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The Vijayanagara rajas ruled a substantial part of the southern peninsula of India for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, and during this epoch the region was transformed from its medieval past towards a modern colonial future. Concentrating on the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history of Vijayanagara, Burton Stein details the pattern of rule established in this important and long-lived Hindu kingdom, which was followed by other, often smaller, kingdoms of peninsular India until the onset of colonialism. Through an analysis of the politics, society and economy, Stein addresses the central question of the extent to which Vijayanagara, as a medieval Hindu kingdom, can be viewed as a prototype of the polities and societies confronted by the British in the late eighteenth century. This work thus presents an understanding of one of the great medieval kingdoms of India, and a more general assessment of the nature of the state, society and culture on the eve of European colonial rule.