D. Hampi

Part IV
Archiving Intangibles: Social Life,

Living Traditions
Architectural and Social Life
Reconstructions of Bazaar Streets
of Hampi: Vijayanagara Period
Mamata N. Rao
1 Introduction
Reconstruction of architecture and social life is an upcoming theme of interest in

Digital Heritage. One of the well-known examples in this area is the work done
under Roman Reborn project [1] which aims to create 3D digital models to illus-
trate the urban development of Rome from 1000 B.C to 550 A.D. This chapter out-
lines the architectural and social life reconstructions for the Bazaar streets of Hampi,
a metropolis of Vijayanagara period, the objective being to visualize the probable
architectural look of bazaars and social activities in varied dimensions. The method-
ology focuses on field research and literature survey of Vijayanagara period to create
coherent digital reconstructions.
2 Site Context and Historical Background for Bazaar

Streets of Hampi
The city of Hampi is described to be a metropolis with a length and breadth of around
25 kms [2]. The city has two main zones the royal enclosure comprising of palaces,
administrative offices, houses for nobility along with a royal bazaar street and the
sacred centre comprising of temple complexes together with bazaar streets:
1. Virupaksha Temple Complex and bazaar street
2. Vitthala Temple Complex and bazaar street
3. Krishna Temple Complex and bazaar street
4. Achyuta Raya Temple complex and bazaar street
M. N. Rao (✉)
Senior Faculty National Institute of Design, R & D Campus, Bengaluru, India
e-mail: mamatarao@nid.edu
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 265

A. Mallik et al. (eds.), Digital Hampi: Preserving Indian Cultural Heritage,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5738-0_16
266 M. N. Rao
The bazaar streets are referred to in various literature resources on Hampi as

‘Chariot Streets’, ‘Car Streets’, and ‘Rathavidhi’ indicating that they were con-
structed for accommodating pulling of Rathas (chariots / wooden cars) of temple
Gods and Goddesses during festivals.
Each of these temple complexes with a bazaar street and surrounding environs
formed a Pura, which could be stated to be similar to suburbs of today.
2.1 Virupaksha Temple Complex and Bazaar Street
2.1.1 Virupaksha Temple Complex
Virupaksha temple is a living temple, where deities are worshipped even today. This
temple is dedicated to God Virupaksha (Shiva) and his consort Pampadevi (Parvati).
The temple has a recorded history of over 1000 years even prior to early 15th century,
when Vijayanaraga empire flourished [2]. Scholars [2–4] have referred to the work
Shivatatva Chintamani by Lakkanadandesha who describes that King Devaraya II
(Praudhadeva Raya) paid attention to the development of Virupaksha temple and
its surroundings. His work includes building a huge enclosure wall to the temple,
four gateways in the cardinal directions by clearing the foreground of the temple for
laying a wide car street with fruit-bearing trees planted on either side of the Gopuras
on the Hemakuta region.
2.1.2 Virupaksha Temple Bazaar Street
The street that runs in front of Virupaksha temple complex is called Virupaksha
bazaar street. Earlier studies [5–7] have stated the length of this street to be 800 m
long and over 13 m wide. The street has Virupaksha temple complex at one end and
Nandi mantapa at the other end with a series of steps leading to a gateway that marks
the end of this street.
A number of literary resources mention about the pulling of chariots on Viru-
paksha bazaar street. It is said that Devaraya II introduced the annual festival of
pulling Rathas (wooden chariots) of temple Gods and Goddesses for a procession on
this street [2, 3]. Hampiya Bazaarugalu [8] states ‘According to Lakkandandesha,
a commander-in-chief for king Devaraya II, three chariots one for Virupaksha, one
for Pampambika and third for Ganesh were taken for procession’. However, Nicoli
Conti an Italian ambassador who visited Vijayanagara early 15th century describes
two chariots being taken in a procession [2]. Virupaksha Vasantotsava Champu
[9] by R.S. Panchamukhi an English translation of Sanskrit work by poet Ahobala
who lived in the late 14th Century who mentions about two chariots one pulled by
brahmins, the other pulled by merchants and sudras with both the chariots carry-
ing utsava murtis of Shiva and Parvati. This procession also consisted of kings and
chiefs, musicians, dancing girls while the watching crowd lining the street raised a
Architectural and Social Life Reconstructions of Bazaar Streets . . . 267
huge shout and threw coconuts, dates at the chariots as a token of respect. Vasundhara
Filliozat in her book states, ‘As many as three temple chariots (ratha) were drawn by
devotees on Virupaksha Street’ [3].
Virupaksha street has over fifty colonnaded mantapa structures flanking it. Michell
and Filliozat [5] describe elaborate structures such as double storeyed with balconies
and ornamental parapets to have been probably used as royal pavilions for watching
the festivities. Domingo Paes has described Virupaksha Street as ‘a street with very
beautiful houses with balconies and arcades, in which are sheltered the pilgrims that
come to it and there are also houses for the upper classes; the king has a palace in
the same street, in which he resides when he visits the pagoda (the pagoda men-
tioned here would be Virupaksha Temple Gopuram)’ [10]. Filliozat [11] identifies
this probable structure on the street and states ‘Towards the end of the street, before
taking a turn to go to the river there is a beautiful house which has a royal pala-
tial appearance with balcony, etc. Most probably it was the royal residence and Paes
might be referring to this house’.
2.2 Vitthala Temple Complex and Bazaar Street
2.2.1 Vitthala Temple Complex
Shastri and Akki [2] referring to Sastri and Venkataramanayya [12] describe Vit-
thala temple as existed in the time of Devaraya II based on telugu poem Narasimha
Puranam of Haribhatta, that praises Prolaganti Tippa, minister of Praudha Deve Raya
for the construction of Bhoga Mantapa at Vitthalapura. Mack [13] speculates this to
be a Tuluva dynasty shrine established by Vira Narasimha on or soon after his coro-
nation in 1506. Most of the inscriptions found inside the temple are dated after 1500
AD and refer to Krishnadevaraya [2].
2.2.2 Vitthala Temple Bazaar Street
This Street runs into two main galleries, one running from eastern gopuram of Vit-
thala temple easterward up to Parankusa Mantapa (referred today as Gejjala Man-
tapa) and the other running from eastern gopuram of Vitthala temple northwards up
to Ramanuja temple (referred as Brahma Vitthala temple). Shastri and Akki [2] have
stated the length of the eastward gallery of the street to be 945 m long with a width
of 40 m and the northern gallery to be 122 m long and 16.3 m wide.
A number of inscriptions have indicated on the festive events celebrated at Vit-
thala temple complex and street. Akki and Shastri [2] mention about the inscrip-
tions found inside the temple describing celebrations of festivals like Gokulasthami,
Mahanavami, Vijayadasami, Ugadi, Dipavali, Sri Ramanavami, Makara Sankranti,
Utitirunalu, etc. in the Vitthala temple. In this work, they further describe the use
of different coloured sarees and cloth was used to decorate Vitthala chariot which
268 M. N. Rao
was pulled up to the Parankusa Mantapa. Mack [13] conjectures a probable route
for Vitthala temple procession being led out of eastern gopura of the Vitthala temple
and continued in a clockwise circumambulation sequence to Alwar shrines outside
Vitthala temple complex. The Pushkarni (temple tank) located on the northern side
of the street has a colonnaded gallery all around it and was used for temple rituals
such as the teppotsava (flotilla festival).
Scholars [2, 4, 13] have suggested that the colonnaded mantapas have variously
served as retail spaces, rest houses for pilgrims and spaces for activities related to
procession.
2.3 Krishna Temple Complex and Bazaar Street
2.3.1 Krishna Temple Complex
Robert Sewell [14] states ‘Krishnasvami temple was built by him (referring to
Krishna Deva Raya) in 1513 after his successful campaign in the east’. Akki and
Shastri [2], Filliozat [15] state that Krishna Deva Raya installed the idol of Bala
Krishna brought from Udayagiri in 1513. Presently this temple is in ruins and was
deserted after the Vijayanagara empire. Krishna temple complex with the bazaar
street and the surrounding environs together formed the Krishnapura located cen-
trally at a city level must have been an area that acted as a major centre and linkage
to the Hampi metropolis.
2.3.2 Krishna Temple Bazaar Street
Like the other bazaar streets of Vijayanagara period this street too is lined by colon-
naded mantapas on either side and can be reached by a downward flight of steps
from the arterial road in front of eastern gopuram of Krishna temple complex. This
arterial road that extends from Royal Enclosure to Virupakshapura is identified by
Settar [16] as Deverividhi who says that this might have functioned as a major city
level link during Vijayanagara period. Akki and Shastri [2] mention the length of
the eastward running bazaar street to be not less than 570 m long and 49.5 m wide.
Our work carried at Digital Hampi Lab at NID R and D Campus has documented the
bazaar street in terms of its extent and the kind of structures found. As per our field
study, the bazaar street is around 160 wide (49.5m) and recent excavations have also
exposed the cobbled stones that must have paved the street. The excavation work by
ASI is still in progress and based on structures seen so far, the length is around 370
mapped with respect to existing plinth available.
There is a Pushkarni (a temple pond) on the Northern side of the Bazaar Street. It
has at its centre a free-standing pavilion called the ‘Utsava Mantapa’. The Pushkarni
should have functioned as a node for religious activities during festive occasions.
During Vijayanagara period Pushkarni was used for rituals such as Teppotsava,
Deepotsava held as part of annual and monthly festivals. Settar [17] and Anila
Verghese [18] mention Teppotsava festivals being organized within the Pushkarni
precincts with the Utsava Murtis of Gods and Goddesses taken around for a boat
ride.
3 Architectural Reconstruction
Digitized models were built for five different segments: (i) City level urban map
(ii) Virupaksha Bazaar Street (iii) Vitthala Bazaar Street (iv) Krishna Bazaar Street
and (v) Achyuta Raya Bazaar Street The work for creating these models is described
under two main heads:
1. Building Digitized Models for Hampi City Level Urban Map
2. Architectural Reconstructions of Bazaar Streets.
3.1 Building Digitized Models for Hampi City Level Urban

