Intro

If you’ve never been to Hampi, I strongly urgent that you do so at least once in your life. And a pro tip, tkae the overnight train from Bengaluru to Hospete, which is the nearest railway junction, look out from the window. I went to Hampi in 2022, and the night sky I saw out of the train was one the clearest of my life. I mean, of course, it’s not perfect for stargazing or anything like that, but if like me, you’ve only seen a night sky with the moon and a few stars and planets, this will be a treat.

And another pro tip, when you get to Hampi, rent a cycle. There are buses there, of course, and they’re pretty regular, but still, you can’t go around at your own pace and there’ll be a lot of waiting. When I was there, the rate for renting a cycle was, I think ₹100 per day, and almost all of the sites are within cycle-able distance. And yeah, please Hampi solo. Hampi is not really an adventure-type of place, nor ideally a place you’d want to visit with friends.

Just go solo and soak in the history and the weight of the scale of what all of the ruins would’ve looked like at the peak of the Vijayanagara Empire and what we’ve lost. I think it will be a trip you’ll cherish for long.

It was the capital of one of the greatest empires of Bharat, and today we’re going to talk about the greatest emperor of that empire.

Krishnadevaraya built many of the famous structures of Hampi - the Ugra Narasimha statute, the Hazara Ram temple, the Krishna temple, besides enhancing other monuments like the Vijaya Vitthala temple and the Lotus Mahal.

He stopped the encroachment of the Deccan sultanates into southern India and won amazing victories that we were never told about.

He was a poet and compiled some of the finest works of literature such as the Amuktamalyada, and the Jambavati Kalyanam in Telugu and Sanskrit, was a brave warrior and commander on the battlefield, a lover, and a great emperor who wanted to was mostly led by doing what was right than unchecked ambition.

Sources

For this episode on Krishnadevaraya, I’ve majorly referred to the book Raya by Srinivas Reddy besides other sources and videos.

Becoming the Emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire

The Vijayanagara Empire had been established by two brothers - Harihara and Bukka - in 1336 CE. 150 years later, Krishnadevaraya’s father, Narasa Nayaka, who was a general but not a noble man and did not coem from any royal lineage, overthrew the king he was serving under as general and became the Emperor of the Vjayanagara Empire.

His two oldest sons were - Viranarasimha and Krishna - who he had from two different wives. There are a few different stories as to how Krishna became the emperor, but the fact is that after his father, Narasa Nayaka’s death, his elder brother Vira Narasimha became the emperor, and after a short reign of 6 years, he died and being the next eldest son, Krishna became the “raya” or the emperor of Vijayanagara.

There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that he did not really want to become the emperor. One such story is that when his father was on his deathbed, he called his two sons to gauge which of them was a better fit to become the next emperor. He had a ring on his finger and he said that whichever of them would pull it off his finger would become the next emperor. The elder son, Viranarasimha, tired first and despite trying really hard he could not pull the ring from his father’s swollen finger.

Then it was Krishna’s turn and he pulled out his dagger and cut off his father, the Emperor of Vijayanagara’s, finger. The ring was now off his hand. He wasn’t concerned that he might get thrown into prison or worse for cutting off the emperor’s finger. He was given a challenge and he figured out the least roundabout and the most direct path to accomplishing his goal. This is a theme that would keep propping up throughout his life. He just cut to the chase and didn’t like beating about the bush.

Another story relates that his brother became emperor after their father, as historically proven, but when he was about to die after a short reign, he wanted his son who was still very young to become king. So he had ordered his brother Krishna to be blinded so that he would become unfit to rule ever.

When Timmarasu, the minister who had served both his father and would go on to serve Krishna, told Krishna of this, he said, ‘I do not wish to be king, nor anything else in the kingdom, even though it should come to me by right. I only desire to pass through this world as a yogi.’

According to the story, Timmarasu presented the eyes of a goat to Viaranarasimha and he died in peace thinking his brother had been blinded and hence his son would become the next Emperor.

