Incidentally, I had read some history of Vijayanagar Empire a year or so before and that had kept alive my interest in the Hindu resistance and revival by the Sangama kings which saved the Southern part of the subcontinent from being ravaged and Islamized by the onslaught of the Turkish Sultanate who had established their kingdom in Delhi in the later twelfth century. Along with Robert Sewell’s excellent historical record of this great kingdom in his book, ‘Vijayanagara, the forgotten Empire’, I had also read Ganga Devi’s ‘Madhura Vijayam’, a 14thcentury Sanskrit classic available in fragments which describes the valor of King Kumara Kampana, a son of Bukka (the founder of Vijayanagara), and his conquest of Madurai which restored peace in the Southern peninsula by sealing the fate of the Sultanate rule in Madurai. I remembered the fact that Venugopalan’s ‘Thiruvarangan Ula’ was a fictional record of the turmoil in South India by the repeated conquests of the Delhi Sultanate and also of the weak resistance by the sundry and fragmented Hindu Kingdoms till Vijayanagara put an end to the tyranny. Here was fiction to add color to history, and hence I was more than happy when I got hold of an online version of a scanned copy of the entire four parts that someone had uploaded.
‘Thiruvarangan Ula’ is a historical novel, but with a difference from the fictional kind this genre mostly falls under. For, most of the events portrayed are verifiable though the major characters are fictional. The story line is fictional too but woven around verifiable events that happened in the early fourteenth century. The novel that opens with the conquest of SriRangam by Ulugh Khan (later known as Mohammed Bin Thuglaq) and the valor shown by the very few warriors inside the fort in defending it also portrays SriRangam as one of the biggest Temple complexes in the world with its five walls and a city itself inside them. Which is supplemented by a layout of the Temple City complex, as it existed then. This book was written in the early seventies and Venugopalan who also wrote titillating thrillers under another pen name (Pushpa Thangadurai) seems to have collected a lot of available historical material for his book with the intention of making it a substantial book based on reality than just producing some fiction to pass time. He engages in history when the flow in the story demands it –deftly, and not deliberately and frequently, that it hardly diverts the attention of a casual reader.
Life in India, in general, was one intertwined with various developments of Indic Spirituality till the Turkish Sultanate and the Moghuls later took over. The civic and social structure had its weaknesses but there was a life that had a common ground in the various Indic traditions that prevented any significant hardship for the general masses. There were indeed sectarian issues but the generality of life was smooth and peaceful since it was flexible in its necessary internal adjustments. From the early twelfth century there was a succession of raids from Persia that resulted in a kingdom of Turkish Sultanate at Delhi. The impact of an alien culture was tumultuous to the Indian mind and masses. Along with plundering there came a forced life-style change itself with a ferocity unknown to the masses as yet.
It is in this period of turmoil Venugopalan places his novel. Malik Kafur, the general of Alaudin Khilji, had already ravaged half the Southern peninsula and he had marched further South to plunder Madurai. He had looted mind-boggling wealth from the Temples all his way down South and laying them to ruins as well. As if one conquest were not enough to plunder the wealth of the Southern Temples and kingdoms, there were two more raids from the Delhi Sultanate. The novel is a fictional account of a very important event that did happen during the third raid by Ulugh Khan that also established a Sultanate rule in Madurai and resulted in a forty plus years of laying waste of all that makes mankind civilized and humane -- of which valid historical documents are available.
Venugopalan portrays well this chaotic period throughout his novel. Villages are burned and deserted, families are separated and displaced – not only where the wars are waged, but also in the near and far vicinity. Women are taken for harems. Most women of the families of the fallen kings used to immolate themselves than fall into a fateful life as that. The Temples that were lifelines of Life till then are forcefully abandoned, if not destructed after being looted. All festivities come to a standstill under the sultanate rule and Life itself stupefied into a state of decay.
It is a day before Ulugh Khan’s laying siege to SriRangam, the novel begins. The people are terrified since they are aware of the destruction and bloodshed that follow these conquests. The whole city that lives in the Temple complex within its five walls is asked to evacuate. The very small number of warriors remain along with those who because of their love and devotion to Sri Aranganatha, the presiding deity of SriRangam, refuse to leave the Temple premises. Venugopalan weaves a remarkable fictional account of the war in which the meagre forces hold on admirably before they eventually fall for the enemy who is much greater in number and might. What follows after the downfall is the massacre typical of the Sultanate conquests. There are historical records that make a note of the twelve thousand unarmed civilians who remained in the city were butchered and the great Temple ransacked and stripped off its wealth.
War between various Kingdoms was not new to India but war for mindless plunder, wanton destruction and lust for blood was entirely unknown till the Turkish sultanate descended into India. The common man who was left relatively untouched in his everyday life by any political upheavals was subjected to unimaginable cruelty. There have been large scale displacements of the masses all over India in this period because of such brutal conquests. We see Alauddin Khilji not just conquering the Hoysalas and plundering their wealth, but reducing to ruins the magnificent cultural achievements at Halabedu and countless other Temples. As if it were not enough, with every such conquest, we find large scale massacre and a forced change in life-style that shattered the very cultural framework and also resulted in the painful displacement of the masses.
There was much more than a political game of establishing power behind these conquests, for it seems to have been fuelled by a fanatical wish of trampling and subjugating a way of life that was alien to the marauding outsiders of the land. It was not just in the initial wave of conquest alone one finds it. History shows how the blood-shed and violence continued for more than three centuries. One only shudders to guess the fate of South India if Vijayanagara had not formed its mighty wall of resistance. It took a long while for the Hindu mind to realize that it was not only facing an enemy whose nature it never knew till then but also that it may go extinct at the enemy’s hands. In earlier instances of a threat to its spirit that needed a whiff of fresh air, it could readily breathe it in when brought in by the other Indic streams of spiritual development, assimilate them and hence even expand itself. Not so with the Turkish onslaught that only seemed to aim for its extinction. The realization and eventual resistance, painfully slow though, had to finally come through the Vijayanagara kings, the foundation of which was laid, as one finds, through many such events as the one portrayed by Venugopalan in this novel.
Every Hindu Temple has a main Deity, (Moolavar), made mostly in stone and is a non-movable and permanent part of the Temple; a smaller Deity (Utsavar) of the same Godhead made mostly in precious metal or a combination of metals who is taken all around the Temple and the city not only for blessing people but also be a part of general Life itself in the colorful and festivity-filled Hindu way of Life. It was a typical feature of those conquests that the Moolavar used to be desecrated and the Utsavar looted for its precious material. These Deities were not simply ‘idols’ for the Hindu mind, but an embodiment of a faith that had a long history of a Philosophic and Spiritual evolution behind it. Throughout the long novel in four parts, Venugopalan’s characters frequently mention what the Deity meant to them as the central source of a system of belief and faith that had sustained Life for them. They are hence passionate in saving the Deity even at the cost of their own lives. It is in moving details he portrays such facts as to the many number of such deities that had to be moved away from their original Temples and kept safe in the Temples which weren’t under the Sultanate regime. Even Godess Meenakshi Amman from Madurai had taken refuge in the Temples in Nagercoil.
(For part 2, click here)
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