforms such as the mahanavami dibba are clearly connected to royal occasions. Against: the “king’s palace” enclosure has no definitive evidence of being a royal residence; the exact use of the audience hall is unclear, and the ritual use of the mahanavami dibba is genuinely disputed among scholars. Conclusion: the name is a convenient modern classification that points to the area’s dominant function, but does not fully explain the precise use of every building within it.
Q. What architectural traditions inspired the architects of Vijayanagara, and how did they transform them?
Answer: Vijayanagara’s architects built on the temple-building traditions of the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Hoysalas and Cholas, particularly the Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur and the Chennakeshava temple at Belur. Building on these, they developed a new architectural scale, the raya gopuram, that dwarfed the central shrine’s own tower; added elaborate mandapas and long pillared corridors; and adapted the arch and dome of Indo-Islamic architecture, introduced by the Turkish Sultans, for use in gateways.
Q. What does the architecture of buildings like the Lotus Mahal and elephant stables tell us about the rulers who commissioned them?
Answer: The Lotus Mahal, named by nineteenth-century British travellers, was possibly a council chamber; its Indo-Islamic style (arches) shows that Vijayanagara’s rulers were familiar with the architectural language of the Deccan Sultanates and were not hesitant to adopt it, pointing to both cultural openness and a practical display of power. The long row of domed chambers called the “elephant stables” (the chapter asks whether they really were stables) suggests the importance placed on managing and displaying military resources, particularly elephants, which mattered both in warfare and in ceremonial processions. The true function of both buildings remains uncertain today, which shows that architecture alone cannot fully reveal a ruler’s intentions.
6 6-Mark Questions
Q. Trace the discovery and conservation of Vijayanagara from Mackenzie’s 1800 survey to the 1980s mapping project.
Answer: In 1800 Colin Mackenzie prepared the first survey map, based on the memories of the priests of the Virupaksha temple. From 1836, epigraphists began collecting temple inscriptions; from 1856, photographers such as Alexander Greenlaw began recording the monuments; in 1876, J.F. Fleet began systematically documenting the site’s temple-wall inscriptions; and in 1902 formal conservation began under John Marshall. Historians combined all this with the accounts of foreign travellers (Paes, Nuniz, Abdur Razzaq, Nikitin) and Telugu-Kannada-Tamil-Sanskrit literature. In 1976 Hampi was recognised as a site of national importance, and in the early 1980s an intensive documentation project began, in which dozens of scholars worked over nearly twenty years, dividing the site into 25 lettered squares, each subdivided further, painstakingly recording thousands of structures, roads, paths and bazaars. In 1986 Hampi was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q. What impression of the lives of ordinary people of Vijayanagara emerges from the chapter’s various descriptions, and what questions can buildings alone not answer?
Answer: Barbosa describes ordinary housing as “thatched, but nonetheless well built and arranged according to occupations, in long streets with many open places”; Paes calls the bazaars “the best-provided city in the world”, stocked with rubies, diamonds, pearls, cloth, fruit and common horses alike, suggesting a lively, diverse commercial life. But almost nothing of ordinary housing survives, so this picture rests mainly on travellers’ accounts, not on the buildings themselves. Surviving buildings can tell us about defence, construction technique and symbolic meaning, but they cannot tell us what ordinary men, women and children thought about any of it, whether they had access to the royal or sacred centres at all, or who the masons, stonecutters and sculptors who actually built the city were, what wages they earned, or where their materials came from. These remain open questions for further research.
7 Case Studies
— NCERT, Source 1, “Colin Mackenzie”
(A) 2 marks What post did Colin Mackenzie hold, and for how long?
Answer: He was appointed the first Surveyor General of India in 1815 and held the post until his death in 1821.
(B) 3 marks According to Mackenzie, how could the study of Vijayanagara benefit the East India Company?
Answer: He believed it could give the Company much useful information on institutions, laws and customs whose influence still prevailed among the population, helping make governance of the colony easier.
(C) 3 marks What does this passage reveal about the motivation behind Mackenzie’s work?
Answer: It shows his work was not driven only by pure historical curiosity; he explicitly saw local history as a practical tool for easing colonial governance, revealing how early colonial archaeology was often tied to the interests of the colonial state.
— John M. Fritz, George Michell and M.S. Nagaraja Rao
(A) 2 marks According to the quotation above, which elements of Vijayanagara can now only be reconstructed through “imagination”?
Answer: Wooden elements such as columns, brackets, beams, ceilings, overhanging eaves and towers, which were decorated with plaster and perhaps painted brightly.
(B) 3 marks Why do these elements no longer survive, and what remains today?
Answer: Wood is a perishable material, so it decayed over time; unlike temples, which were built entirely of masonry, the superstructures of buildings such as palaces used perishable materials. Only the stone foundations and platforms survive today.
(C) 3 marks What does this quotation reveal about the limits of “seeing” and understanding Vijayanagara today?
Answer: It shows that the surviving ruins present only a partial, incomplete picture of the original buildings; historians must use travellers’ written descriptions and comparative architectural knowledge to imagine the missing parts, so no reconstruction can be treated as final or complete.