The Heirs of Vijayanagara

This comparative study of court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the South Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries challenges existing scholarship by revealing their competitive, fluid, and dynamic nature. It highlights the contestation of power among kings and Brahmins and questions recent scholarship that perceives a fundamentally new form of Nayaka kingship.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 596 pages
Publication date: 02 March 2022
Publisher: Leiden University Press

This comparative study explores court politics in four kingdoms that emerged after the South Indian Vijayanagara empire's decline during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Drawing on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research presents a captivating new analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments. In great detail, this monograph offers both new facts and fresh insights that challenge existing scholarship. By highlighting the competitive, fluid, and dynamic nature of these courts, it undermines the historiography that views them as harmonious, hierarchical, and static. Far from being remote, ritualized figures, we find kings and Brahmins engaging in power struggles with other courtiers. At the same time, by stressing continuities with the past, this study questions recent scholarship that perceives a fundamentally new form of Nayaka kingship. Thus, this research has significant implications for our understanding of both these kingdoms and their 'medieval precursors.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789087283711