the inhabitants of India; partly from the summaries compiled by
careful mediaeval historians such as Barros, Couto, and Correa, who,
though to a certain degree interested in the general condition of
the country, yet confined themselves mostly to recording the deeds
of the European colonisers for the enlightenment of their European
readers; partly from the chronicles of a few Muhammadan writers
of the period, who often wrote in fear of the displeasure of their
own lords; and partly from Hindu inscriptions recording grants of
lands to temples and religious institutions, which documents, when
viewed as state papers, seldom yield us more than a few names and
dates. The two chronicles, however, translated and printed at the
end of this volume, will be seen to throw a flood of light upon the
condition of the city of Vijayanagar early in the sixteenth century,
and upon the history of its successive dynasties; and for the rest
I have attempted, as an introduction to these chronicles, to collect
all available materials from the different authorities alluded to and
to weld them into a consecutive whole, so as to form a foundation
upon which may hereafter be constructed a regular history of the
Vijayanagar empire. The result will perhaps seem disjointed, crude,
and uninteresting; but let it be remembered that it is only a first
attempt. I have little doubt that before very long the whole history of
Southern India will be compiled by some writer gifted with the power
of "making the dry bones live;" but meanwhile the bones themselves
must be collected and pieced together, and my duty has been to try
and construct at least the main portions of the skeleton.

Before proceeding to details we must shortly glance at the political
condition of India in the first half of the fourteenth century,
remembering that up to that time the Peninsula had been held by a
number of distinct Hindu kingdoms, those of the Pandiyans at Madura