Map
In the beginning, the study focused on understanding the various linkages at an

urban level for Hampi metropolis with emphasis on mapping these linkages that
connected the various bazaar streets. We studied the various literary sources with
the focus to chart old roads, networks, linkages, the extent of temple Bazaar Street,
the gateways. Maps from books published by [19], Longhurst [20], Settar [21],
Michell and Filliozat [22], Fritz et al. [23], Patil [24] were referred to prepare a com-
prehensive map of Hampi, as a digital vector file. This map shows the puras around
the four temple bazaar street and its environs; the royal enclosure with the surround-
ing fort wall with its gateways and the Pan Supari Bazaar (royal bazaar); all the
geographical features such as hills, river and water channels; the road networks.
3.2 Architectural Reconstruction of Bazaar Streets
We first began with Virupaksha Bazaar Street as it had the maximum number as
well as a diverse set of structures. A detailed description of our work pertaining to
Reconstruction of Virupaksha Bazaar Street has been published earlier [25]. For the
reconstruction of all the three bazaar streets, the following methodology has been
followed:
a. Preparation of Digital Footprint of Bazaar Streets: The 2D plan drawings of

many of the structures of Virupaksha, Vitthala and Krishna Bazaar Street were
270 M. N. Rao
Fig. 1 Digital footprint prepared for Krishna Bazaar Street by placing images of 2D drawings on
Google Map
Photogrammetry measurements 2D AutoCAD drawings
Fig. 2 a Photogrammetry of Krishna Bazaar Pushkarni Gateway b 2D Drawings of existing

Pushkarni gateway (part of parapet shown in red is the portion destroyed)
published in Vijayanagara Architectural Inventory of the Sacred Centre [26]. The

scanned images formats of these drawings were placed, scaled, aligned to fit with
respective structures seen on Google Maps using Adobe photoshop software to
create a footprint of the bazaar street as shown in Fig. 1.
b. Identification of various existing structures of bazaar street and photo docu-
mentation: The bazaar street footprint prepared (Fig. 2) served as a reference map
for field survey to identify the various structures of the bazaar street which was
improved by plotting structures seen in recent excavations by ASI. This was more
the case for Virupaksha Bazaar Street. When we began our work in March–April
2011, people were occupying these structures for their living and commercial
activities which were later vacated due to a court order. Data was collected in the
form of photographs for each of the structures of the streets which would include
the front view, side views, and close-up photographs of various architectural ele-
ments such as plinth, column types, etc. Panoramas were also taken at various
points within the temple complexes and the bazaar streets to capture the existing
condition of the structures, the tools used being image editing softwares such as
Adobe photoshop and Pano VR. The photographs were taken for time periods
from 2011 till 2014 and 2015. Our final version of reconstructions for various
structures of Virupaksha and Vitthala Bazaar Street are based on our last field in
Jan 2014, while that for Krishna Bazaar Street are based on our last field visit in
June 2015.
c. Measurement of structures and Preparation of 2D drawings:

∙ Manual measurements: For each of the structures of Bazaar street manual
measurements were taken noting end-to-end dimensions of the structure, col-
umn to column spacing and height for each floor.
∙ Photogrammetry: There were a few structures which were high and taking
manual measurements was not possible. In such cases we collected pho-
togrammetric data for the front fade of double height structures. We took
several photos of the structure taken at constant radii from the structure and a
reference marker. Autodesk Imagemodeler software was used to process these
images and obtain the height of the structure (Fig. 2a). This method did not
give good results when the structures had blunt/broken edges as it was diffi-
cult to map the points. In the case of Gejjala mantapa in on Vitthala street we
sought permission to climb the structures to take manual measurements as a
large portion of the shikara superstructure was not seen from the ground level
for taking photographs.
We created 2D CAD drawings using AutoCAD software for all the well pre-
served and dilapidated structures based on the footprint and manual measure-
ments. For the dilapidated structures, the remains of column shaft or plinth
were noted and considered. This street footprint was further improvised with
updated data from 2D drawings.
d. Categorization of various structures of Virupaksha Bazaar Street: The extent
of a structure was based on the overall plinth for that structure. The next step
was to categorize the structures identified on each of these Streets into Broad or
Main Architectural Typologies based on their distinguishing and common fea-
tures. Once the typology was identified for the structure the location of the struc-
ture whether it was northern, southern, eastern or western was noted. The archi-
tectural typology, the location and the number of the structure formed the basis
for the nomenclature of each of these structures. The bazaar street structures were
classified into six main or broad architectural typologies as follows:
1 Saalumantapas or Colonnades as ‘C’ (Northern Colonnade—NC, Southern

Colonnade SC and 1, 2 and 3 depending on their numbers)
2 Pushkarni as ‘Pu’( Northern Colonnade of Pushkarni NPuC)
3 Mantapas as ‘M’ (Northern Mantapa NM, Southern Mantapa—SM)
4 Kallubagilu or Gateways as ‘G’ (Northern Gateway NG, Southern Gateway
SG)
5 Shrines as ‘Sh’ (Northern Shrine NSh, Southern Shrine SSh)
6 Free-Standing Pavilions as ‘P’.
272 M. N. Rao
Fig. 3 Main and sub-architectural typologies
e. Subcategorization of main architectural typologies: Such a categorization of

structures into main architectural typologies would help us reconstruct features
for mantapas, colonnades, pavilions, gateways and shrines based on instances
found in similar category. To take this further and have a closer relationship
within the members of a category subcategories were created for each architec-
tural typology, i.e. sub-architectural typologies as shown in Fig. 3 for the purpose
of arriving at reconstructions.
Virupaksha temple Bazaar Street We found 68 structures on this street and
were able to categorize the structures on this street into five main architectural
typologies Mantapas, Colonnades, Gateways, Shrines and Pavilions. The temple
Pushkarni adjacent and part of the temple complex was not considered as part of
the Bazaar Street.
Vitthala Bazaar Street This street had 40 structures in all including the pushkarni
structures. There are many sections that could be considered part of the bazaar
street structures like the sections behind and the southern side of Vitthala temple
complex along with the other subsidiary shrines/ temples, and along the eastward
running section which abruptly stops after pushkarni but we have not taken these
into consideration as we did not find clarity in extent of the remains of columns
or plinth. Further excavation and research could throw light on the status of these
structures. We were able to categorize the structures for this street into 6 main
architectural typologies Mantapas, Colonnades, Gateways, Pushkarni, Shrines

and Pavilions.
Krishna Bazaar Street This street had 10 structures in the bazaar street section
accessible with the downward flight of steps including the pushkarni. In the case
of Krishna Bazaar Street the end point of the street could not be clearly demarked.
Presently excavation by ASI is ongoing after clearing the banana plantations that
earlier in 2011 occupied this area. We were able to categorize the structures for
this street into 6 main architectural typologies Mantapas, Colonnades, Gateways,
Pushkarni, and Pavilions. Shrines were not found in the existing structures of this
street.
f. Reconstructions of various structures of Bazaar Streets: Reconstructions for
the various structures of Bazaar Streets were based on architectural typologies
and sub-typologies as follows:
∙ Reconstructions based on architectural typologies and sub-typologies

Case 1: Let us say the existing structure has only remains of plinth or some
columns, then first identify the main architectural typology. For example see
the extent and shape of plinth and locate a mantapa or column with similar
plinth. The features of this mantapa are used to reconstruct the destroyed man-
tapa in Fig. 4i.
Case 2: In the existing structure if one of the architectural feature has been
destroyed then we would need to identify the sub-architectural typology for
this structure. For example if we find that a parapet is missing for a 4-pillared
double storeyed with double height pillars, then look for another instance of
this sub-typology where parapet is available to reconstruct the destroyed para-
pet. as shown in Fig. 4ii.
Case 3: If existing structure has missing architectural elements in a portion
and there are also instances of these elements available in another portion,
then we can reconstruct missing elements using instances of similar elements
available in the structure as shown in Fig. 4iii.
Case 4: There were a number of structures in bazaar streets such as colon-
nades and huge double storeyed mantapas where we have not found any
instance of parapet. In such cases there is no availability of instances within
the main or sub-architectural typologies. Hence we have looked at Vijayana-
gara style parapet for huge structures as in temple prakara wall parapets to
reconstruct parapets for colonnades and huge double storeyed mantapas as
shown in Fig. 4iv.
∙ Verifying and refining reconstructions for bazaar streets: There are a number
of literary resources that describe the bazaar street scenarios of Hampi which
have been used for this purpose. Most of these are textual narratives and there
is very little visual data available that could be a source for architectural recon-
structions. We have looked at a number of field-based visual resources such
as murals, stucco work, relief work at temple complexes and bazaar streets
and we have so far not found any visual resource depicting bazaars. The only
274 M. N. Rao
Fig. 4 (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) reconstruction for the four cases
visual resource available were photograph taken by Greenlaw [27] in 1857 and
the photographs taken by Edmund Lyon [28] of Virupaksha Street in 1868,
available in Online Exhibitions of Bristish Online Library. Based on these two
visual resources we improved our reconstructions for southern side mantapas
of Virupaksha Street, and the reconstruction of Krishna Pushkarni mantapa
and pavilion.
4 Social Life Reconstruction
The next section deals with reconstructions of Social life and visualizing Bazaar
Scenarios based on field work and available literary resources.
4.1 Study of Clothing and Material Culture
The methodology considered for the study and arriving at inferences of Clothing
style of Vijayanagara period is as detailed below:
a. Study of Literary resources on Social Life and Material Culture Of Vijayana-

gara: We looked at literary resources [29–31] on social life and administration
Under Vijayanagara to cull out had textual descriptions of socio-cultural activi-
ties and Clothing customs of that Period. Next, we looked at publications [32–36]
specifically on clothing and material culture of Vijayanagara period to under-
stand the clothing terms/vocabulary and their visualization as researched by ear-
lier scholars. Next, we corelated the various clothing terms to the clothing form
or style and visualized typical clothing culture of this period as shown in Fig. 5.
Descriptions on Clothing as reported by Domingo Paes, Abdur Razaak, Nicoli
Conti, Nuniz and others gave us further data on the clothing style for each of the
classes of Vijayanagara period such as Royalty, Nobility, Common man/woman,
etc. for visualization.
Fig. 5 Clothing terms based on literary resources and visualizations

