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How did the patronage activities of India’s Vijayanagara
Empire (c. 1346–1565) influence Hindu sectarian identities?
Although the empire has been commonly viewed as a Hindu bulwark
against Islamic incursion from the north or as a religiously
ecumenical state, Valerie Stoker argues that the Vijayanagara court
was selective in its patronage of religious institutions. To
understand the dynamic interaction between religious and royal
institutions in this period, she focuses on the career of the Hindu
intellectual and monastic leader Vyasatirtha. An agent of the state
and a powerful religious authority, Vyasatirtha played an important
role in expanding the empire’s economic and social networks.
By examining his polemics against rival sects in the context of his
work for the empire, Stoker provides a remarkably nuanced picture
of the relationship between religious identity and sociopolitical
reality under Vijayanagara rule.