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Passing the baton
'Vijayanagara, meaning city of victory was the imperial capital of an empire in southern India. Established in 1336 and named after its capital, the Vijayanagara empire expanded and prospered througho
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kvijaykumar
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January 5, 2024
'Vijayanagara, meaning city of victory was the imperial capital of an empire in southern India. Established in 1336 and named after its capital, the Vijayanagara empire expanded and prospered throughout the next century. Krishnadevaraya was the best known ruler of this empire, reigning from 1509 to 1529. In 1565, this impressive city was sacked by armies from the Deccan sultanates after the battle of Talikota. The city was never rebuilt.
Vijayanagara architecture consists of religious, courtly, and civic buildings. The sculpture is characterised by a return to a more serene art of the past, taking elements from the Chalukya, Hoysala, Pandya, and Chola periods. Granite, the local and durable stone, was used with plaster applied to many sculptures to produce a smooth finish which was then gilded or colourfully painted.
The site, largely reduced to ruins, was left to the ravages of nature and neglect for nearly three hundred years before Amateur British colonial photographer, Alexander Greenlaw extensively photographed the site in 1855-56. The resulting series of waxed paper negatives were made available to the Victoria & Albert Museum and printed in 1910. Additional photographs of the site were taken by Dr William Henry Pigou and Dr ACB Neill, also in 1856, for the publication “Architecture In Dharwar and Mysore”. Edmund Lyon subsequently visited the site and took extensive photographs in 1868.
The Greenlaw negatives along with another set of prints, also made in 1910, were ''rediscovered'' in a private collection in 1980. In 1983, the collector, Edgar Gibbons, a retired Army officer from Cornwall, having recently purchased the negatives and prints from a relative of Greenlaw, made the negatives available to the Vijayanagara Research Project photographer, John Gollings.
Fascinated by Greenlaw’s images, Gollings painstakingly rephotographed, in 1983, sixty of the exact sites visited by Greenlaw. This was to enable the Vijayanagara Research Project to measure the change in the condition of the monuments over time.
The Vijayanagara Research Project was carried out under the direction of Drs John M. Fritz and George Michell. The project created extensive documentation of the Vijayanagara site from 1980 through 2002. During this period much of the core area of Vijayanagara (more than 25 square km of ruins) was mapped in detail and more than 34,000 archaeological features were located and described. Some 1,000 structures, ranging from large-scale, comparatively well-preserved temple complexes to dilapidated and collapsed structures, were measured and drawn.
In recognition of the significance of Vijayanagara, the “Hampi Group of Monuments” was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987. However, this gesture has not removed the dangers that the site now faces from unchecked development and the lack of an effective conservation management plan. The photographs reveal the damage to the site even within the last century – the vimana over the Garuda chariot is gone, as is the lamp pillar in front of the gopuram of the Vitthala temple.
Acknowledgments and sources:
https://www.penn.museum/sites/VRP/default.html>
https://sarmaya.in/spotlight/you-cant-visit-hampi-in-a-day>
Vijayanagara architecture consists of religious, courtly, and civic buildings. The sculpture is characterised by a return to a more serene art of the past, taking elements from the Chalukya, Hoysala, Pandya, and Chola periods. Granite, the local and durable stone, was used with plaster applied to many sculptures to produce a smooth finish which was then gilded or colourfully painted.
The site, largely reduced to ruins, was left to the ravages of nature and neglect for nearly three hundred years before Amateur British colonial photographer, Alexander Greenlaw extensively photographed the site in 1855-56. The resulting series of waxed paper negatives were made available to the Victoria & Albert Museum and printed in 1910. Additional photographs of the site were taken by Dr William Henry Pigou and Dr ACB Neill, also in 1856, for the publication “Architecture In Dharwar and Mysore”. Edmund Lyon subsequently visited the site and took extensive photographs in 1868.
The Greenlaw negatives along with another set of prints, also made in 1910, were ''rediscovered'' in a private collection in 1980. In 1983, the collector, Edgar Gibbons, a retired Army officer from Cornwall, having recently purchased the negatives and prints from a relative of Greenlaw, made the negatives available to the Vijayanagara Research Project photographer, John Gollings.
Fascinated by Greenlaw’s images, Gollings painstakingly rephotographed, in 1983, sixty of the exact sites visited by Greenlaw. This was to enable the Vijayanagara Research Project to measure the change in the condition of the monuments over time.
The Vijayanagara Research Project was carried out under the direction of Drs John M. Fritz and George Michell. The project created extensive documentation of the Vijayanagara site from 1980 through 2002. During this period much of the core area of Vijayanagara (more than 25 square km of ruins) was mapped in detail and more than 34,000 archaeological features were located and described. Some 1,000 structures, ranging from large-scale, comparatively well-preserved temple complexes to dilapidated and collapsed structures, were measured and drawn.
In recognition of the significance of Vijayanagara, the “Hampi Group of Monuments” was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987. However, this gesture has not removed the dangers that the site now faces from unchecked development and the lack of an effective conservation management plan. The photographs reveal the damage to the site even within the last century – the vimana over the Garuda chariot is gone, as is the lamp pillar in front of the gopuram of the Vitthala temple.
Acknowledgments and sources:
https://www.penn.museum/sites/VRP/default.html>
https://sarmaya.in/spotlight/you-cant-visit-hampi-in-a-day>