Daily Static Quiz Prelims Practice 2027
Harihara I (r. 1336–1356) founded and consolidated the empire against the Bahmani Sultanate and regional powers. Deva Raya II (r. 1422–1446), the "Wise," expanded territory and reformed the cavalry and revenue system. Krishnadeva Raya (r. 1509–1529) presided over the golden age, with maximum territorial extent and cultural flowering. Aliya Rama Raya (regent, 1542–1565) led the empire into decline, dying at the Battle of Talikota in 1565, which triggered fragmentation. Option (a) wrongly reverses Krishnadeva Raya's achievement onto Rama Raya, (c) scrambles the chronology entirely, and (d) places Harihara I centuries after his actual reign.
- Krishnadeva Raya focused on consolidating territorial control through a combination of diplomacy with neighbouring kingdoms and selective military campaigns, avoiding simultaneous conflicts with multiple major powers.
- Aliya Rama Raya maintained the same diplomatic and military strategy as Krishnadeva Raya, ensuring stability and preventing the rise of rival regional sultanates in the Deccan.
- Aliya Rama Raya's military strategy involved alliance-building with Deccan Sultanates against external threats, while Krishnadeva Raya primarily faced the Bahmani Sultanate as his main rival.
Statement 1 is correct — Krishnadeva Raya was a pragmatic ruler who combined selective campaigns against weaker neighbours with diplomacy and matrimonial alliances, avoiding multi-front wars and thereby achieving maximum stability and territorial extent. Statement 2 is incorrect — Aliya Rama Raya instead pursued aggressive interventionism in Deccan politics, antagonising all four Deccan Sultanates and provoking their coalition against him, the opposite of Krishnadeva Raya's approach. Statement 3 is also incorrect — it was Rama Raya who faced unified opposition from the sultanates rather than alliances with them, while Krishnadeva Raya dealt mainly with the fragmented Bahmani successor states by his era, not the Bahmani Sultanate as a unified entity.
Option (d) is wrongly matched — Aliya Rama Raya was primarily a military regent and political administrator whose reign was marked by instability, factional conflict, and military crises, not a cultural renaissance comparable to Krishnadeva Raya's era. Option (a) correctly credits Harihara I with founding and consolidating the empire and establishing Hampi as capital. Option (b) correctly attributes Deva Raya II with recruiting Muslim cavalry mercenaries and reforming revenue administration. Option (c) correctly credits Krishnadeva Raya with patronising Sanskrit scholars like Allasani Peddana, commissioning the Krishna Temple, and codifying governance in his own treatise, the Amuktamalyada.
Reason (R): Krishnadeva Raya's military campaigns systematically conquered the Deccan Sultanates and destroyed the Bahmani Sultanate, allowing him to absorb their territories into his empire.
Assertion A is correct — Vijayanagara's territorial extent peaked under Krishnadeva Raya (1509–1529), stretching from the Krishna River to beyond the Tungabhadra with control over both the western and eastern coasts and their trade routes. Reason R is incorrect, since the Bahmani Sultanate had already fragmented into four successor states before his reign, so he did not destroy a unified Bahmani Sultanate. His campaigns were selective victories against weaker neighbours combined with diplomacy, rather than systematic conquest and absorption of sultanate territory.
- Deva Raya II's later reign saw the rise of powerful nobles and officers who began to establish independent principalities, weakening central imperial authority over distant provinces.
- Krishnadeva Raya's death in 1529 was immediately followed by a war of succession among his sons, leading to the installation of weak successors who could not maintain the empire's military and administrative standards.
- Aliya Rama Raya's defeat and death at the Battle of Talikota (1565) directly triggered the political fragmentation of the Vijayanagara Empire, as regional powers declared independence and the centre lost control of peripheral territories.
Statement 1 is correct — after Deva Raya II's death, regional nayaks and nobles asserted autonomy, setting a pattern of decentralisation that later rulers, including Krishnadeva Raya, had to fight to reverse. Statement 2 is correct — Krishnadeva Raya's death in 1529 was followed by weaker successors such as Achyuta Deva Raya and later minors like Sadasiva Raya, enabling Aliya Rama Raya's rise as regent. Statement 3 is correct — Rama Raya's death at Talikota in 1565 removed the strongman holding the empire together, after which regional nayaks declared independence and central authority collapsed permanently, even though the empire's name persisted.