276 M. N. Rao
b. Field Study and analysis of Murals, Stucco and Relief work: We studied
murals at Rangamantapa, Virupaksha temple, Hampi; Lepakshi Temple murals;
stucco work at gopurams of Virupaksha and Krishna temple; relief work at
Mahanavami Dibba and all the bazaar streets of Hampi to understand visual data
on clothing and garment styles of Vijayanagara period.
∙ Study and analysis of Rangamantapa murals, Virupaksha temple, Hampi: The
work by C.T.M Kotraiah [37] dates murals at Rangamantapa, Virupaksha tem-
ple, Hampi to the first half of the 16th century’. This mural has 13 main and
many sub-panels which depict Sthalpurana, stories from mythology, and a
processional scene showing a guru being carried in a palanquin lead by guards
and soldiers. The ceiling paintings are bound by vertical paintings on the four
edges that show mythical animals, birds, musicians, dancers, devotees includ-
ing nobility, etc. We looked at both main and sub-panels and mapped the cloth-
ing styles together with the colour palette.
∙ Study and analysis of Lepakshi murals, Veerabhadraswami temple, Lepakshi:
The Lepakshi murals at Veerabhadraswami temple Lepakshi, are regarded as
the earliest surviving of the Vijayanagara murals [38]. The photographs for
Lepakshi murals provided by IIACD, Bengaluru were manually annotated for
information on clothing style and the colour palette for each term of cloth-
ing (Fig. 6). After all the panels were analyzed a conclusive colour and tex-
ture palette was derived for each clothing term of Vijayanara period that was
depicted in the murals as shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 6 Analysis of clothing style and colour palette as seen for Lepakshi murals
Fig. 7 Compiled data on colour palatte for Purnoruka (form of male clothing style) as seen for
Lepakshi murals
∙ Study and analysis of Relief work and iconography at Mahanavami Dibba and
Bazaar Streets, Hampi: At Mahanavami Dibba, all the sides of the platform
and the various tiers were studied and the clothing style mapped for each figure
on the platform using photographs which were translated into line drawings
using Adobe Illustrator. The same methodology has been used for mapping
the various relief work figures found on each of the architectural features such
as columns, parapet of mantapas of bazaar streets Virupaksha, Krishna and
Vitthala Bazaar Street mantapas. For each mantapa, the columns that show
iconography have been identified. All the four sides of such columns have
been photographed, and then line drawings along with relief-work seen have
been drafted again using Adobe Illustrator software. All the relief work doc-
umented belongs to Vijayanag;ara period and there is no reference to them
being rebuilt. The figures, their clothing style, the postures and the artifacts if
any carried were annotated manually as shown in Fig. 8.
∙ Study and analysis of Stucco work at Virupaksha and Krishna temple, Hampi:
Study of stucco work on the outer and inner gopurams, main shikhara, para-
pets seen of the inner courtyard of Virupaksha temple was done. Anila Vergh-
ese and Anna L. Dallapicola [39] have stated that the outer eastern gopuram
(hiriya gopuram), the inner gopuram (Raya Gopuram); and the Balakrishna
temple (Krishna) were constructed during the time of Krishnadevaraya. The
work by G. Mitchell and P. B. Wagoner [40] dates the stucco work of Virupak-
sha temple outer East Gopuras to a later date. The figures depicted in stucco
work, the clothing style seen was very similar to the ones we saw in the relief
work and iconography at Mahanavami Dibba and Bazaar streets of Hampi. So
although it is indicative that the stucco work at Virupaksha might have been
278 M. N. Rao
Fig. 8 Study of relief work on a mantapa column of Virupaksha Bazaar Street, one with pho-
tographs based on which line drawings are prepared
rebuilt at a later date, we analyzed these for clothing styles. The figures, their
clothing style, the postures and the artifacts if any they carried were annotated
manually for each figure using Adobe InDesign software.
4.2 Visualization of Bazaar Street Scenarios:
A number of textual descriptions for bazaar activities at Hampi were taken and visu-
alized them with people shown in clothing style we derived from our research. The
methodology considered for arriving at conjectural visualizations of bazaar street
scenarios is detailed for three scenario cases.
a. Visualization of Bazaar Street Scenarios: We had reconstructed architectural

models along with digital footprint of bazaar streets and had data for clothing style
and material culture of Vijayanagara period. Textual descriptions were taken from
the books by Robert Sewell, Nilakanta Sastri, Mahalingam, Filliozat, Kotriah
and Dallapicola, which contained scenarios mentioned by foreign travelers of
Vijayanagara period such as Domingo Paes, Abdur Razaak, Nicoli Conti, Nuniz.
These were divided into two broad thematic categories.
∙ Everyday Bazaar Streets and activities, items sold: This included statements
that described Bazaar Street ambiance such as: ‘...In the beginning the Viru-
paksha market might have had goods in view of the needs of the Temple.....’
[2]. This we associated with flower, fruits, kumkums being sold in front of the
mantapas close to the temple complex.
We researched to find out about the kinds of flowers available in this period.
We found descriptions such as ‘The city of Vijayanagara is said to have had
a plentiful supply of flowers, especially roses, at all times in the year. The
desire of the people for sweet-scented flowers appears to have been insatiable.
They wore them as garlands on their heads and around their necks. Women
Fig. 9 Conjectural visualization with flower and temple goods selling ladies
decorated their hair with different kinds of flowers and Among the flowers that
had no fragrance they liked only the lotus. Rose, jasmine, campak, jaji, vira-
jaji, molla, ketaki, etc. were some of the favourite varieties for which people
had special fondness’. [41]
Similarly the Kannada translated version on Amuktamalayada a poem by
Krishnadevaraya describes the ladies selling flowers as follows ‘ It describes
these women sitting in a sensual manner and creating/making the flower gar-
lands. They talk to one another with a blushing smile that attracted the young
men. It seems that these ladies wore sarees as there is description of seere
(saree) seragu (pallu) covering their mouth/face to hide their blush. They
sprinkled water on the flowers with their hands and when they did so pre-
tending to sprinkle water on the flowers they also sprinkled water on the young
men who tried to flirt with them. These flower women flirted with men and sold
them flowers for four times the price in gold coins. These flower ladies wore
saree that had Kumkum (red) coloured shining border and on their fingers
they had rings made of tooth or ivory maybe. They wore Ravike (blouses) that
were tightened with strings/knots’. [42]. Figure 9 visualize the bazaar street
activities conjuctures based on the textual narratives described above.
∙ Bazaar Streets during Rathotsava festival: The ambience described during
Rathotsava festival is as follows: ‘...The beginning of the festival was indicated
by beating of the drums and gathering then grew so large and thick that there
was hardly any space, even for an ant to move. The king of Vidyanagara too
was present there. There were many other kings like the king of Kashmir,
of Sri Raidesa, Mokshapura, Balari-Nagara, king of Vanechara family, king
of Harapura, Bhujanaganagra and many others. By this time the two idols of
Siva and Parvati were placed in the car and the Prasada was distributed to
280 M. N. Rao
Fig. 10 Drummers, people and pulling of Ratha during Rathotsava
all after proper worship. The great sage Vidyaranya got up in the car with
his pupils and followers; and the worship of the car and the images of Gods
then followed. The Brahmins proceeded to draw forth the car but it did not
move. Thereupon, the king was called to propitiate the god. The king came and
worshipped the car and taking the rope in his hands, he pulled it and the car
moved forth.There was another car presented by merchant, named Pamparya
and it was drawn by the merchant and the Sudra classes...’ [9]. From the
above for the drum beating scene we saw references in Rangamatapa murals
at Virupaksha temple that had a scene of drummers and musical instruments.
Based on this the Rathotsava conjectural visualizations were made as shown
in Fig. 10.
b. Collaborating on immersive walkthrough:We collaborated with Indian Institute
of Technology (IIT) Bombay team for developing the immersive walkthroughs for
Bazaar street scenarios. We sent them the visualizations of a Bazaar Street activ-
ities and ambience along with 3D architectural models of one mantapa structure,
the character 3D models and probable shots to be demonstrated in the immer-
sive walkthroughs. Based on this the IIT Bombay team developed the immersive
walkthrough video that showed Virupaksha Bazaar Street scenario.
5 Conclusion and Future Work
The methodology adopted for the Reconstruction of Bazaar Streets has looked at
the available instances today that was supposed to be of Vijayanagara period. In
some places we have also seen that the Vijayanagara period instances might have
been redone or rebuilt. The methodology has been derived in such a way that even
in future, we could fine-tune and apply this for the changed instances of Vijayana-
gara period as we get better informed with further researches in this area. This
methodology that looks at both architectural, clothing and social life instances for
reconstructions could be applied to other heritage sites in future.
Acknowledgements We thank the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India