But after Krishna did become the emperor after his brother’s death, he didn’t go through the rest of life like the reins of the Empire were unwillingly thrust on him. He didn’t busy himself with wine or women and just do the bare minimum to keep as Emperor. He threw himself at the responsibility that he was laid on his shoulder, and was determined to follow his raj dharma and become the greatest king the empire had ever seen.

Early Days as Emperor

As soon as he became the emperor in 1509, he wanted to know what he was the emperor of, and bring order to the chaos and unruliness that existed during his brother’s rule. So he began to stock of his empire’s current position. He called in his accountants and treasurers and ministers and asked them to submit detailed reports of the number and state of forts, cities, villages, farms, jewelry, coins and looked into reports from district temple superintendents, the various lords of the empire and the palace’s salaried forces.

He discovered several gaps such as the fact that certain lords or nayakas were contributing less number of horses, elephants, and infantrymen than they were supposed to among other things. He also sent out spies, before touring his empire himself to assess the state of affairs.

KDR first consolidated his existing position before looking outwards.

In just the next year after his coronation that would be 1510, Ganagaraja who was the lord of the principality of Ummattur near modern-day Mysuru, revolted and KDR went down to suppress it. He then also defeated the last remaining opposition within his empire, Kumara Vijaya. He was an ally of Gangaraja and was the lord of the island fortress of Srirangapatnam, where the absolutely beautiful Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple is located.

Timmarasu, his loyal minister, whom he lovingly called Appaji, arranged his marriage to Tirumaladevi, daughter of the defeated Kumara Vijaya. After this, there were no more rebellions within the kingdom or any other battle with his few southern Indian neighbours.

Krishnadevaraya Ends the Deccan Sultans’ Annual Raids

With all internal rebellions crushed, Krishnadevaraya now looked outwards. Some of the Deccan Sultanates would annually raid and plunder the northern parts of the Vijayanagara Empire.

But let me digress a bit and give you a brief background of the Deccan Sultantates. The Sultanates were actually break away empires formed from the Bahmani Sultanate, which itself was a break away empire from the the Turkish Sultanate based in Delhi.

Just like the Vijayangara Empire, the Bahmani sultanate was established during the rule of Muhammad Bin Tughluq, the same “Mad Sultan” we’ve read about in school who moved the capital of his kingdom from Delhi to Daulatabad in Maharashtra, near the current Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, because he believed he would be able to better control his southern territories from there. He forced all the people of Delhi to move with him to the new capital. And then moved back because of the threat from the Mongols. He’s the same sultan who crashed his sultanate’s economy by issuing brass and copper coins instead of the silver and gold ones and then was forced to take them back in.

The Vijayangara kingdom was established in 1336, while the Bahmani kingdom was established 11 years later in 1347. Ther was Gulbarga or modern-day Kalaburgi in Karantaka. 1490 onwards, the sultanate had started to decline and five kingdoms emerged from the Bahmani sultanate. It wasn’t like the Sultante ended - there were Bahmani sultans right up till 1527 when the kingdom was annexed by Aurangzeb, but after 1490, the sultans had no real power or major territory after the five kingdoms, which came to be known as the Deccan Sultanates sprang up.

These five Deccan Sultanates were later called by either the name of the ruling dynasty or their capital. For example, the Adil Shahis ruled from Vijayapura in Karnataka, then-called Bijapur. Their sultanate's was called the Adil Shahi sultanate or the Bijapur Sultanate. The Nizam Shahis ruled from Ahmednagar or the current Ahilyanagar in modern-day Mahrashtra. So their sultanate could either be called the Nizam Shahi sultanate or the Ahmednagar Sultanate. The three others were the Qutub Shahis who ruled from Golconda in the outskirts of modern-day Hyderabad, the Barid Shahis who ruled from Bidar in Karnataka and the Imad Shahis who ruled Berar, which was a province rather than a city, currently the Amravati division or Varhad in Maharashtra.

