Victory City(103)

So the story of Bisnaga ended as it began: with a severed head and a fire.

A few things were spared. Some temples, and parts of the Mandana mutt remained standing, with only partial damage, and many of the mutt’s monks survived, except those who ran into the streets to help the dying and mourn the dead. The head of the mutt, young Ramanuja Acharya, was one of these, his body hidden in a mountain of the dead; and after the burning of the city, the bodies burned in the streets, and all of what had been Bisnaga became a funeral pyre. And vultures came down from the air, to finish off what remained.



* * *



—

Pampa Kampana survived. On one of the last pages of her book she wrote: “Nothing endures, but nothing is meaningless either. We rise, we fall, we rise again, and again we fall. We go on. I too have succeeded and I have also failed. Death is close now. In death do triumph and failure humbly meet. We learn far less from victory than from defeat.”

The day came when the forces of the alliance departed, having done their work, and silence descended on the ruined city like a shroud. In the Mandana mutt Pampa Kampana wrote the last of all her pages. She went to the corner of her room and found the pot she had made to receive her work, and placed the manuscript inside. We must assume she had a helper after that, a surviving monk perhaps, but we cannot know for certain. We know only that she left the mutt and made her way to the rubble of the statue of Pampa with the sealed pot (who helped her seal it?) and a shovel (or shovels) to dig with. Then she, or her unknown helper, found a piece of earth that was not covered in broken stones. And she, or he, or they both began to dig.

When she had buried the Jayaparajaya she sat down, cross-legged, and called out, “I have finished telling it. Release me.” Then she waited.



* * *



—

We know this because she wrote down what she was going to do on the final pages of her book. We may allow ourselves to imagine that her wish was granted, that the centuries swept over her at long last, her flesh withered and her bones crumbled, and after a few moments there were only her simple clothes on the ground, filled with dust, and a breeze sprang up and blew the dust away. Or we may believe, more fancifully, that the magical yalis of her dreams appeared and led her through the celestial gates into the Eternal Fields, where she was no longer blind, and eternity was not a curse.

She was two hundred and forty-seven years old. These were her last words.

    I, Pampa Kampana, am the author of this book.

I have lived to see an empire rise and fall.

How are they remembered now, these kings, these queens?

They exist now only in words.

While they lived, they were victors, or vanquished, or both.

Now they are neither.

Words are the only victors.

What they did, or thought, or felt, no longer exists.

Only these words describing those things remain.

They will be remembered in the way I have chosen to remember them.

Their deeds will only be known in the way they have been set down.

They will mean what I wish them to mean.

I myself am nothing now. All that remains is this city of words.

Words are the only victors.





For Hanan





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


These are some of the books I read before and during the writing of this novel. In addition there were many scholarly (and newspaper) articles, essays, and websites I consulted, which are too numerous to mention. My gratitude to them all. They were immensely helpful. Any faults in the text of the novel are my own.

Vijayanagar—City and Empire: New Currents of Research, Vol. I—Texts and Vol. 2—Reference and Documentation, edited by Anna Libera Dallapiccola in collaboration with Stephanie Zingel-Ave Lallemant

A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761, by Richard M. Eaton

India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765, by Richard M. Eaton

Beyond Turk and Hindu, edited by David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence

The Travels of Ibn Battuta

From Indus to Independence—A Trek Through Indian History: Vol. VII, Named for Victory: The Vijayanagar Empire, by Dr. Sanu Kainikara

Toward a New Formation: South Indian Society Under Vijayanagar Rule, by Noboru Karashima

India: A Wounded Civilization, by V. S. Naipaul

A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, by Sastri K. A. Nilakanta and R. C. Champakalakshmi

Court Life Under the Vijayanagar Rulers, by Madhao P. Patil

Raya: Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara, by Srinivas Reddy

City of Victory, by Ratnakar Sadasyula

Hampi, by Subhadra Sen Gupta, with photographs by Clare Arni

A Forgotten Empire, by Robert Sewell, which also contains his translations of The Narrative of Domingo Paes, written c.1520–22, and The Chronicle of Fern?o Nuniz, written c.1535–37





By Salman Rushdie


    Fiction


Grimus

Midnight’s Children Shame

The Satanic Verses Haroun and the Sea of Stories East, West

The Moor’s Last Sigh The Ground Beneath Her Feet Fury

Shalimar the Clown The Enchantress of Florence Luka and the Fire of Life Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights The Golden House Quichotte

Victory City