for funding the project ‘Representation of Art, Artifacts and Architecture of Hampi Bazaars from a
Design Perspective’ DST No: NRDMS/11/1586/09/Phase- II/Project No 15. The author would like
to thank National Institute of Design (NID) for all the institutional support, facilities and the various
project appointees who worked at Digital Hampi Lab at NID. We would like to thank the Director
NID, Prof. Pradyumna Vyas for all the encouragement in taking this project up at our Institute.
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pp 10–11
Creating Personalized Avatars
Jai Mashalkar and Parag Chaudhuri
1 Introduction
Recreations heritage sites in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed
reality (MR) are often populated by virtual characters. These characters also serve
as proxy representatives of the real users in these worlds and are known as avatars.
In order to create immersive and believable experiences for real users, these avatars
must resemble the real user in shape, appearance and movement. This has spurred a
lot of recent research in creation and animation of virtual avatars.
Here we present a framework to create personalized avatars for mixed reality
applications in digital heritage. The framework allows us to create a mesh model
of the user by deforming a template mesh to match a point cloud captured by mul-
tiple depth cameras. Subsequently, it tracks and maps the motion of the user to the
created character mesh, to animate it. This system is described in Sect. 3.
Subsequently, in Sects. 4 and 5 we briefly discuss how multiple characters (see
Fig. 1) can be animated further by synthesizing new motion using a collection of
motion capture data. We also discuss the challenges involved in adding physically
simulated garments to these characters to enhance their appearance.
However, since virtual characters are at the centre of our work, we first briefly
discuss what makes constitutes a virtual avatar.
1.1 What Makes a Virtual Character?
A simple virtual character is represented as a mesh model. Inside the mesh model
is a skeleton, whose pose is mathematically described as a hierarchy of transforma-
tions. The character is moved by changing the pose of this embedded skeleton. The
J. Mashalkar
Informatica Business Solutions Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India
e-mail: jaaimashalkar@gmail.com
P. Chaudhuri (✉)
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, India
e-mail: paragc@cse.iitb.ac.in

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5738-0_17
284 J. Mashalkar and P. Chaudhuri
Fig. 1 Virtual characters used in an animated recreation of social life on the Virupaksha Bazaar
street in Hampi
mesh vertices follow the skeleton. Setting up controls to move the skeleton is known
as rigging and the process of moving the mesh with the skeleton is known as skin-
ning. The mesh elements are never seen as the characters are usually rendered with
a texture on them. Figure 2 shows a character with textured clothes, followed by its
underlying mesh geometry and finally the embedded skeleton.
Virtual characters that populate virtual environments often have to be carefully
designed to make them believable and amenable for animation. For e.g., the flow of
elements in the mesh shown in Fig. 2 has been designed with care to avoid unnatural
deformations during character posing. Our character creation method starts with such
a template mesh and maintains the mesh topology throughout the process, as is later
explained in Sect. 3.3, in contrast to other state of the art methods.
The exact dimensions and look of the avatar are important too. We received exten-
sive help from our partners at the National Institute of Design (NID, R&D Campus,
Bangalore) who researched the look and clothing of people in historical Hampi. Their
research is described in the chapter on social life reconstruction in this book. Visual
descriptions of how people dressed in ancient times helped us design clothing styles,
textures and props, which were essential to create the virtual worlds shown in Figs. 1
and 12.
1.2 Depth Camera Sensors
Our method and many other state of the art methods, as will be described in Sect. 2
use a depth camera sensor. These sensors, like the Microsoft Kinect 1 and 2 [11]
Creating Personalized Avatars 285
Fig. 2 Here we see a typical textured virtual character, its underlying mesh with quad elements
and the skeleton embedded inside it. Asset courtesy MakeHuman [13]
and Intel RealSense [18], can create point clouds of the real world. We have used
the Microsoft Kinect 1 sensor in our system (see Fig. 3). This Kinect camera works
by projecting a known structured pattern of fixed size onto the environment using
Fig. 3 Microsoft Kinect v1

depth camera sensor [11]
an infrared (IR) light projector. The projection of this pattern in the real world is
sensed by the IR camera on the Kinect and the measurements are used to determine
the depth of the points in the real world. This is, in addition, registered to the image
captured by the RGB camera to get the colour of those points. This allows us to
reconstruct a coloured point cloud of the world the Kinect camera can see. We use a
setup consisting of four such cameras to scan and reconstruct a real human user (see
Sect. 3).
2 Background
Virtual characters have been used in digital heritage for many applications [10, 17].
Since we focus on creating these character avatars from a real user, we first look at
relevant methods in the literature.
Newcombe et al. [16] present a method to perform real-time scanning of static
scenes using the Microsoft Kinect. Scanning of humans is challenging since it
involves non-rigid registration of overlapping point clouds. Dynamic range scans
of articulated models are globally registered by the system presented in the work by
Chang and Zwicker [4]. A probabilistic scan alignment model was utilized by Cui
et al. [5] to improve upon this work. A major drawback of these two techniques is
that they perform computationally intensive optimizations and produce models with
a non-uniform topology which makes them unsuitable for animation. Tong et al. [20]
have developed a system that uses three Kinect cameras to scan the user who stands
on a rotating turntable. The point cloud is constructed using a global non-rigid regis-
tration algorithm bootstrapped with a rough template constructed from the first depth
frame, resulting in an animatable model. Our system is similar to this method since it
uses multiple Kinect cameras. However, we perform meshing using a template mesh
instead of reconstructing the point cloud to get a better topology. Parameters of a
SCAPE model [2] are fit to depth data and image silhouettes obtained from a single
Kinect in the method presented by Weiss et al. [21]. This method requires the use of
a parameterized database of models, while our method requires only one template
mesh [14].
Multi-view video can also be used to create virtual avatars, as demonstrated in [1,
6, 7]. Ahmed et al. [1] extract silhouettes from multi-view video and then fit a tem-
plate mesh to the visual hull formed by them. The output produced by this method
can be retextured and is animatable. However, their setup requires synchronized
multi-view video and extensive processing. Performance capture methods directly
fit a scanned user’s mesh to multi-view video silhouettes and have the capability to
recover motion of the person without doing explicit kinematic tracking [6] or recover
skeleton geometry first and then refine the surface template fit [7]. These methods
need to process multiple video streams, hence are computationally intensive, requir-
ing hardware of higher complexity. They also need a more accurate template mesh
to bootstrap the process.
We use only two template meshes, one for each gender, in our system. We have
used these meshes without any additional tuning to generate all the example avatars
in this work. Our depth cameras are not synchronized. They are calibrated with
respect to each other and ICP is used to determine a pairwise transformation between
each pair of depth cameras. The computation required to fit the template mesh to the
depth data is not intensive since it is split up into two stages and the first stage is just
a rigid alignment. We use a single depth camera for motion capture in our system,
though this can be easily replaced by any available motion capture setup.
In order to animate the character further, we implement and use a motion graph
add-on to Blender [8, 9], which is based on the motion graph idea introduced by
Kovar et al. [12]. We also present some ideas about how to virtually dress the char-
acters [19] and add them to the simulation.
3 System for Creating Personalized Avatars
Figure 4 depicts a brief overview of our system. A four Kinect setup is used to scan
the user, which generates a noisy point cloud. A template mesh is deformed to fit
this point cloud. The mesh is then textured using snapshots of the person to create a
personalized avatar resembling the person. We have created personalized avatars for
multiple users as can be seen in Fig. 5.
The mesh can also be textured to match the context of the heritage application,
e.g., with suitable skin and garment textures designed for a particular historical era.
It is then animated using our motion capture system in Blender as demonstrated in
Sect. 4. Interested readers can find more details about our point cloud capture, the
mesh fitting and texturing methods in [14].
Fig. 4 Our system to create personalized avatars

