Editing Vijayanagara (section)

==Description==
{{Main|Vijayanagara Empire}}
{{more citations needed section|date=December 2013}}
[[File:A map published in 1820, Hampi, Vijayanagara ruins.jpg|thumb|The earliest known map of Vijayanagara, based on drawings of 1785, published in 1820]]
{{Karnataka History}}
{{Infobox
| title = Vijayanagara ruins in the 19th century
| image =
{{image array|perrow=2|width=140|height=100
| image1 = Ruins of Bala Krishna Temple Vijayanagara Hampi 1868 Edmund Lyon photo.jpg| caption1 = Krishna temple in 1868
| image2 = Ruins of Vijianuggur, the Volkonda Ramachandra temple in Hampi, Vijayanagara, 1868 photo.jpg| caption2 = Rama temple in 1868
| image3 = Interior of Vitthala temple mandapa in Hampi, Vijayanagara 1880 photo.jpg| caption3 =  Vitthala temple in 1880
| image4 = Hampi King's Balance Vitthala temple street entrance near river 1856 photo.jpg| caption4 = King's balance in 1858
}}
}}
The name translates as "City of Victory", from ''vijaya'' (victory) and ''nagara'' (city). As the prosperous capital of the largest and most powerful kingdom of its time in South India, Vijayanagara attracted people from all around the world.
{{blockquote|After Timur's sack of Delhi, North India remained weak and divided. South India was better off, and the largest and most powerful of the southern kingdoms was Vijayanagar. This state and city attracted many of the Hindu refugees from the north. From contemporary accounts, it appears that the city was rich and very beautiful—The city is such that "eye has not seen nor ear heard of any place resembling it upon earth", says Abdur-Razzak from Central Asia. There were arcades and magnificent galleries for the bazaars, and rising above them all was the palace of the king surrounded by "many rivulets and streams flowing through channels of cut stone, polished and even." The whole city was full of gardens, and because of them, as an Italian visitor in 1420, [[Niccolò de' Conti|Nicolo Conti]] writes, the circumference of the city was sixty miles. A later visitor was [[Domingo Paes|Paes]], a Portuguese who came in 1522 after having visited the Italian cities of the Renaissance. The city of Vijayanagar, he says, is as "large as Rome and very beautiful to the sight"; it is full of charm and wonder with its innumerable lakes and waterways and fruit gardens. It is "the best-provided city in the world" and "everything abounds." The chambers of the palace were a mass of ivory, with roses and lotuses carved in ivory at the top--"it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere, another such.|[[Jawaharlal Nehru]], ''The Discovery of India''<ref>{{cite book|last=Nehru|first=Jawaharlal|author-link=Jawaharlal Nehru|title=The Discovery of India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZO03R1m8QH4C|year=2004|publisher=Penguin Books India|isbn=978-0-14-303103-1}}, page 257</ref>}}

The ruined city is a [[World Heritage Site]], known in that context as the Ruins of Hampi. In recent years there have been concerns regarding damage to the site at Hampi from heavy vehicular traffic and the construction of road bridges in the vicinity. Hampi was listed as a "threatened" World Heritage Site by the UNESCO but was later removed from the list after appropriate corrective measures were taken.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/hampi-no-more-on-list-of-endangered-heritage-sites/article3084132.ece|title = Hampi no more on list of endangered heritage sites|newspaper = The Hindu|date = 2 August 2006}}</ref>

Traveller memoirs before 1565 CE record it as a large and developed metropolitan area.<ref name=Arizona/> The Italian [[Cesare Federici|Cesari Federici]] writing two years<ref name=Arizona/> after the Vijayanagara Empire's military defeat in 1565 describes the city after its ruin, "is not altogether destroyed, yet the houses stand still, but emptie [sic], and there is dwelling in them nothing, as is reported, but Tygres and other wild beasts."<ref name=Arizona>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YkYdxK29RHkC&pg=PA37|title=Polities and Power: Archaeological Perspectives on the Landscapes of Early States|first1=Steven E. |last1=Falconer |first2=Charles L. |last2=Redman |publisher=University of Arizona Press|year=2009|pages=37|isbn=9780816526031}}</ref>

Recent commentaries state:

{{blockquote|The massive walls, which can still be traced, enclosed an area of more than sixty square miles, much of which was occupied by fields and gardens watered by canals from the river. The population cannot be estimated with precision, but it was certainly very large when judged by the standards of the fifteenth century. The great majority of the houses were naturally small and undistinguished, but among them were scattered palaces, temples, public buildings, wide streets of shops shaded by trees, busy markets, and all the equipment of a great and wealthy city. The principal buildings were constructed in the regular Hindu style, covered with ornamental carving, and the fragments which have survived suffice to give point to the enthusiastic admiration of the men who saw the city in the days of its magnificence.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moreland |first1=W. H. |first2=Atul Chandra |last2=Chatterjee |title=A Short History of India |location=New York |publisher=David McKay |year=1962 |orig-year=first edition 1936 |edition=4th |page=177}}</ref>}}

[[Sanjay Subrahmanyam]] states that Vijayanagara was arguably one of the only three centres during this period with a population of over 100,000 in South India and that from the contemporary accounts and what remains of its expanse, the city proper and the suburbs had a population of 500,000 to 600,000. He notes that [[Domingo Paes]] had estimated its size at 100,000 houses.<ref name=Sanjay>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jgSMPKVh7f8C&pg=PA23|title=The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650|first=Sanjay |last=Subrahmanyam|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2002|pages=22, 23|isbn=9780521892261}}</ref>