An outstanding feature of the Royal Centre of Vijayanagara is the Muslim appearance of a number of courtly buildings, particularly the Lotus Mahal and Elephant Stables. Here architects combined features derived from the architecture of the Deccan sultanates (pointed and lobed arches, vaults and domes, stylised geometric and foliate patterns) with temple-like eaves and towers to create a genuinely innovative style that cannot be characterised as either Islamic or Hindu. We interpret this hybrid idiom as a product of the sophisticated and cosmopolitan Vijayanagara court.

Vijayanagara emperors incorporated Muslim cultural practices when they borrowed sultanate modes of warfare and courtly ceremony and dress. Their attitude to architecture was no different. Hence, the fascination with the building styles, techniques and designs of their contemporaries at the Deccan courts of Gulbarga and Bijapur. However, the Vijayanagara architects did not simply imitate these sultanate models. They creatively filtered this imported tradition through the lens of their own South Indian tradition. The result is the hybrid but inventive buildings of the Royal Centre.

No evidence exists to suggest that these imported architectural features ever conveyed a religious (Islamic) message. Building in a quasi-sultanate idiom reflected an aesthetic fascination with sultanate culture on the part of the Vijayanagara emperors. We view these efforts to incorporate this foreign tradition into their own world as an expression of the cosmopolitan attitude that characterised the Vijayanagara court. Significantly, this architectural idiom was concentrated in the Royal Centre. After the sack of the city in 1565, this idiom was further developed in the palaces of the later Vijayanagara rulers at Penukonda and Chandragiri.

Vijayanagara, In Ancient Cities, Sacred Skies. (See Project Publications)