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1 results

  • 2 - The Far South

  • from XIV - Towns and Cities
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 452-457

  • Summary

    Urbanism is a distinctive feature of the economic history of later medieval south India. The Vijayanagara state was based upon heavily fortified administrative centres often under the control of warriors and Brahmans who were strangers to the place. Brahmadeyas of the Chola period were settlements of great size and wealth under the control of an assembly of Brahmans. Temples of the post-Chola period became centres of pilgrimage necessitating a variety of facilities seldom before demanded. Kānci was a focal point for many of the sectarian and caste activities of the central Tamil plain just as Tirupati was for the northern portions of the plain and as Palni, Nanjunad, and Perur for the southern and western parts of the interior upland of the macro-region. An independent stimulus to urban development was military. Vijayanagara, the capital city of the empire from 1340 to 1565, was one of the greatest fortified cities of all of India.