Group of Monuments at Hampi

Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, the last great Hindu kingdom of South India. Founded in 1336, it reached its zenith under Krishna Deva Raya in the early sixteenth century, becoming the world's second-largest city. The empire fell at the Battle of Talikota in 1565, after which the city was systematically destroyed. Yet the Virupaksha Temple, whose origins predate the empire by centuries, maintained continuous worship through the destruction and continues today.

The traditional founding narrative of the Vijayanagara Empire speaks of brothers named Harihara and Bukka. Warriors serving the Kampili kingdom, they were captured when it fell to the Delhi Sultanate, forcibly converted to Islam, and sent south to administer newly conquered territory. There, tradition holds, they encountered the sage Vidyaranya, who reconverted them to Hinduism and inspired them to establish a kingdom that would protect dharma against northern invasions.

In 1336, they founded their capital at Hampi, calling it Vijayanagara, the City of Victory. Whether or not the details are historical, the founding intention shaped what followed: a kingdom understood as a bulwark of Hindu civilization, its capital as a statement of civilizational ambition. Over the following two centuries, successive dynasties, Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, poured resources into making this vision stone.

The site they chose was already sacred. The Virupaksha Temple had received worship since at least the seventh century, its Shiva linga drawing pilgrims to the banks of the Tungabhadra. The landscape itself, with its mythological associations with the Ramayana and the legend of Pampa and Shiva, was already a thin place. The empire built upon layers of existing sacredness.