A Forgotten Empire - Vijayanagar - History of India

Abstract

These documents possess peculiar and unique value that of Paes because it gives us a vivid and graphic account of his personal experiences at the great Hindu capital at the period of its highest grandeur and magnificence −− "things which I saw and came to know" he tells us −− and that of Nuniz because it contains the traditional history of the country gathered first−hand on the spot, and a narrative of local and current events of the highest importance, known to him either because he himself was present or because he received the information from those who were so. The summaries of the well−known historians already alluded to, though founded, as I believe, partly on these very chronicles, have taken all the life out of them by eliminating the personal factor, the presence of which in the originals gives them their greatest charm. Senhor Lopes, who has published these documents in the original Portuguese in a recent work,[4] writes in his introduction: "Nothing that we know of in any language can compare with them, whether for their historical importance or for the description given of the country, and especially of the capital, its products, customs, and the like. The Italian travellers who visited and wrote about this country −− Nicolo di Conti, Varthema, and Federici −− are much less minute in the matter of the geography and customs of the land, and not one of them has left us a chronicle." They are indeed invaluable, and throw an extraordinary light on the condition of Vijayanagar as well as on several doubtful points of history