Spring and fall

How did a dry, rocky region become one of the grandest cities of the medieval world, in a time of climate change? It took foresight, funding and tech to build Hampi. There are lessons for today, in the wisdom of the Vijayanagara kings

- Mridula Ramesh

The temple celebrating a river's love story predates the empire. On the windy, rocky Hemakuta Hill, a leafless tree holds court before a tiny one-roomed shrine beside a green spring-fed pond.

This is Moola Virupaksha, a 7th-century structure that marks the spot, the story goes, where Shiva tried to come to terms with the loss of his beloved Sati. Her body had been cut to shreds, but his memories of her remained, and so he meditated.

In time, his beloved was reborn as Pampa (another name for the river Tungabhadra). As she sought him, Manmatha, the god of love, fired his arrow to help matters along. Shiva's meditation was broken. In anger, he opened his third eye (virupaksha; Sanskrit for eye without form) and killed the archer.

Still, Manmatha's arrow had found its mark, and the lovers reunited. Today, the giant Manmatha temple tank is dedicated to the slain catalyst of their romance. Over time, Pampa became Hampi, the seat of one of the grandest cities in the medieval world.

That tale begins in the 14th century, when empires around the world were under attack from the elements. In Europe, unusually heavy rainfall in the spring of 1315 caused crops to rot in the fields, while strangely cool weather and a lack of sunshine hurt subsequent harvests. A terrible famine followed. Starving masses migrated to cities, where the ensuing squalor welcomed the plague with open arms.

In Cambodia, by the mid-1300s, the Khmer empire was grappling with years of drought that alternated with flood. In China, the Yuan dynasty was trying to provide disaster relief even as crucial rice harvests were undercut by massive floods along the Yellow River and devastating typhoons.

The climate was changing. The Medieval Warm Period was transitioning into the Little Ice Age. This was the interregnum; a volatile time, then as now.