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Can investigating India's medieval dams provide a model for bringing water to a billion people?
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On the shores of the Tungabhadra River, the Virupaksha Temple complex is one of the most popular sites in the 14th- to 16th-century city of Vijayanagara, capital of an empire that ruled much of southern India. (Samir S. Patel)
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The Vitthala Temple complex's magnificent courtly and sacred districts would not have been possible without the city's large, extensive water system. (Samir S. Patel)
While Kathleen Morrison, an anthropologist from the University of Chicago, answers her phone, I have a moment to take in the stunning view from the top of Matanga Hill. There are dozens of other hills like this one, piles of smooth granite boulders that resemble oversized river cobbles. Lush paddies and fields of bananas and sugarcane lap against them. This, according to legend, was the forest domain of the monkeys, home of monkey-god Hanuman, in the ancient Sanskrit epic The Ramayana. Through a midday haze that gives everything a painterly quality, it's also clear that the landscape is studded with buildings--the ruins known as Vijayanagara (also called Hampi, the name of a modern village here). Today, the site in the Indian state of Karnataka is crawling with pilgrims, tourists, and neo-hippies. But it was once the sprawling, wealthy capital of an empire that ruled most of southern India from the 14th to 16th century, during a time called the Middle Period, when the subcontinent was a hodgepodge of shifting empires, sultanates, and kingdoms. The rulers here had a sense of the monumental--there are temple complexes, columned bazaars, palaces, baths, and elephant stables, in addition to irrigation canals from the braided channels of the Tungabhadra River. From up here, it seems like a fine place to have a big city.
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"This is a really tricky place to have a big city," Morrison had told me a few minutes before. Beyond the reach of the canals, this is one of the drier parts of southern India. As in many ancient cities--Petra and Angkor come to mind--water played a critical role in Vijayanagara's political and physical landscapes. On the horizon two miles away is the vegetation-choked, 14th-century Kamalapura Reservoir, which provided water for several hundred thousand people. I try to imagine the groves it now irrigates as a dense metropolis.
Morrison hangs up the phone. The call was from her team, excavating a site across the river. Their Hindustan Ambassador--India's classically boxy sedan--has broken down. We have the other car, so it's time to go.
Prior to this dig, Morrison's historical, archaeological, and paleoenvironmental research focused on a landscape-wide study of the reservoirs that served Vijayanagara. She found that the old waterworks have a surprising significance for a thirsty nation (70 percent of its 1.1 billion people rely on irrigation-supported agriculture) grappling with disruptive megadams and dwindling groundwater.
The idea that past or indigenous cultures employed some kind of forgotten wisdom in managing their resources is a common theme in Indian development literature. "New traditionalism," as the approach is known, posits that large, state-run projects such as big dams are inferior to traditional forms of water management, which are described as community-run, small-scale, sustainable, and fair in their distribution of water. It is an admirable vision, but what happens when, as Morrison found, the wisdom of the past isn't quite what we would like it to be?
Samir S. Patel is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.
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