A group of college students from Bengaluru visits a village in the Krishna-Tungabhadra doab. Among huge boulders they see the ruins of Vijayanagara: broken gateways, long stone walls and halls with carved pillars. Local elders tell them tales of a great city that was sacked in a battle and later deserted. Their teacher explains that scholars rebuilt the history of this empire by putting together such local tales with ruins, inscriptions and written records. She adds that a British officer working for the English East India Company was the first to survey the site and draw its map.
The British officer who surveyed the site received most of his early information about it from:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Memories of priests of the Virupaksha temple and the shrine of Pampadevi
Option (1) Accounts of foreign travellers who had visited the city — Incorrect. Travellers' accounts were used later, when historians collated many sources to rebuild the history of the city.
Option (2) Photographs of the monuments taken for scholars — Incorrect. Photographers began recording the monuments only from 1856, long after the first survey of 1800.
Option (3) Memories of priests of the Virupaksha temple and the shrine of Pampadevi — Correct. Colin Mackenzie's initial information came from the memories of priests of the two main shrines at Hampi. Such living memory was the first guide to the ruins.
Option (4) Inscriptions collected from the temples by epigraphists — Incorrect. Epigraphists began collecting inscriptions at Hampi only from 1836, after Mackenzie's work.
NCERT (2026-27): “1. The Discovery of Hampi |