Yusuf Adil Shah, the founder of the Adil Shahi or Bijapur sultanate would annually raid, and plunder the northern part of the Vijayanagara empire. Besides according to Srinivas Reddy, whose book I read for this episode, wrote that according to some sources, KDR’s father, Narasa Nayaka had tried to form a truce with Yusuf Adil Shah, but at the peaceful, diplomatic meeting, Adil Shah betrayed him and killed many of his nobles while Narasa Nayaka just managed to escape alive.

However, the incident that spurred KDR into battle was that his spies in Yusuf Adil Shah’s court reported that he had insulted him and KDR who had a short temper, and as we’ll see, often took impulsive decisions, which actually most of the time turned out well for him, marched to take on the Yusuf Adil Shah and the Bijapur sultanate in late 1510.

The Krishna river was the traditional boundary between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Bijapur Sultanate, and when KDR reached the southern bank near Kovilkonda in modern-day Telengana, with his army to cross the river and enter Bijapur territory, he found that Yusuf Adil Shah had already the river and had set up camp with his army in Vijayanagar territory. Ahmadnagar and Golconda had also contributed men to his army.

The battle played out in a different manner, and not strictly in the conventional way. Deccan Sultanates had a tradition where they would erect a tent called the Battle tent which would serve as an indicator they were now at war and that the surrounding area was darb-al-jihad or field of war. If it was dismantled, it would mean that they were no longer at war. And it was more than just a symbol in some cases. If the enemy somehow managed to capture the battle tent and tear it down, it would be a huge blow to the morale of the sultan’s forces. It was like sort of bringing down the flag and raising your own when capturing a fort. So to prevent this, the Bijapuris guarded it with elephants and best of their soldiers.

instead of engaging in a long drawn out battle, he sent some men under a Telugu lord named Pemmasani Ramalingama Nayadu, to bring down the tent. Ramalingama Nayadu and his soldiers managed to break through enemy lines, reach the Battle Tent, attack the elephants and their mahouts and cut down the ropes of the Battle Tent.

As soon as that happened, the Vijayanagara army started beating their battle drums and KDR mounted an elephant and headed towards the Battle Tent. Seeing their battle tent down, Yusuf Adil Shah and his men suffered a psychological setback and then these beating drums and KDR and his army coming for them made them retreat. The Krishna river’s water was at a higher level than usual. Many Bijapuri soldiers jumped into the river and tried to swim across it. In the process, some were was swept away by the current while the sultan himself supposedly managed to escape in a boat.

Anyway, once the sultan and his forces started fleeing, KDR ordered his men to cross the Krishna, and hence enter Bijapur territory. For years, Bijapur had raided Vijayangara’s northern lands, now under KDR, his army plundered towns within a 3 league or approx. 17 km radius.

Capturing the Udayagiri Fort

Krishnadevaraya certainly wanted glory for himself, but he did not want to expand Vijayanagara’s borders. He had a great sense of history and wanted to restore all the parts that had been part of the kingdom in the past but had slipped into others’ hands. He wanted to do right by the kings that had preceded him and right by the kingdom that he was now the ruler of.

That’s why when he defeated the Bijapur sultan, he did not annex any part of his territory, even though he could have, because he did not believe that it rightly belonged to Vijayanagara.

One of his predecessors, Saluva Narasimha, on his deathbed had laid down his final wish - ‘Time has failed me. I desire that my sons, or whoever should inherit this kingdom which I gained by the sweat of my brow, should capture the three fortresses that remain in revolt against me still.’

KDR wanted to restore the historical territorial expanse of the Vijayanagara Empire and the three forts that his predecessor had talked about - Udayagiri, Mudgal and Raichur - would be his milestones in this mission.

Towards the north east of the city of Vijayanagara, the river Krishna was the traditional boundary of the empire. But much of the land between the city and this north-eastern boundary had fallen into the hands of the Gajapati kingdom with its base in Cuttack, in modern day Odisha.

Udayagiri fort, which is about 160 km north of Tirupati, was the one of the most important fort in this area, and KDR besides Saluva Narasimha’s wish, he knew that he had to control it so that it could serve as a base for him to launch attacks to reclaim territory.

