The turbulent events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are explained to some extent by the unique location of the Deccan plateau as a meeting place of forces from both North and South India, the promise of boundless land and wealth inspiring repeated invasion. In the first decades of the fourteenth century, the Deccan was subjugated by the Khaljis and Tughluqs, the first Muslim rulers of Delhi. Resistance to these assaults from Delhi occurred in three waves. The first was the military thrust of the mighty Hindu Vijayanagara kingdom south of the Tungabhadra-Krishna rivers in the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries. The second was the opposition of the Shia Muslim sultans such as the Shahis, throughout most of the seventeenth century. The third was the guerilla tactics of the Hindu Maratha warriors in the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries.

This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the kingdom or empire of Vijayanagara. It presents literary sources from the Vijayanagara period, ranging from complete translations to abbreviated summaries. Two types of general works on the Vijayanagara kingdom may be distinguished: one that attempts to cover all major aspects of the history of the kingdom and another that treats some specific aspects over the entire history. Sewell's contributions to the opening of Vijayanagara history are better represented in other of his works upon which other early historians substantially drew and through which the first generation of Indian historians of the kingdom became familiar with modern, European historical methods. The defeat of Vijayanagara and the sack of the city in 1565 by the confederacy of sultanate forces ushered in a period of extended chaos and decline that is treated both generally and in terms of Tamil country by R. Sathianathaier, Tamilaham in the Seventeenth Century.

The Vijayanagara epoch saw the transition of South Indian society from its medieval past to its modern future. During the time that the rayas were peninsular overlords and their capital the symbol of vast power and wealth, south Indian society was transformed in several important ways. In the beginning, the Vijayanagara kingdom was not very different from its medieval predecessors, Hoysalas and Kakatiyas. But one difference there was, and it explained why the latter two kingdoms were replaceable. That was the urgency to develop better military means to cope with Muslim newcomers to the peninsula. Krishnadevaraya cast aside the ancient Chola and Pandya kings in the South and installed military commanders who not long after established centres of sovereignty opposed to his successors. The Vijayanagara transformation of the old regime out of which its early rulers emerged was not complete by the late seventeenth century, but it was an irreversible change from that old order.