Describe in detail about the foreign travellers' accounts which gave information of Vijayanagar kingdom.

Answer:

The foreign travellers who visited the Vijayanagara empire between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries left vivid eyewitness accounts that are among our most valuable sources for its wealth, cities and administration, richly supplementing the indigenous inscriptions and courtly literature that survive.

The principal travellers

• Nicolo de' Conti, an Italian, visited about 1420 and described the capital's great size, festivals and army.
• Abdur Razzaq, a Persian envoy of 1443, admired the strongly fortified and prosperous city of Deva Raya II.
• Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz, Portuguese of the early sixteenth century, described Krishnadeva Raya's court, city and administration.
• Duarte Barbosa noted the empire's flourishing trade, social customs and religious life.

What they tell us

• They vividly convey the empire's wealth, crowded bazaars, irrigation works and military strength.
• They describe grand festivals such as the Mahanavami and the splendour of the royal court.
• They record social practices, from the position of women to the busy trade in horses and gems.

Notable observations

• Abdur Razzaq described the seven concentric fortifications and the bazaars of Vijayanagara.
• Paes called it as large as Rome and the best-provided city in the world.
• Nuniz preserved a dynastic history of the empire and details of its military organisation.
• Barbosa noted the freedom with which people of every faith lived in the kingdom.

Value and limitations

• Their outsider's eye captures everyday detail that the formal records simply omit.
• Yet, unfamiliar with local customs, they sometimes misunderstood or exaggerated.
• Their accounts must therefore be checked against inscriptions and literary sources.

These foreign notices thus provide a rich and human picture of Vijayanagara at its height that the epigraphic record alone cannot. Used critically alongside the inscriptions, as Nilakanta Sastri demonstrated, they remain indispensable to any reconstruction of the empire's splendour and daily life.