Also, the Gajapati and Vijayanagara kings were long standing rivals, and wresting the fort from their hands would be a great win for the Vijayanagara empire.

KDR also had a personal axe to grind with Prataparudradeva, the Gajapati king during his time, because, according to some sources, KDR’s mother was a maidservant and PRD would often insult him by calling him “dasi putra” or “son of a slave”.

He set out in the winter of 1512, with an army of 34,000 infantrymen and 800 elephants towards Udayagiri. Along the way, men contributed by local lords also joined his army, and they reached Pennar river, some distance from the fort in January 1513.

He dispatched his army ahead to lay siege on Udayagiri while KDR himself, along with his two wives, Chinnadevi and Tirumaladevi, went to Tirupati to seek the blessings of Lord Venkateshwara. After that he quickly headed north to join his army which had been besieging the fort.

Udayagiri was well fortified and a long-drawn out siege till the time the food and water inside the fort ran out was the only way to force it into surrender.

KDR set up almost an entire city outside the fort. It had stalls selling vegetables, grains, clothing, ornaments, fragrances, mattresses and pillows and had barbers, washermen, cobblers, tailors and other tradesmen.

The people inside Udayagiri fort, however, were running out of food and water day by day and almost two years after the siege had begun, on 9th June 1514, the commander of the fort sent his turban as a sign of submission.

KDR had won Udayagiri fort from the hands of Prataparudradeva and was one step closer to fulfilling his predecessor’s final wish and his own mission of restoring Vijayanagara’s lands.

KDR and his queens returned to Vijayanagara while he appointed his prime minister, Timmarasu aka Appaji’s, son as the new commander of the fort.

Krishnadevaraya defeats the Gajapati King Prataparudradeva

From there he instructed Timmarasu to push further north and capture the fort of Kondaveedu. Kondaveedu was the most important fort in the area, more important than Udayagiri, actually. Although Kondaveedu was not part of the original three forts that he wanted to conquer, capturing it would mean that Vijayanagara would have a strong military base very close to the Krishna river, which like I said before, was considered the boundary between Vijayanagara and the Gajapati kingdom. If they could wrest it from the hands of the Gajapati king, they would push them back beyond the Krishna and keep them there.

KDR knew that if he wanted to win the fort directly, he would have to simply besiege the fort and wait till provisions ran out just like he had done in Udayagiri, so uncharacteristically, he asked Timmarasu and his son to go the roundabout route. He instructed them to capture all small, nearby forts so that the forces at Kondaveedu would be thinned out because they would have to go protect these smaller forts. Timmarasu did just that. He captured some forts with military strength, while some he won through diplomacy.

Once all nearby forts had surrendered, KDR himself set out towards Kondaveedu. Timmarasu and his forces had already besieged the fort and since he had neutralized all nearby forts, Kondaveedu itself had very few men to protect it. The fort itself happened to be commanded by Prataparudradeva’s son, Prince Virabhadra.

Prataparudradeva, marched with a force to save his son and camped at Meduru, on the northern bank of the Krishna, some 40 km east of Kondaveedu fort. KDR sent a message to him saying that to avoid unnecessary loss of lives while trying to cross the river, his army would retreat a few kilometres so that the Gajapati forces could safely cross over and then they would fight it out. Or he said that his men should go retreat few kms from the bank, so that KDR’s forces could cross the river safely and they battle it out. He received no reply so KDR’s forces made their way through the Krishna with the the Gajapati’s army waiting for them on the northern bank. Despite the highly disadvantageous position, KRD’s forces won and Prataparudradeva fled back to Cuttack leaving his son out to face KDR alone with his small force.

KDR returned to Kondaveedu and he really did want a long drawn out siege and spend almost two years trying to capture Kondaveedu, so he just decided to power through. KDR got moveable wooden platforms constructed so that they his men would be at the same level as the defenders standing on the forts’ walls. KDR’s forces fought from these platforms, and then finally managed to enter the fort and which force it to surrender in late June of 1515.

