14. Vijayanagara - The Last Emperors Of South India

Fall of Civilizations Podcast

History

4.9 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2022

⏱️ 194 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the rocky banks of South India's Tungabhadra River, an enormous ruined city lies crumbling... In this episode, we look at the Vijayanagara Empire of Southern India, a civilization that has all but faded from memory in many parts of the world. Find out how this remarkable society rose up out of an age of conflict and fragmentation, how it built one of the largest and most impressive medieval cities in the world, and developed an identity that was both South Indian in nature, and global in its outlook. With readings in Sanskrit, and the sounds of traditional Carnatic music, find out what happened to bring the great stone temples of Vijayanagara crashing down in fire and flame. ---------- Credits: Voice actors: Peter Walters Michael Hajiantonis Kim Heron Nick Denton Paul Casselle Sound engineering by Alexey Sibikin Original music performed and composed by Aruna Sairam.

Transcript

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0:00.0	but on this day, we are glorious,
0:05.8	The God of Heaven
0:08.6	the man.
0:17.7	In the year 1800, a Scottish captain by the name of Colin McKenzie was travelling
0:33.9	in the south of India.
0:37.1	McKenzie was an officer in the British East India Company, a trading corporation with
0:43.3	a private army larger than many countries that in the last century had come to hold sway
0:49.7	over vast areas of India.
0:53.8	McKenzie had come to India at the age of 30 and he became so fascinated with the place
1:00.8	that he would never leave.
1:02.8	He was a curious man and an avid collector of artefact.
1:08.0	Over his nearly 40 years in India, he amassed a collection of 1500 historical manuscripts
1:14.9	written on palm leaves in 13 languages, along with thousands of local histories and songs,
1:22.7	charts, maps, sketches and a collection of more than 6,000 coins.
1:29.5	McKenzie was also himself a skilled map maker and he produced the first authentic geographical
1:36.2	map of South India.
1:38.7	And so we can imagine his excitement as he was travelling through the rocky landscape
1:43.5	of the Indian state of Karnataka when his local guides told him of the existence of an
1:49.6	enormous ruined city nearby that had once been the capital of a great and powerful empire.
1:58.6	These ruins they told him were crumbling and overgrown and could be found near the town
2:04.8	of Anagundi at a small village known as Hampi, a place that the Canada-speaking locals
2:12.4	had come to know by the name Alputun or the ruined city.
	...

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