82 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR THE INDIAN SEAS Vijayanagar in the interior was beset by the newer Mussulman kingdoms, and had no leisure for the petty politics of the coast-strip. In 1564 Vijayanagar finally went down before the Moslems on the field of Talikot after an existence of four and a half centuries. Its capital can still be traced far inland in the Madras Dis- trict of Bellary vast ruins of temples, fortifications, reservoirs and bridges, with a remnant of 693 human beings amid a population composed of hyenas, jackals, and snakes. At the coming of Vasco da Gama the Mussulman kingdoms of the south were also in the throes of disso- lution and new birth. The Bahmanid dynasty, formed from the coalition of the Mussulman adventurers in the fourteenth century, began to break up in 1489, and by 1525 its disintegration was complete. The Portuguese arrived just as this once powerful kingdom was evolv- ing itself through internecine wars into the Five Mus- sulman States of southern India. Four of the five cared nothing for the isolated coast-strip outside their moun- tain wall. The fifth intervened only when stung by insult; and its intervention was cut short by the dis- tractions incident to the succession of a boy-prince. The inland Hindu kingdom and the five inland Mus- sulman states of southern India, although more power- ful than any of the coast chiefs such as .the Zamorin of Calicut, were themselves insignificant compared with the great powers of the north. But at that time the Afghan sovereignty in northern India was dwindling to the vanishing point. The invasion of Tamerlane in