Fig. 5 Avatars of users 1, 2 and 3 created using our method

3.1 Quality and Accuracy of Reconstruction
The template mesh we use has a topology that ensures that the character animates
properly [13]. The final mesh obtained maintains this topology and hence, is suitable
for animation. This can be seen in Fig. 6.
To measure the accuracy of the model created using our method, we measured
various anthropomorphic dimensions on the model and the actual user.
The lengths we measured are shown in Fig. 7. The results given Table 1 demon-
strate that our system produces models with accurate dimensions. This makes the
models perfect for all applications that require accurate user avatars, including digi-
tal heritage.
We present this data in Table 1 as validation of the accuracy of our modelling
process.
Fig. 6 Final output of the mesh fitting process, which maintains the uniform topology of the tem-
plate mesh, making it suitable for animation
Fig. 7 Lengths measured

on the mesh and user for
validation
3.2 Time Taken in Reconstruction
The entire process of constructing a model of a user, starting from capturing the
point cloud to animating the model can be done in approximately within an hour.
For a typical user, the first stage of meshing takes 18 s, the second stage of meshing
takes 114 s and texturing takes 8 s, on an Intel Core i7 machine with 8GB RAM. The
user interaction during meshing and texturing takes about 10 to 15 min to complete.
The point cloud capture from the 4-Kinect system and all associated processing to
get the point cloud is completed in about 20 min. It should be noted that no special
GPU techniques are being used to accelerate the process yet. Such methods can be
used in future for enhancing our method.
3.3 Comparison with Poisson Reconstruction
We apply Poisson surface reconstruction on the point cloud with 8 to 10 octree lev-
els to reconstruct a mesh from the captured point cloud. Figure 8a and b depict the
improper deformations during the animation of the Poisson mesh. Irregular folds
can be seen because the mesh has numerous overlapping and close triangles, which
results in automatic skinning methods like bone heat skinning [3] failing to assign
Table 1 Measurements of lengths of different body parts of the actual user, their model recon-
structed using our system and the percentage error between the two measurements
Length User 1 User 2 User 3 User 4
User Model Error User Model Error User Model Error User Model Error
(cm) (cm) % (cm) (cm) % (cm) (cm) % (cm) (cm) %
L1 35 33 5.7 40 40 0 37 35 5.4 44 47 6.8
L2 61 54 11.4 73 76 4.2 70 72 2.7 70 77 10
L3 22 21 4.6 22 23 4.5 24 23 4.1 28 28 0
L4 42 42 0.0 46 47 2.1 42 43 2.3 44 46 4.5
L5 49 50 2.0 55 60 9 56 55 1.7 60 59 1.66
L6 37 38 2.7 48 46 4.1 47 45 4.2 50 48 4
Fig. 8 Animation of a Poisson reconstructed mesh a, b and mesh recovered using our system c, d
proper skinning weights. Animating this mesh properly would require extensive
manual skinning in areas where the topology of the mesh is irregular. The mesh
resulting from our method is free of such irregularities(see Fig. 8c and d) since it
maintains the topology of the template mesh.
4 Motion Capture for Personalized Avatars
A motion capture system to automatically rig, skin and animate the mesh has been
developed in Blender [3]. The mesh created in the previous sections is rigged and
skinned using the tools available in Blender. 2d skeleton data from Kinect [11] sensor
is streamed into Blender with the help of OpenNI drivers and NiTE framework, and
retargeted in real time to the mesh using our motion capture plugin. The captured
motion can be recorded in a bvh file. This recording can be used to edit or replay the
animation, and also to retarget the motion to another model.
Fig. 9 Rigging and skinning the mesh allows us to animate it in real-time using motion captured
from a single depth camera
Figure 9 shows a frame from an animation sequence. The left image shows the
rig and the skin weights for the torso on the mesh whereas the right image shows the
actual rendered frame.
Motion retargetting is done basically by copying rotations obtained from move-
ments of joints of the NiTE skeleton. However, since the data is collected from a 2d
skeleton, complex movements such as bending and twisting do not get copied. The
plugin has the capability to detect these movements. Further enhancements have
been done to smoothen out irregularities due to external factors such as noise and
missing data, as is discussed subsequently.
4.1 Modelling Twist Movements
Twisting of limbs around their longitudinal axis is not recoverable from movements
of joints. We use the locked constraint-tracking feature in Blender to solve this prob-
lem. As an example, to animate the twist of the upper hand when the wrist moves
around, the y-axis of the bone is locked, and the z-axis is constrained to track the
wrist joint. This results in correct of twisting of arms, as seen in Fig. 9. Similar the-
ory is used to model twisting of a person around the waist.
Most of the bones in the human body are not flexible, enabling reconstruction of
their motion using a simple skeleton. However, the torso region of the body is flex-
ible, around which various kinds of bending and twisting movements are possible.
These are modelled by breaking down torso into parts and using a segmented bone in
Blender for the upper part. This ensures rotations are applied uniformly to the torso.
4.2 Handling Noise and Missing Data During Motion

Capture
The data obtained using Kinect has a lot of noise. Noise is damped by smoothing the
movements over 5 frames. This gives a balance between accurate motion mapping
and stability. Apart from noise, the capture sometimes misses out some joints; if
the joint goes out of the frame, or is occluded by other parts of the body. In such
cases, the previous movement of the joint with respect to its parent is continued till
the joint comes into view again. Additionally, constraints are applied on individual
bones based on the limits of movement allowed at the joint, to prevent the body
depicting unrealistic poses.
4.3 Meshes with Garments
Realistic characters cannot be modelled using just one mesh. If there are clothes on
the model, they are usually represented by a different mesh. It becomes difficult to
animate the combined model, since the mesh of the garments may intersect with each
Fig. 10 A character with garments is animated considered the garment as a piece-wise rigid attach-
ment to the main character mesh using linear blend skinning
Fig. 11 Snapshots from animation of models of users 1, 2 and 3. The motion has been captured
and applied using our single Kinect motion capture and retargeting system developed in Blender
other or the mesh of the character. Automatic skinning of these meshes to the same
skeleton might give slightly different weights to vertices that are close on separate
meshes, resulting in collisions. Hence, a method has been developed to assign skin
weights to garment meshes based on nearby vertices belonging to the character mesh.
This ensures all vertices move in accordance with the character mesh. However, some
edges might still overlap, if there is a difference between the densities of different
meshes. Hence, a small distance is maintained between the layer of garments and
the character mesh. Results for clothed characters animated using this method are
shown in Fig. 10.
Frames from animations of avatars textured as the users they were modelled from
are shown in Fig. 11.
5 Animating Groups of Virtual Characters
We have developed methods to model and animate personalized avatars inspired

from appearance and motion real users in the previous sections. However, populating
digitally recreated heritage sites requires us to animate multiple characters. These
require us to create longer animation sequences. While some of these sequences can
be created manually for specific characters, it is very advantageous to have tools that
can generate plausible animation automatically based on certain user constraints.
Motion Graphs [12] is one such method, and we have created a plugin in Blender
that can generate motion graphs from previously captured motion capture data. We
Fig. 12 Another scene showing virtual characters in an animated recreation of social life on the
Virupaksha Bazaar Street in Hampi
can also synthesize character motions from available motion capture data such that
the character moves along an arbitrary path drawn by the user [8, 9]. This allows us
to easily animate groups of characters like the ones shown in Fig. 1.
6 Garment Simulation for Virtual Characters
Digital heritage applications can require the character to be dressed appropriately to

the place and time being recreated. This can be done using techniques presented ear-
lier (see Fig. 10), but then garments are attached to the character in a piece-wise rigid
manner. However, as scenes become complex, as shown in Fig. 12, proper garment
authoring and simulation methods are required.
We provide such an authoring system for garments that can be cut and tailored
like shirts and kurtas [19]. However, some Indian garments are more challenging to
drape and animate, like saris and dhotis. These are made from a single piece of cloth
and are draped by wrapping them around the body in multiple layers. This creates a
very high number of self-collisions among the cloth layers that is very challenging
to handle during garment simulation. Apart from numerical robustness and accuracy
of the simulator, the garment is also difficult to drape in a virtual setting. We have
developed a system that allows the authoring of certain kinds of garment drapes
Fig. 13 Snapshot of a dhoti draped using our physically based Indian garment simulation system
(an example can be seen in Fig. 13, however, the robust and efficient handling of
collisions still remains a challenge [15].
7 Conclusions
Personalized avatars are an essential component of many digital heritage applica-

tions, both as interaction proxies for real users and as virtual inhabitants of digitally
recreated worlds. We have presented a system for constructing such personalized
avatars. Our methods improve upon methods in existing state of art by maintaining
a uniform topology in the reconstructed mesh, making it suitable for animation. The
appearance of the avatar can be enhanced by texturing it using snapshots of the user.
The accuracy of the model is verified by comparing it with anthropomorphic mea-
surements on the created model and the real user. Ease of animation of the model
is also demonstrated by animating it using a motion capture system developed in
Blender.
A collection of motion capture data can be used to synthesize new animation.
This can be used to animate small groups of characters. Garments on virtual avatars
can also be modelled and simulated to create richer characters.
There exist many avenues for future research in this area. The existing system
for creating the avatars needs to be made fully automated and more robust. Many
enhancements can be done to improve the time required in processing the captured
point cloud. Similar challenges also exist in motion capture, synthesis and garment
simulation. Further research is also needed to extend the presented animation tech-
niques to handle larger and more diverse crowd of characters. This will make it easier
to populate virtual recreations of heritage sites.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the MakeHuman [13] project for the human template
models and the Blender Foundation for the open-source Blender [3] 3D content creation software.
This research was supported by the Immersive Digital Heritage project (NRDMS/11/1586/2009)
under the Digital Hampi initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of
India.
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1951–1958
Intangible Heritage of Vijayanagara:
Vijayadashmi Tradition
Chaluvaraju
1 Introduction
A celebration of religious festivals has a distinguished place in Indian History. Most

