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We started our tour of Hampi with the Queen's bath. which contrary to the name was probably a pool for male courtiers and their female companions.
And unlike the Hazararana temple, the building is bare on the outside. The artistic energy seems to have been preserved for the interiors with high vaulted domes and overhanging balconies. The floor of the pool is original and intact after 500 years.
The enclosure wall had a definite Cuscanian look.
“This building stands on pillars shaped like elephants and with other figures, and all open in front, and they go up to it by staircases of stones around it; underneath, is a terrace paved with very good flagstones, where stand some of the people looking at the feast. This house is called the House of Victory as it was made when the king came back from the war against Oriya (Orissa)"
- Eyewitness account of the Mahanamavi festival by Domingo Pages on 12 September 1520
Today all that remains is the majestic platform, it’s built over a period of time. At the peak of its splendor, a seven storied building stood atop the platform and was used by Raja Krishnadevaraya to inspect his army.
The walls of the platform have been prodigiously carved. Though the carvings are not of the highest quality, it is worth more than one circumambulation. Here are some of my personal favorites:
Here is a scene that shows a royal patron being trampled by an elephant gone wild. This must have been a very important event at the time as this scene has been repeated about 22 times on multiple locations in Hampi. Then there is a scene that shows an elephant in a royal procession being attacked by a tiger. I have always wondered is the two are connected. Is that why the elephant turned violent?
The first time I saw this hunting scene, I was shocked to discover a rather unambiguous Coptic cross. After all the missionaries were supposed to be a few centuries away from landing in India! Alas, before I could start hyperventilating, having discovered such an enormous achronologicity, I was told that the symbol stood for water. And lo, the very next day, I found a small water hole outside the Vitthala temple, shaped like a cross.
Ala-ud-din Khilji forever changed the landscape of war after he introduced horses in his invasion of 1920.
The rulers of Vijayanagar maintained relationships with European and Turkish traders for a constant supply of good horses. Krishnadevaraya held important harbors in Malabar (Mumbai) to keep an eye on the horse trade. The following scene shows the Turkish horse traders in their pointed hats
A few hundred feet away from the Mahanamavi dibba, an open channel cuts across the arid landscape. The channel is about a foot in diameter and sits on top of dressed granite blocks urging the water from the river Tungabhadra using nothing but gravity. Since Hampi has long hot summers, it is obvious that at one point in time the channel was covered, probably with burned bricks, to avoid evaporation. The aqueduct pours the water into a wonderfully symmetrical and well preserved water tank called Pushkarni. The square tank is 22m wide and 7m deep (22/7 = ratio of the phi). Obviously the ratio is a coincidence as the metric system was unknown to southern India in the fifteenth century.
After Hampi was sacked in the sixteenth century and the city left to rot, the tank accumulated dirt and was lost to mankind. It was discovered as recently as 1981 by a young member of the ASI who was having a “Newton moment”. Apparently he was standing besides this branch of the aqueduct that ended over – uh – nothing.
“This where a tank should be”, he said. Fortunately he borrowed a shovel, dug a foot and discovered the steps. The rest, as they say, is history. The tank is one of the most startling and important architectural discoveries in recent times. So startling and important, that I cannot find a single authoritative article that talks about the event. After five thousand years, Indians are still bad with documentation.
Notice how the channel does not line us with any of the elements of the tank? Supposedly there was a basin below the channel to gather water (the step does have a drilled hole and could have received the based of one), but I still cannot imagine how it would take care of the symmetry.
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