© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341314 Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013) 433-470 brill.com/jesh he “Fall” of Vijayanagara Reconsidered: Political Destruction and Historical Construction in South Indian History 1 Mark T. Lycett and Kathleen D. Morrison 2 Abstract he eponymous capital of Vijayanagara was largely abandoned following the defeat of the imperial army at Talikota in 1565. he city was burned and looted and its monumental temple complexes, gateways, and images left in ruins. Despite large-scale damage to archi- tecture in the city, however, the level and focus of destruction was strikingly variable. In this paper, we draw on the material record of late Vijayanagara temple complexes and other archaeological evidence to examine patterns of diferentially distributed political violence. We suggest that these patterns may be understood, in part, in terms of the contemporary politics of sovereignty, incorporation, and reconstitution of elite authority. Drawing on 1) his article builds on nearly 30 years of research by the authors both in the city of Vijayanagara and its surrounding region. For the former, the support and published work of the Vijayanagara Research Project directed by John Fritz and George Michell has been essential; we thank John in particular for his useful comments as we were preparing this paper and for the use of VRP maps. Similarly, excavations by both the Archaeological Sur- vey of India and our long-time collaborators at the Karnataka Directorate of Archaeology and Museums provided important windows into the occupational history of the city. he Vijayanagara Metropolitan Survey, co-directed by Kathleen Morrison and Carla Sinopoli, provided a regional perspective, while observations of the axial destruction of certain large temple complexes by Mark Lycett in the context of his annual course on ‘Landscape and Place in South India,’ prompted us to look back to historic photographs which show these patterns prior to recent reconstruction work. Permission to use historic photos was gra- ciously given by the British Library. Special thanks to Daud Ali and other participants in the seminar “Monastery, Mosque, and Temple: Jains, Muslims and Hindus in the Medieval Deccan (c. 700-1700),” held at the University of Pennsylvania, for comments, questions, and encouragement. Comments by Phillip Wagoner and an anonymous reviewer were extremely helpful in making revisions; of course, any remaining errors are ours alone. 2) Mark T. Lycett, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology 1126 E. 59th St. University of Chicago Chicago, IL 60637 USA; Kathleen D. Morrison, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, 1126 E. 59th St. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 USA.