Evaluate the accounts of foreign travellers about Vijayanagar Empire.

Answer:

Foreign travellers who visited Vijayanagara between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have left vivid eyewitness descriptions of its wealth, administration and daily life, and their accounts complement the indigenous inscriptions in ways nothing else can.

The principal travellers

• Nicolo de' Conti, an Italian of about 1420, described the capital's size and festivals.
• Abdur Razzaq, Persian envoy in 1443, admired its seven fortifications and bazaars.
• Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz described Krishnadeva Raya's court and administration.
• Duarte Barbosa noted its trade, religious tolerance and social customs.

Their value

• They record everyday detail, markets, festivals and irrigation, that formal records omit.
• Paes compared the city to Rome and called it the best provided in the world.
• Nuniz preserved a dynastic history and details of military organisation.
• They describe the Mahanavami festival and the splendour of the court.

Their limitations

• As outsiders they sometimes misunderstood customs and religious practice.
• Numbers of troops and revenues are frequently exaggerated.
• They wrote from memory and with the prejudices of their own societies.
• Their testimony must therefore be checked against inscriptions and literary sources.

What they collectively establish

• The capital was among the largest and wealthiest cities of its time.
• Irrigation works and agriculture were highly developed.
• A large standing army and extensive horse imports sustained its power.
• Religious tolerance permitted mosques and diverse worship in the city.

The travellers' accounts are thus indispensable but require critical handling. As Nilakanta Sastri demonstrated, used alongside the epigraphic record they transform our understanding of Vijayanagara from a list of rulers and grants into a living picture of one of the great cities of the medieval world.