Now that he had successfully reclaimed territory that historically belonged to Vijayangara, he pushed further north, not with the aim of expanding his kingdom’s territory but because he wanted to shut down the Gajapati king once and for all and make it clear that despite being not being of true royal lineage, he was a better king than him.

The Vijayanagar forces plowed through the forts of Kondapilli, on the northern bank of the Krishna, in modern-day Andhra Pradesh, and camped at Potnuru, some 45 km north west of Vishakhapatnam, and squarely in Gajapati territory.

He could’ve advanced further, but decided to let the Gajapati come to him. he waited 6 months, but Prataparudradeva did not show up possibly because he was occupied trying to fend off Hussain Shah, the sultan of Bengal. Finally tired of waiting, he marched on the Gajapati’s captial of Cuttack and captured the city. Prataparudradeva fled before he could be captured and humiliated by KDR.

However, like I’d said before, he wasn’t really looking to expand his empire. As he made clear in a message he sent to him, “I want you to realize that I have come solely for the sake of increasing my glory, with no desire of annexing your kingdom. The Gajapati kingdom I leave for the Gajapati.”

And so, KDR married Prataparudradeva’s daughter, Jaganmohini Devi, also referred to as Tukka or Annapurna, signed a peace treaty in August 1519, almost 7 years after starting the campaign against the Gajapati, he returned to Vijayanagara while returning all the Gajapati territory he had captured north of the Krishna river.

Battle on the Krishna

Udayagiri was now in Vijayangara’s hands, but Mudgal and Raichur were still not. Both were in the hands of the Bijapur sultanate and after he had defeated Yusuf Adil Shah in 1510/1511, he had signed a peace treaty with the Bijapur sultante. Yusuf had died soon after that battle and now his son, Ismail Adil Shah, sat on the throne, but the peace treaty was still in effect. Launching an attack on the two forts would mean that KDR would have to be the one to break the treaty which would reflect badly on him and make him known as the king who didn’t honour peace treaties.

Timmarasu, however, pointed out that the treaty contained a clause that should either party give refuge to the other party’s enemies and refuse to hand them over, the peace treaty would become null and void.

KDR had an African Muslim in his court called Cide Mercar. KDR gave him gold to go to Goa and purchase horses from the Portuguese, who at the time had monopoly over the trade of Arabian horses in the Deccan region. Mercar as instructed by KDR, ran away with the money to Bijapur and took refuge under Ismail Adil Shah. KDR requested that the criminal be handed over to him to be tried and punished, or he would consider the peace treaty null and void since Bijapur was sheltering Vijayanagara’s criminal. The sultan’s courtiers convinced him not to hand over Mercar to KDR because he was apparently a descendant of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Ismail hid Mercar away in the port of Dabhol and feigned ignorance to KDR.

KDR however, had enough evidence that Mercar had been in Bijapur and since the sultan refused to hand him over, declared that the peace treaty was now null and void and he could now be attacked.

And so in early 1520, he set out to capture Raichur fort as quote, unquote punishment for sheltering Vijayangara’s enemy. He captured Mudgal fort on his way to Raichur, both were which south of the Krishna and historically had been part of the Vijayanagara, although I couldn’t find any descriptions of how Mudgal was captured. So I’m assuming it was a pretty smooth and straight forward affair.

Raichur fort was located on a hill in the very fertile area called the Raichur Doab between the rivers Krishna and Tungabhadra. The fort also protected a bustling city within it.

The fort’s walls were made of hard granite, had a moat around it and had huge towers at regular intervals. A frontal assault was impossible and even a siege would take a lot of time because the fort was very well provisioned and it could take as many 4-5 years for the food and water to run out.

Still, KDR ordered some of his soldiers to go to foot of the fort and start dismantling the outer wall by destroying the huge rocks with pickaxes. As you can imagine capturing the fort would be painfully slow.

Then during summer, news reached him that Ismail Adil Shah was setting up camp on the north bank of the Krishna with a huge army. So KDR took a sizeable portion of the army with him and went to fight the Bijapur sultan.

