A comparative study of courtly politics in four early modern kingdoms in South India.

When Dutch traders arrived on the Indian subcontinent in the early seventeenth century, they encountered a courtly culture they perceived to be traditional, peaceful, and static. In reality, the kings and Brahmins they met were engaged in a fresh power struggle following the recent collapse of the Vijayanagara empire. In The Heirs of Vijayanagarai, Lennart Bes marshals a wealth of untapped sources from both Indian and Dutch archives to recover the dynamic complexity of political life in early modern India. By comparing four kingdoms—Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnand—across the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, this book offers a captivating analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments in south India.