of the festivals, however, are entwined in the social and cultural traditions that are
locally circumscribed. Dasara has been a pan-Indian festival celebrated all over India
by different Hindu communities with variations in the customs, rituals and mytho-
logical narratives. One of the significant and symbolic rationale to celebrate Dasara
as a festival is to mark the victory of good over evil. The resonance throughout the
country between its various vibrant local forms has allowed Dasara to assume the
form of a National Festival.
Here, we will explore Dasara celebrations by relating the current practices of
Mysore Dasara, celebrated with the recognition as a Naadahabba or state festival
by the Karnataka government, to that of the Dasara of the Historical Vijayanagara
empire. We can get a glimpse of the historical past from the documentation and
accounts of foreign travellers to the Vijayanagara Kingdom during the reigns of var-
ious rulers, and witness the lifestyle of the great kings and the local communities
which are represented in the form of wall reliefs and sculptures at Hazara Rama
temple, Mahanavami Dibba (the Great platform) and other places that survive in
the ruins of Vijayanagar in Hampi. This movement through time will, more impor-
tantly, ride on some of the less documented aspects of both the royal and the village
Dasara of the Hampi region that is missed out from the archival and archaeologi-
cal inscriptions but survives in the intangible local cultural practices of today. These
local ritual practices are like living fossils, which parallely offer a window into the
past while being part of the social and cultural fibre of the present. Combined with
new technologies of digitally recording images, sounds and other multimedia, these
intangibles—the myths and stories, rituals and practices, folk songs and dances of
the communities in the region—can now be made available as archival of digital
records for meaningful interpretation.
Chaluvaraju (✉)
Kannada University, Hampi, India
e-mail: chaluvaraju.hampi@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5738-0_18
300 Chaluvaraju
One of the goals of the IDH project [4] was to investigate the basic requirements
related to Digital Heritage archiving and usage through collaboration between the
culture and the technology communities and to identify the nature and form of her-
itage that is most suitable for digital capture, storage and usage.
During this project period of four years, Dasara festivities in the three regions of
interest, Mysore, Hampi and the villages around Hampi, have been incrementally
documented using photographs, audio/video recordings and their geographic coor-
dinates by us, drawing on insights from the community and other resource people
from these places. In this chapter, we illustrate the participatory process and also
indicate how this helped us in interconnecting not only the large collection of mul-
timedia material produced during this work but also to the material that was made
available from other projects and related works of others available on the Web.
Mysore Dasara, celebrated over the last four centuries, is popular even today
among local and international tourists. We use this as the point of entry to get insights
and draw contrasts with respect to the Royal Dasara of Vijayanagara times. We
develop a vocabulary of Dasara and use this to annotate specific parts of the docu-
ments and media in the archives. Vijayanagara Royal Dasara and the Dharmaragudda
Dasara (a collective of nearby villages celebrate Dasara at Dharmaragudda, near
Hampi) celebrations are compared and contrasted through the annotation process
which indicates relationships between specific parts of resources in the archives.
This rich archival resource can be utilized later by others to see in an analyti-
cal perspective, the abundant archaeological evidence available in Hampi about the
Vijayadashami tradition such as the Hazara Rama temple, the MahanavamiDibba
and more, along with the references of travelogues of foreign visitors and locally
available literature to visualize the Vijayadashami ‘Vilya procession route’ during
the historical period.
2 Dasara Narratives Origins of Dasara—Etymology

and Synonyms
The word Dasara is derived from Sanskrit root, made up of two words namely
‘Dasha’ means ten and ‘ahar’ means day [6]. Thus, Dasara means a festival of ‘ten
days’ or a festival of the ‘tenth day’. This festival is known by different names such as
Dasara, Navaratri (lit. nine nights), Dashahara, Durgapooja, Durgotsava, and many
more in different regions and amongst various communities.
The celebration of Dasara comprises of two parts, the first part consists of Navara-
trapooja, the act of worship for nine days and the second part is about Vijayadashmi,
the tenth ‘day of victory’ that comprises of worship and performance of the festival,
with joy and splendour.
Navaratra, the first nine days, is for the performance of the rituals, mostly con-
ducted at a private or familial level, where Goddess Durga revered as principal
form of feminine strength or Shakti, is worshipped in all her seven different forms
Intangible Heritage of Vijayanagara: Vijayadashmi Tradition 301
Fig. 1 Deity: ‘Chamundeshwari’ is worshipped during the Navratra festival. She is the hero of an
epic battle killing buffalo-headed demon ‘Mahisasura’. She is also known as Durga or Mahisasura
Mardini. The patrons of this puja in Mysore are the Wodeyars
called Saptamatrikas (lit. seven Mothers), the most prominent being the seventh day
Saraswathi Pooja (offerings to goddess of intellect), the eighth day Durgashtami
(offerings to goddess Durga), the ninth day Mahanavami (lit. the great ninth day)
all tools and weapons are offered worship for protection, and on the tenth and final
day Vijayadashami, grand public performances are held with great pomp, open to
the public.
Dasara is a festival celebrated on the first ten Lunar days of the bright fortnight
of the lunar month of Aashvayuja (seventh month of Lunar calendar correspond-
ing roughly to the period from September to October). Dasara is celebrated all over
India under different names and forms. In Southern India, this festival, commonly
known as Navaratri, is a celebration and re-enacting of a mythical battle between the
goddess Chamundeshwari (a form of goddess Durga) and the buffalo-headed-demon
Mahishasura (Fig. 1).
The venerated works like the Kalika purana and others opine that the Navaratri
festival must be celebrated in Vasantasampata (spring season) and Sharatsampata
(autumn season). Thus, the celebration of Navaratri festival takes place twice a year.
Both the periods referred above are suitable for the worship of goddess Durga.
It is noteworthy that these periods coincide with the harvesting season in most
parts of India. The Dasara festival falls in the days that follow the closing of the
rainy season and starting of Winter season. The change of seasons brings changes
in the climate with innumerable diseases and untold miseries. The Devi Bhagvata
suggests that in order to escape from the jaws of death and become quarantined from
302 Chaluvaraju
the diseases and dangerous difficulties it is essential or even mandatory to worship