This is the second time something like this was happening by the way. Even during his siege of Kondaveedu fort, Prataparudradeva had come with his force to help lift the siege and KDR left the siege to go fight him, which also happened over a river, although not the Krishna.

Both Vijayanagara’s and Bijapur’s armies were camped on either side of the Krishna. Kumara Vijaya, the same guy who had rebelled against KDR when he became emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire, and eventually became his father-in-law, told him that he wanted to lead the first charge with his sons.

Since it was summertime, there was a small ford in the Krishna where it was shallow enough that men and horses could cross it on foot, but the Bijapuri soldiers knew this as well and as Kumara Vijaya and his sons were crossing the ford, the Bijapuri soldiers killed all of them.

Vijayanagara’s first charge failed quickly, and now the Bijapuri soldiers crossed the ford and began charging at the Vijayanagara soldiers who were on the other bank. Many Vijayanagara soldiers were killed and they started to run away.

When KDR saw this he rode out in front of them and gave a small speech to his fleeing soldiers. “We all die one day, one way or another. Let us meet fate boldly and meet death in battle like our heroic fathers! The day has arrived.”

He told them that Adil Shah can boast that he killed Vijayanagara soldiers, but never that he conquered them.

With this renewed morale, the Vijayanagara troops charged and fought the Bijapuri soldiers. They managed to overpower Bijapur and now their soldiers started to flee the battlefield. Sultan Ismail Adil Shah himself had crossed the river and was now trapped between two Krishnas. The river Krishna behind him and KDR in front of him. But he didn’t join the battle. Seeing that they were on the verge of defeat, one of his nobles helped him escape back to Bijapur.

However, by this time most of his army had either been killed, drowned in the Krishna or had fled, so KDR ordered his forces to stand down so that the remaining men could retreat to Bijapur.

When his soldiers urged him that he should have chased down and killed the sultan, he said that he had humiliated the sultan of Bijapur. Besides, his main goal was to capture the fort of Raichur and he did not want to waste any more of his troops on the defeated sultan.

So KDR and his army headed back to Raichur. In one of the most lucky encounters in Bharat’s history, while returning he ran into a Portuguese nobleman called Christovão de Figueiredo who was going to Vijayanagara to trade horses. He had a personal bodyguard of 20 musketeers with him. Figueiredo asked him if he could accompany him to Raichur to watch the siege.

Once at the fort, the dismantling work had been going on but progress was slow. So, the soldiers had to run from the Vijayanagara camp to the base of the fort and many would be shot down on the way by archers or gunmen stationed on the wall of the fort, but Figuerido’s musketeers had guns that could fire from a really long distance. They took out the soldiers on the wall who were shooting at the Vijayanagara soldiers.

Eventually, KDR with a small group of soldiers headed towards the fort with the Portuguese musketeers covering him. The commander of the fort himself came on the wall of the fort to assess the situation and probably to try to shoot KDR, but Figueiredo took him out with his matchlock gun.

With the commander of the fort dead, the citizens and the soldiers inside surrendered.

About three weeks after the battle on the Krishna, Raichur fort was now back in Vijayanagara Empire’s hands.

He had now accomplished the dream of his ancestor. All three forts - Udayagiri, Mudgal and Raichur - were in Vijayanagara’s hands and the empire had now regained control over its historical territory.

KDR returned to Vijayanagara with his army. It was 1520 and KDR was the most powerful man in southern India.

Krishnadevaraya defeats the Bijapur Sultanate and reestablishes Bahmani Sultanate

In late 1520, an ambassador from Ismail Adil Shah came to KDR’s court to speak with him. He told him that the sultan of Bijapur knows that he is the most powerful king in this part of the world but that he had broken the peace treaty without a solid reason and was politely requesting his tents, his elephants, horses and Raichur back.

Obviously, KDR was not going to return the hard won fort and the spoils of war just like that. That too to a neighbouring sultan who would use them to attack Vijayanagara.

But he did not want to make it seem like he was the one refusing peace. And to be honest, all these years of winning all major battles, and defeating his enemies, he had started to become a little arrogant.

