NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part II, Chapter 7

Deccan Society, Trade and Culture

Foreign visitors describe the Deccan of this period as rich, crowded and heavily commercial. Its wealth rested on textiles, iron, diamonds and an enormous import of war horses, and its culture produced a golden age for Telugu, Kannada and Dakhani writing.

Society

• Society followed the varna order, but military service and trade offered mobility, and nayakas rose from many communities.
• Fernao Nuniz records women employed in the palace as accountants, writers, musicians, wrestlers and guards, which shows women held paid public roles.
• Devadasis were attached to temples, and the practice of sati is recorded by foreign observers among certain groups.
• Abdur Razzaq describes the capital as having markets full of jewels, a large population and orderly bazaars, and says nothing equal to it existed elsewhere.
• Slavery existed, and domestic slaves are frequently mentioned in inscriptions and traveller accounts.

Trade and the horse question

• The Deccan had no good breeding grounds for war horses, so both Vijayanagara and the Sultanates imported them from Arabia and Persia at very high prices.
• Horses came through the western ports - Bhatkal, Honavar, Mangalore and Goa - and whoever controlled these ports controlled the cavalry of the Deccan.
• After Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498 and the Portuguese took Goa in 1510, they dominated the horse trade and used it as diplomatic leverage.
• Krishnadevaraya negotiated with the Portuguese precisely to secure a steady supply of horses.
• Other exports were cotton textiles, spices, iron and steel, and Golconda diamonds, which were the only known source of large diamonds in the world at the time.

Temple architecture of the period

• The Vijayanagara temple added new structures to the older Dravida plan.
• The rayagopuram - a huge gateway tower, often taller than the shrine, so the temple could be seen from far away.
• The kalyana mandapa - a hall for the annual ceremonial marriage of the deity.
• The amman shrine - a separate shrine for the goddess within the same complex.
• Composite pillars carved with the rearing yali, a mythical lion-like animal, became the signature motif.

Literature

• Telugu entered its golden age under Krishnadevaraya and the ashtadiggajas; his own Amuktamalyada belongs to this flowering.
• Kannada literature flourished, with Kumara Vyasa retelling the Mahabharata.
• In Sanskrit, the commentary on the Vedas associated with Sayana was produced under Vijayanagara patronage.
• In the Sultanates, Persian was the court language, but Dakhani, an early form of Urdu, developed here first; Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah is remembered as an early poet in it.
• The Bhakti tradition of the Deccan continued through the Haridasas of Karnataka, such as Purandaradasa, who is honoured as a founder of Carnatic music.