A student of water management reads a sixteenth-century account by a Portuguese visitor to Vijayanagara. It describes a tank that a king had made at the mouth of two hills, so that water coming from either side collected there. More water reached it from more than three leagues away, through pipes running along the lower parts of a range outside. Three large carved pillars in the tank were connected to pipes that supplied water to gardens and rice-fields. To make the tank, the king broke down a hill, and the visitor saw fifteen or twenty thousand men at work, looking like ants.
From where was the water that reached this tank from more than three leagues away brought?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → From a lake which itself overflowed into a little river
Option (1) From a dam built across the river Tungabhadra — Incorrect. A dam across the Tungabhadra fed the Hiriya canal, which watered the valley between the sacred centre and the urban core.
Option (2) From a lake which itself overflowed into a little river — Correct. Paes writes that the water came by pipes over about 15 kilometres and was brought from a lake which itself overflows into a little river.
Option (3) From the Kamalapuram tank near the city — Incorrect. Kamalapuram tank was the main early fifteenth-century tank. Its channel carried water to the royal centre.
Option (4) From reservoirs made by embankments on hill streams — Incorrect. Embankments on streams made many reservoirs around the city. Paes, though, names a lake as the source of this distant water.
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