Water, Power, and Agrarian Expansion in the Vijayanagara Empire, 1336-1565 CE

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between hydraulic infrastructure, agrarian expansion, and imperial political authority in the Vijayanagara Empire between its foundation in 1336 and its dissolution following the Battle of Talikota in 1565. Drawing on epigraphic records, Portuguese traveller accounts, the architectural surveys of John Fritz and George Michell, and the irrigation archaeology conducted by the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and the Vijayanagara Research Project, the study traces how successive Sangama, Saluva, and Tuluva rulers transformed the semi-arid Deccan landscape of the Tungabhadra basin through systematic investment in tank irrigation, canal networks, and stepped well construction. The article argues that hydraulic expansion under Vijayanagara was not merely an agronomic strategy but a political technology serving three interconnected imperial functions: the extension of state authority into frontier zones through the creation of agriculturally productive settlements, the consolidation of nayaka subordinate loyalty through the delegation of irrigation endowment rights, and the legitimation of royal authority through the Shaiva theological framework that equated royal water management with divine fertility. The case of the Hiriya canal system constructed under Krishnadevaraya (r. 1509-1529) demonstrates that hydraulic imperialism under Vijayanagara reached its most systematic expression in the reign of the empire's most celebrated ruler, whose investment in irrigation infrastructure was inseparable from his military campaigns to secure the cotton and rice producing zones of the eastern Deccan. The article concludes that the Battle of Talikota and the subsequent abandonment of the capital Hampi represented not only a military and political catastrophe but an ecological one, whose consequences for the irrigated agricultural landscape of the Tungabhadra basin persisted for centuries and were only partially addressed by subsequent Maratha and British administrative interventions.