Krishnadevaraya’s siege of Udayagiri

01The siege

Udayagiri, on a steep hill west of Nellore, was the southern bastion of the Gajapati empire, won by Kapilendra Deva’s armies half a century before. Krishnadevaraya besieged it in 1513. Vijayanagara inscriptions and the Portuguese chronicler Fernão Nuniz describe the difficulty: roads had to be cut through the rock for the siege. The fort fell in 1514, and an uncle of Prataparudra was among those captured.

02The Krishna temple at Hampi

From Udayagiri Krishnadevaraya took an image of Bala Krishna, the child Krishna, and built a temple for it in his capital; an inscription of 1515 at the Krishna temple in Hampi records the consecration. He then marched on to take Kondavidu in 1515 and pressed into Kalinga. The war ended around 1519 with a treaty in which, by tradition, Prataparudra gave his daughter in marriage to Krishnadevaraya and the Krishna river became the frontier.

Place · Founded 1336 by Harihara I and Bukka Raya; sacked 1565Hampi (Vijayanagara)Vijayanagara, the City of Victory, capital of the empire that held the south for over two centuries. After the defeat at Talikota in January 1565 it was plundered for months and never lived again.Read →