Hampi

Hampi — Vijayanagara, the city of stones

A capital, not a single shrine

Hampi is not a deity and not a temple. It is a ruined capital city in Karnataka, the seat of the Vijayanagara empire (1336–1565), and it is filed in this directory as a place of worship because the sacred structures that survive there are its substance: more than a hundred temple complexes built across the empire's two centuries, of which the Virūpākṣa temple is the only one still in unbroken ritual use.

Vijayanagara's rulers were Vaishnava — the empire's founding myth, from the Vamśāvatāra and Purandara episode of the Mahābhārata, places the first ruler on the south bank opposite the city — and the great temple at Hampi is dedicated to Virūpākṣa, a form of Shiva, with the Pampa tank in front of it and the Akṣobhya hill behind. The Vittala temple, with its stone chariot and its musical pillars, and the Hazara Rama temple, an early brick-and- stone structure with a sculpted frieze of the Rāmāyaṇa across its colonnade, are the two best-known ruins. Much of the power of the site lies in what is not standing: the pillared bazaars along the main street, the royal enclosure, the water-infrastructure of tanks and channels, and the batteries of monolithic sculpture scattered across the boulder-strewn landscape.

The site's pilgrimage life continues. The Virūpākṣa kalyāṇotsava still draws large congregations, and the boulder landscape that was a geological accident is read by visitors as the "City of Rocks". Hampi is also a place where the Vijayanagara state's collapse in 1565 and the accounts of the sack left by travellers and later chroniclers are collected, and where the archaeology of the site has been substantially revised in the last three decades.

Sources and what is still unverified

Nilakanta Sastri's history remains the standard narrative frame; the UNESCO dossier and recent archaeological work on the urban layout are the right sources for the city as a city.

Outstanding for a named guardian, ideally a Kannada speaker: which temples remain in active worship versus archaeological site only; the current state of the Vitthala temple's conservation; and the correct dating of its monolithic chariot, which is not securely established.