Read the passage and answer the questions:
The Rayas and the Nayakas
Among those who exercised power in the empire were military chiefs who usually controlled forts and had armed supporters. These chiefs often moved from one area to another, and in many cases were accompanied by peasants looking for fertile land on which to settle. These chiefs were known as nayakas and they usually spoke Telugu or Kannada. Many nayakas submitted to the authority of the kings of Vijayanagara but they often rebelled and had to be subdued by military action. The amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire. It is likely that many features of this system were derived from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate. The amara-nayakas were military commanders who were given territories to govern by the raya. They collected taxes and other dues from peasants, craftspersons and traders in the area. They retained part of the revenue for personal use and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants. These contingents provided the Vijayanagara kings with an effective fighting force with which they brought the entire southern peninsula under their control. Some of the revenue was also used for the maintenance of temples and irrigation works. The amara-nayakas sent tribute to the king annually and personally appeared in the royal court with gifts to express their loyalty. Kings occasionally asserted their control over them by transferring them from one place to another. However, during the course of the seventeenth century, many of these nayakas established independent kingdoms. This hastened the collapse of the central imperial structure. Amara is believed to be derived from the Sanskrit word samara, meaning battle or war. It also resembles the Persian term amir, meaning a high noble.
Identify the foreign traveler who did not visit the Vijayanagara Empire?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Francois Bernier
Francois Bernier, a French doctor, came to the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century. He was in India from 1656 to 1668 and was closely associated with the Mughal court, long after Vijayanagara was sacked in 1565. The Italian trader Nicolo de Conti visited Vijayanagara in the fifteenth century, and Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz came from Portugal in the sixteenth century; all three wrote about the city.
Note: A same/similar question was asked in CUET (UG) in the papers below.
| 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
| 13-05 S1 | – | – | 31-05 S3* | – |
* A similar question.
NCERT (2025-26): “3. Vijayanagara The Capital and its Environs … A large number of inscriptions of the kings of Vijayanagara and their nayakas recording donations to temples as well as describing important events have been recovered. Several travellers visited the city and wrote about it. Notable among their accounts are those of an Italian trader named Nicolo de Conti, an ambassador named Abdur Razzaq sent by the ruler of Persia, a merchant named Afanasii Nikitin from Russia, all of whom visited the city in the fifteenth century, and those of Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz from Portugal, who came in the sixteenth century. 3. François Bernier A Doctor with a Difference … Bernier, a Frenchman, was a doctor, political philosopher and historian. Like many others, he came to the Mughal Empire in search of opportunities. He was in India for twelve years, from 1656 to 1668, and was closely associated with the Mughal court, as a physician to Prince Dara Shukoh, the eldest son of Emperor Shah Jahan, and later as an intellectual and scientist, with Danishmand Khan, an Armenian noble at the Mughal court.…” |