‘Fathers’ and ‘Sons’: Inscribing Self and Empire at Vijayanagara,Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

This article examines nᾱyaka political subjectivity and culture in the making of Vijayanagara Empire. It argues that ‘real’ and ‘fictive’ relationships of family produce nᾱyaka kingship in Vijayanagara Empire (1350–1650 AD). In the inscriptions, the nᾱyaka repeatedly projected a genealogical proximity to the emperor and other nᾱyaka. They described themselves as loyal servants, fictive (or political) sons, and agents and bearers of the burden of the kingdom. Nᾱyaka discourses of loyalty, service and filiality are expressive of the political relationships and also constitutive of empire. Conceptually, this project offers a way out of the primarily structuralist and functionalist explanations of nᾱyaka identity and politics. It does not simply view the inscriptions as documents or as records of a social and political reality; instead, following both philological and post-foundational approaches, it looks at the inscriptions as a series of testimonials in a political field which inscribe the nᾱyaka self and state simultaneously.