He told the ambassador that Ismail Adil Shah could have it all back if he came here and just kissed his foot. And no one thought KDR was joking. The ambassador took the message to Adil Shah and he must’ve been angered by the demand, but he sent back the ambassador with a clever reply. He told KDR that he would be willing to come kiss his feet, but he couldn’t enter enemy territory. Maybe because he was unsure what the Emperor would do to him once he entered the boundary of the Vijayanagara Empire.

KDR said, fine, then I’ll come to you.

Ismail Adil Shah had just shot himself in the foot.

It would have been much better if he had gone to Vijayanagara because KDR didn’t come alone and he did not come quietly.

He came with a huge army and plundered the Bijapur sultanate’s towns and villages on the way to the capital. Ismail Adil Shah, on the other hand, had already vacated his capital and fled.

From Bijapur, KDR went on to Kalaburagi, then known as Gulbarga, which was the traditional capital of the Bahmani Sultanate.

If you remember Bahmani Sultanate was a break-away independent kingdom from the Tughluq Empire and had itself broken up into the five independent Sultanates. But the the dynasty hadn’t ended and technically, the Bahmani sultanate still existed though they held no real territory of power.

Once at the Gulbarga fort, KDR found the three sons of the long dead Bahmani sultan, Mahmud Shah Bahmani II. He crowned the eldest one the Sultan, and sort of re-established the Bahmani sultanate.

This was a show of power since he was showing the Deccan sultanates that he had the power to re-establish the Bahmani sultanate, which was once the biggest sultanate in southern India. But his main goal was to keep the Bahmani sultanate alive and relevant enough so that all the six sultanates would keep fighting amongst each other, leaving Vijayanagara in peace.

Final Years

After that he returned to Vijayanagara and in 1523 abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Tirumala Raya, while he continued to serve as chief minister instead of Timmarasu.

However, the young king fell sick and died. KDR’s son-in-law, Ramaraya, who wanted the throne for himself may have poisoned him, but we don’t know for sure. However, KDR was convinced by his courtiers that Timmarasu was the one who had killed his son and KDR had him blinded, although he later realized his mistake and made peace with Appaji.

He took on the reins of the kingdom again and ruled until 1529, when he fell sick and died. The Vijayanagara Empire had lost its greatest emperor.

Lessons

Coming to the lessons that we can learn from Krishnadevaraya.

The first lesson that we can learn is that you can also become great by doing just the right thing. You don’t have to always be ambitious or expansionary to become great. KDR, when he captured territories from the Gajapati and the Adil Shahi sultans, could have added them to his empire, but he knew it wasn’t right, as in, that it wasn’t really part of Vijayanagara. He only wanted to reclaim territory that had historically been part of the Empire. Being right is sustainable. You know when to stop. Expansion for expansion’s sake could become like a balloon that you keep blowing not knowing when to stop, until it blows up in your face. Besides, he knew his defeated enemies’ suffering would be great if he left them alive to think over their defeat and humiliation for the rest of their lives.

Second - sometimes it’s best to just cut to the chase without trying to be smart and thinking long and hard to find out a smart way to do something. Sometimes the direct way is the best way. KDR was impulsive most times, and it worked in his favor. If he didn’t act on his impulses such as when he was insulted by Yusuf Adil Shah and the Gajapati, he would never have had the chance to win such stunning victories and secure a place for himself in the history books.

Third - You should take care of problems as and when they arise and not let them fester and become bigger. When KDR had beseiged Kondaveedu Fort and later the Raichur Fort, Prataparudradeva and Ismail Adil Shah came with their forces to lift the siege. But before they could trap KDR between the fort and their armies, KDR went and dealt with them first before coming back and continuing the siege. So, let’s say your dealing with a big problem, and a smaller issue crops up while you’re solving the big one, deal with the smaller/more pressing issue first before dealing with the bigger one.

And finally, you need to take stock to know where the problem. Just like KDR as soon as he became emperor, you have to know where exactly you are right now in order to fill in gaps and plan how to get where you need to be.