goddess Durga.
3 Royal Mysore Dasara: Origins of the State Festival
After the downfall of Vijayanagara Empire, the dynastical power along with the cap-
ital moved from Hampi to Penukonda in Andhra Pradesh [5]. The Wodeyars ruled a
small part of Mysore region under the Vijayanagara Empire. Raja Wodeyar I (1552
1617), following the collapse of the Vijayanagara empire, conquered the fort of Sri-
rangapatna from Tirumala, then Viceroy of Vijayanagara and king’s representative,
to establish his kingdom [6, 7].
Srirangapatna became his capital and he declared his supremacy by ascending
the diamond-studded throne of the King’s representative. He was not only a great
warrior and able administrator, but also a devout, learned scholar and a great lover
of literature and culture. It was he who initiated the celebration of Dasara festival on
similar lines to the practices of the Vijayanagara dynasty in Srirangapatna in 1610
A.D. The festival assumed both religious and cultural significance and became pop-
ular for its glorious celebrations. The king also took a great interest in the legacy of
this festival and commissioned a book on Dasara which codified the festival through
a detailed description of rituals and practices of worship that could serve as a guide
for generations to come.
Goddess Chamundi is the tutelary deity to the royal family. The Chamundi Temple
being one of the Shakti peetas (seat of strength) situated on a hill top has been histor-
ically important in the history of Mysore Dasara celebrations (Fig. 2). The details of
celebration of Dasara festival held in 1647 during the days of Kantheerava Narasaraja
Wodeyar are documented by the poet Govinda Vaidya in his renowned text Kantheer-
ava Narasaraja Vijayam [17].
All the kings who succeeded Kantheerava Narasaraja Wodeyar celebrated Dasara
without fail, following the rules of celebration strictly. The celebration of Dasara
continued with fervour during Hyder Ali’s reign also. The capital was shifted from
Srirangapatna to Mysore after the death of Tippu Sultan in 1799.
It was from 1800, following the shifting of the capital to Mysore, Dasara was cele-
brated based on the textual scriptures written during Raja Wodeyar I and Kanteerava
Narasaraja Wodeyar. The continuing royal patronage for the rituals and traditions
of Dasara by the Mysore kings not only shaped the imagination of festivities which
were grand spectacles for the people of the region, neighbouring kings and feudal
lords. Other parts of the world got to know of these festivities through the travelogues
of scholars, travellers, merchants and monastics [19].
In 1969, after the Indian independence from the British Empire, the Indian gov-
ernment pursued the princely states to give up their sovereignty, ceding control to
become part of Independent India to form the Republic of India. In the process of this
transition, Mysore State became a part of Karnataka, based on the re-organization
of provincial boundaries, and owing to a shared language. With the change of power
Fig. 2 Dasara parade mural painting in the Mysore palace captures the moment in the royal parade
procession that everyone waits for the arrival of the Maharaja
Fig. 3 This is a photograph of the royal procession, which is part of the Mysore Dasara. Here the
erstwhile king of Mysore, a successor of the Wodeyar Dynasty, is sitting on an elephant; the event
is called the ’Jamboosavaari’
in the state imminent, in 1969, the citizens of Mysore witnessed for the last time
the Dasara festival hosted by the royal family enthrone in the Durbar hall. The cel-
ebrations of Mysore Dasara fell onto the Karnataka state Government to be known
as ’Nada habba’ or a State sponsored festival as opposed to the royal patronage it
received for the past four centuries [3] (Fig. 3).
304 Chaluvaraju
Inspite of the grandeur infused in the celebration of Dasara by the State Govern-
ment of Karnataka, observing it as a national festival and continuing the tradition of
observation there are some people who wail at the loss of the tradition in the truest
sense, but at the same time they express a satisfaction that it continues to this day.
Here are the words of an elderly person closely associated with the royal perfor-
mance of Dasara: ’If we remember those days of yore, they feel like a dreamy world.
We feel like lamenting the loss of glorious days. Yet there is a kind of reassurance,
a ray of hope that the tradition is followed in the newer form and newer glory, lest it
be lost’.
Sri. M.L. Subramanya Raje Urs, who was closely connected with the palace,
speaks nostalgically about the antiquarian glory. He opines, ‘How can we compare
the old Dasara with new nadahabba (the national festival)? That glory is different,
this show-off is different’.
4 Royal Dasara of Vijayanagara Empire
Navaratri (the nine-night festival) in Shringeri [12, 13]. Shringeri happens to be the
centre of the Dakshinamnaya Peetha (Southern Vedic chair or mutt) among the pan-
Indian amnayapeethas (Vedic chairs/mutts) [1–3]. In this, centre goddess Saraswati
(the goddess of Knowledge) is worshipped. She is another form of Durga (the god-
dess of power).
There are various references to the practice of celebration of Dasara at this reli-
gious centre. An inscription belonging to the early fourteenth century period holds
testimony to the fact. It also substantiates on the basis of references to the Dasara cel-
ebration made by Al-Baruni in his travelogue and the documents found indicate that
Sri Sharada Mutt of Sringeri was the centre of observance of Dasara since antiquity.
The inscription of 1346 A.D installed by Harihara I alludes to his generous donation
to Sringeri mutt. Another inscription carved and installed in 1516 A.D. describes
the endowment of Ururu for the celebration of Dasara at the Sri mutt made by Sri
Krishnadevaraya before his annexation of Orissa. The celebration of Navaratri in
Shringeri is an altogether distinguished one, for the variety and splendour of the fes-
tive activities, events, durbar and classical music and dance. Worshipping of a banni
tree situated in Sri Kalikamba temple, the procession of victory and various other
programmes are held in great gusto on Vijayadashami (the tenth day of victory).
The durbar of His Holiness Sri Swamiji is a special programme of attraction in
the celebration of Navaratri. This is in vogue in Shringeri ever since the days of His
Holiness Sri Vidyaranya swamiji who played a vital role in founding the Vijayanagar
Empire.
In recognition of the Swamiji’s blessings on the Empire, the kings Sri Harihara
and Bukkaraya (the founders of Vijayanagara Empire) offered their golden throne,
agate studded crown, golden palanquin, the umbrella and chamara (a fly flap, an
emblem of royal status) and many other regal emblems at the feet of the venerated
Swamiji, and then the Swamiji (Vidyaranya) held the durbar (assembly). To com-
memorate this event even to this day the tradition has been continued by the Sri mutt
of Shringeri.
5 Dasara During the Reign of Devaraya-II
Niccolo de Conti visited Vijayanagara Empire during the reign of Devaraya II (1424-
46 A.D). He describes the Navaratri festivals celebrated in Vijayanagara as [14],
Chap. 7
‘During the time of festival tall poles resembling the high masts of a ship are
erected in the main streets of the capital, they are decorated with pieces of coloured
silken shining clothes, at their top. One man, who is God fearing, devotional and
is capable of tolerating any amount of difficulties with equanimity, is made to sit
on the top of such poles. The people pelt him with oranges, limboos or lemon and
many other kinds of fruits. This may be perhaps, the celebration of Navaratri (the
nine-night) festival of the Hindus’.
Abd-ur-Razzaq visited Vijayanagara, on his foreign tour during the period of
Devaraya-II. He describes the Mahanavami festival celebrated during the period of
his visit (1442–45 A.D) in his travelogue as
‘The rulers of this Kingdom are followers of idolatry. In order to exhibit their pres-
tige, power, pelf and luxury they celebrate Mahanadi or Mahanavami (nine night) fes-
tival annually. This is really a regal festival that speaks of the commanding Emperor’s
glory and royal status. The order of celebration is thus (the description of the arrival
of feudatory rulers to the kingdom).
There will be all in all nine fine pendals built in this ground, they will all be
decorated ones. In the ninth pendal the Kings throne gets installed. In the seventh
pendal I was accommodated with my co-tourists and classmates, it was fully reserved
for us. Except us nobody was allowed there into. In the middle of these pendals and
palace, in that beautiful place number of storytellers and musicians were found busy
in narrating stories and singing melodiously. Soon the curtain went up to reveal a
band of beautiful girls who danced ecstatically to the accompaniment of various
strange musical instruments. This dance was mesmerizing one (Fig. 4).
The dombas (acrobatic tribe) exhibited their adventurous skills. A hefty elephant
exhibited the training of his master by resting on all its four legs on a piece of small
wood, moving its trunk and body to the accompaniment of music of the instruments
and drums. The king then presented the musicians, lecturers and the acrobats with
finely gold lined apparels and jewels of greater cost.
Thus the festival continued for three days day in and out. There was a display
of various sorts of coloured explosive crackers and gun powder works and various
sorts of sports, games, athletics that involved enough skill and craftsmanship. Then
he describes the throne of the king’ [8].
306 Chaluvaraju
Fig. 4 Stone relief sculpture showing beautiful, dancing ladies at MahanavamiDibba site in Hampi
6 Dasara During the Reign of Sri Krishnadevaraya
During the reign of Sri Krishnadevaraya, Vijayanagara Empire witnessed unprece-

dented glory. He gave importance and special attention to the protection and pros-
perity of his subjects during the period of his twenty years of administration. He
gave unhindered encouragement to art, architecture, literature and music. He him-
self was a poet of renown. He had given shelter to innumerable scholars and poets
in his court.
Domingo Paes, a Portugese traveller [15] visited Vijayanagara Empire during his
regime. He too has given account of the celebration of Dasara in his travelogue,
which goes as.
“During the period of Dasara the king travels from Hosanagar (Newtown) to Bis-
nagara to celebrate the festival. During this time the feudatory rulers and chieftains
along with many devadasis (the women reserved for the dance services at the tem-
ples, these are usually unmarried) assemble in the Kingdom with their retinue. The
regional rulers, from the border of Orissa and Yedakhan where the war is likely to
break send their deputies to the festival.
The Dasara festival commences on the 12th September and continues for the next
nine days. The celebrations are held at the palace of the king (description of palace
not documented here). There were two big wide circles drawn before the palace. In
these circles there stood beautiful dancers dressed regally. They had decorated their
dress and hair and other parts with various types of diamonds, topazes and agates
of greater value. There were stately buildings which looked like Victory Halls all
decorated with various colours facing the eastern gate of the palace. One of these
was made more attractive with a cloth with various beautiful pictures and figures
on it. Beautiful curtains were hung there. Various chairs for important persons were
arranged there on the platform erected. On the higher platform very near to the throne
of the king the chairs for our leader Figaire Davigo as well as for us, those who
accompanied him were laid.”
7 Dasara During the Reign of Achyutaraya
A Portuguese tourist F. Nuniz visited Vijayanagar (1535-37 A.D) during the period
of Achyutaraya. He describes the celebration of Dasara very beautifully in his chron-
icles. Here is what he describes (Fig. 5).
‘On the first day of the festival nine beautiful pendals are pitched up in the ground
before the palace. These are erected by the important leaders. These are usually large
in size. Various costly clothes are hung there on them. These cloths are embroidered
or painted with pictures of dancers and beautiful figures and designs.
There are around a thousand well-trained wrestlers in the court of the king who
waits ambitiously to show their mettle before the king during the tournaments held
on the occasion of such festivals.
After completion of the celebration of the festival for the period of nine days, the
king rides his coronation stallion to observe the might and mettle of his army, which
is trained and commanded by the respective commanders and arranged in line for
miles and miles. The soldiers, of the army who stand in line and wait for the arrival
of the king, all hold swords, shields and spears and various other types of weapons
Fig. 5 Stone relief sculpture at MahanavamiDibba site in Hampi showing wrestlers, King, lady
with fly flap, as described by Nuniz
308 Chaluvaraju
Fig. 6 Stone relief sculpture at MahanavamiDibba site in Hampi showing soldiers, of the army
who stand in line and wait for the arrival of the king all hold swords, shields and spears and various
other types of weapons
(Fig. 6). During all these nine days he accepts the taxes due for the financial year
from his band of feudatory rulers and the office bearers’.
A detailed description of the programmes held during the celebration is also found
in the literary work the Bharatesh Vaibhava of RatnakaraVarni, a famous luminary in
Kannada Literature and also from an inscription installed by Sri Krishna Devaraya
in 1515 A.D [16].
8 Dasara of Devaragudda (The Hill of Gods)
One contrast that appears in the course of the above narratives is that the rulers
of Vijayanagar were keen on protecting their cultural symbols—temples and ritual
practices, in the face of muslim invasion while Dasara celebrations continued as
gloriously as ever during Hyder Ali’s reign. This contrast in positions indicates that
the Dasara is not just a religious symbol, but a social and cultural practice that played
an important role in the worlds of the people of the area and state encouraged that
this ritual of the people continues. However, the Dasara of the people in the villages
has not only been not documented but as indicated by the collection of documents
by Prof. Chaluvaraju, the narrative here indicates of a festival of contrasts.
Devaragudda, also known as Dharmaragudda, is situated near Ranebennur in
Haveri district, Karnataka State, India. Devaragudda is well known in North Kar-
nataka for the Mailaralinga temple on top of the hill. The temple attracts many
devotees from several parts of the state. Mailaralinga is the patron deity of warrior,
farmer and herder communities.
The Navaratri festival celebrated here is very famous with the local communities
of this region and Mailaralinga devotees from all over South India. All the people
take part in the celebrations with great devotion and without any distinction of caste
and class. Common people’s Dassara used to start two days prior to Royal Dassara.
The King along with his family used to participate in the common peoples Dassara.
This Dassara was celebrated towards the west from the kingdom at a distance of 5–6
forlong as recorded in Nuniz’s travelogue [8].
Goravas consider themselves as the soldiers of Mailaralinga. They are identified
by their distinct lifestyle and attire, as described by Gorava Gaddada Veerappa of
Devaragudda [18].
‘when Mailara killed Mallasura and Manikasura, he wore their intestine as his
turban, their teeth as a cowrie necklace, their mouth as a damaruga (hand drum),
skull as a doni (meal bowl) and their skin as a long coat. The fat of the demons were
used as oil and their nerves as wick for the lamp lit by Mailara after his victorious
battle’.
The Goravas and Goravammas are not restricted to any caste or religion—there
are some Goravas and Goravammas even among the Muslims of this region. Never-
theless, the Mailaralinga tradition attracts devotees from the nomadic pastoral com-
munities of Kuruba (shepherds), Golla (cowherds) and Myasabeda (hunters).
The Gorava must fast for nine days and spend his time in prayer and worship on
all the days of Navaratri. Among the Goravas and Goravis, there are different groups
having specific rituals to perform, such as
1. Kinnaraparis—plays a musical instrument called Kinnari,
2. Kamachaveeras—the devotees who beat their body with staves,
3. Sanchiyavaru—the devotees carrying a small purse,
4. Chatiyavaru—whips himself like the charioteer whipping his horses,
5. Chamaradavaru—the devotees who wave the fly flaps
The portable idol of the god Mailaralinga is placed into a palanquin along with a
quiver of arrows (Fig. 7). The participants hold the Tonneppa (a stout piece of stick
or a cudgel) and bow in their hands through the procession.
In the front of the palanquin, an idol of Mailaralinga riding a horse is placed,
while an idol of the goddess is placed in the rear. The procession goes up to a place
called Shibara (a frame with an emblem of the trident on the top erected on a raised
platform), where more ritual offerings such as Donitumbisuvadu (filling the trough),
Husikadana (mock fight), etc. are performed.
Later, the procession returns to the temple, where precious stones and gold are
offered to the lord, followed by aarati (offering of lamps) made of hoorana (a sweet
pulp made of jaggery and boiled Bengal gram dal and ghee). These rituals are per-
formed every evening of Navaratri.
On the eighth day, Durga Ashtami Jaadidabbior hundi (temple donation box) rit-
ual offerings are made by the devotees. Then Gorava leads the procession with the
Jaadidabbi following him.
310 Chaluvaraju
Fig. 7 The silver figurine is of the deity ‘ailaraLinga’, who in folklore is the hero of the epic battle
in which the demons ‘Mallasura’ and ‘Manikasura’ were killed
In the early morning of the ninth day, Mahanavami of Navaratri, also known
as Khandenavamiin this region, an honouring of Khandoba (a patron deity of war-
rior, farming, herding communities revered as one of the forms of Mailaralinga) and
Ayudhapooja (worship of weapons) are performed (Fig. 7).
In the noon of the same day, the wedding of god Mailaralinga and goddess Malati
is performed according to the prescriptions of scriptures. The palanquin of the God
arrives at the fixed spot. The idol of the Khanderaya or Mailaralingaarrives accom-
panied by the Goravas. This day the idol brought is decked as the horse rider, in
which form lord Khandobais known. The idols of the accompanying gods of Maila-
ralingaare also brought to this place. Then the idols are washed/bathed.
Exactly at this time, the bow of Karanikais brought from Aralikatti—a village
in Hirekerur taluk. The carriers of this bow are instructed not to place the bow on
the ground. As the procession proceeds through each village, the bow is worshipped
by the community members with the proclamation YelukotiYelukotige (strength of
seven crores) Changabalo, Changabalo (a corrupted form of Marathi word ‘Chaan
bolo’ which means ‘say beautiful!’). In the evening Naivedya (offering) of hooranais
offered as is the case daily.
On Vijayadashami, the tenth day of festivities, after 3PM, there is an exhibition
of miraculous performances that are indicative of the devotion of the performers and
the collective powers invested in by society. The devotees of special communities
such as Kanchaveerasbring their respective apparels and wear them. They get the
things like baganigoota (a peg or a stump made from the branch of bagani (a kind
of tree), Jaalimullu (thorn of babool), iron rods, mine (ropes) made from the leather
of deer skin, etc. They drive these pegs or stumps and the iron rods into their legs—
especially the shanks. The sight of these exhibitions is hair raising and frightening.
The devotees, who watch them perform such miracles, offer them bananas, sugar and
turmeric powder (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8 Ritual of ‘piercing cheeks’ in Dharmagudda
Fig. 9 GPS data of the Mysore Royal Dasara procession which includes JambooSavari
After this, the Goravas belonging to shepherd community exhibit iron chain tear-
ing miracle, a total of eleven numbers of chains are torn in Devaragudda. Among the
performers of such miracles one witnesses the Goravas of all age groups.
The Karanikaritual is performed on the tenth day or Vijayadashami, where the
Gorava climbs a big and tall bow, utters a euphoric prophecy for the following year,
which is the most awaited ritual, as people believe that the prophecy is, in fact, god
Mailaralinga’s intentions (Fig. 9).
312 Chaluvaraju
Fig. 10 GPS data used to trace the Vijayanagara Royal Dasara procession route, drawn by artist
Megha Vishwanath [1]
Fig. 11 GPS data-based route of Villages Dasara (DharmaraguddaDasara) procession in Hampi

drawn by Artist Megha Vishwanath [2]
9 Digital Documentation
Incrementally the collected recordings and media is made available by us at https://

www.chaha.in. The recordings and photographs are annotated by our students and
friends as suggestive contributors (Figs. 10 and 11).
An estimated amount of about 17,754 items, totalling 113.4 Gigabytes, with at

least 80 Gigabytes of video, and audio, Images, GPS data, documents and PDF of
manuscripts were collected during the fieldwork, out of which a curated few are
annotated and hosted online at https://www.chaha.in [3].
References
1. GPS data of the Vijayanagara Royal Dasara procession route. Artist credit Megha Vishwanath.
https://www.penciljammers.com/profile/MeghaVishwanath, type: visual artist
2. GPS data of the Vijayadashmi procession route in villages around Hampi. Artist Credit: Megha
Vishwanath. https://www.penciljammers.com/profile/MeghaVishwanath, type: visual artist
3. The Digital archive of Images, audios, GPS related to IDH project. https://www.chaha.in
4. The Indian Digital Heritage (IDH) Research Project, Department of Science and Technology,
Govt. of India. https://www.nrdms.gov.in/idh.asp
5. 1980)
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6. Hayavadana Rao C (1943) History of Mysore, Chapter 1–4
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History of India by Robert Sewell
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p3

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D. Hampi

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Part IV

Archiving Intangibles: Social Life,

Reconstruction of architecture and social life is an upcoming theme of interest in

2 Site Context and Historical Background for Bazaar

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 265

The bazaar streets are referred to in various literature resources on Hampi as

2.1 Virupaksha Temple Complex and Bazaar Street

2.1.1 Virupaksha Temple Complex

2.1.2 Virupaksha Temple Bazaar Street

2.2 Vitthala Temple Complex and Bazaar Street

2.2.1 Vitthala Temple Complex

2.2.2 Vitthala Temple Bazaar Street

2.3 Krishna Temple Complex and Bazaar Street

2.3.1 Krishna Temple Complex

2.3.2 Krishna Temple Bazaar Street

3.1 Building Digitized Models for Hampi City Level Urban

In the beginning, the study focused on understanding the various linkages at an

3.2 Architectural Reconstruction of Bazaar Streets

a. Preparation of Digital Footprint of Bazaar Streets: The 2D plan drawings of

Photogrammetry measurements 2D AutoCAD drawings

Fig. 2 a Photogrammetry of Krishna Bazaar Pushkarni Gateway b 2D Drawings of existing

published in Vijayanagara Architectural Inventory of the Sacred Centre [26]. The

c. Measurement of structures and Preparation of 2D drawings:

1 Saalumantapas or Colonnades as ‘C’ (Northern Colonnade—NC, Southern

Fig. 3 Main and sub-architectural typologies

e. Subcategorization of main architectural typologies: Such a categorization of

architectural typologies Mantapas, Colonnades, Gateways, Pushkarni, Shrines

∙ Reconstructions based on architectural typologies and sub-typologies

4 Social Life Reconstruction

4.1 Study of Clothing and Material Culture

a. Study of Literary resources on Social Life and Material Culture Of Vijayana-

Fig. 5 Clothing terms based on literary resources and visualizations

4.2 Visualization of Bazaar Street Scenarios:

a. Visualization of Bazaar Street Scenarios: We had reconstructed architectural

Fig. 10 Drummers, people and pulling of Ratha during Rathotsava

5 Conclusion and Future Work

Acknowledgements We thank the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India

Jai Mashalkar and Parag Chaudhuri

1.1 What Makes a Virtual Character?

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 283

1.2 Depth Camera Sensors

Fig. 3 Microsoft Kinect v1

3 System for Creating Personalized Avatars

Fig. 4 Our system to create personalized avatars

Fig. 5 Avatars of users 1, 2 and 3 created using our method

3.1 Quality and Accuracy of Reconstruction

Fig. 7 Lengths measured

3.2 Time Taken in Reconstruction

3.3 Comparison with Poisson Reconstruction

4 Motion Capture for Personalized Avatars

4.1 Modelling Twist Movements

4.2 Handling Noise and Missing Data During Motion

4.3 Meshes with Garments

5 Animating Groups of Virtual Characters

We have developed methods to model and animate personalized avatars inspired

6 Garment Simulation for Virtual Characters

Digital heritage applications can require the character to be dressed appropriately to

Personalized avatars are an essential component of many digital heritage applica-

1. Ahmed N, De Aguiar E, Theobalt C, Magnor M, Seidel HP (2005) Automatic generation of

A celebration of religious festivals has a distinguished place in Indian History. Most

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 299

2 Dasara Narratives Origins of Dasara—Etymology

the diseases and dangerous diﬃculties it is essential or even mandatory to worship