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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXIV.
If the Köyilolugu's narrative can be relied on, there were two1 distinct raids during both of which Srirangam appears to have fallen a victim to the invaders' rapacity and iconoclastic zeal. It is stated that as a result of the first raid' the image of Ranganatha was absent from the temple for a period of 59 years, until its restoration in A. D. 1372 by a Chandragiri-prabhu', thus pointing to A. D. 1310-11 coinciding with Malik Käfür's southern campaign, as the date of its occurrence. The date of the second sack of Srirangam is Saka 1249, and as this coincides with the date of the southern campaign undertaken in the reign of Muhammad-bin-Tughlak in A. D. 1327-28, it has been surmised that the Muhammadan army which was sent out from Warangal passed along this route and raided Srirangam. The Ranganatha image which escaped capture by being smuggled out of the temple by Pillai Lōkacharya had, as described in the Köyilolugu, an eventful itinerancy through several places for over forty years, until it was brought back to Srirangam by Gopanarya of Gingee, an officer of the Vijayanagara prince Kampana in Saka 1293 (=A. D. 1372). The heroic part played by these two persons, prince and officer, in defeating the Muhammadans at Madura and in restoring the Ranganatha image to its own habitation, is already known from the Madhuravijayams of Gangadevi and from the two Sanskrit verses engraved on the Dharmavarma's wall in the second präkära of the Srirangam temple. Epigraphical references to these incidents are also found in records copied at Kannanur,' Tiruppattur, Tirukkaļākkudi and several other places.
When Srirangam slowly recovered from the effects of the tulukka-vānam, the work of renovating the fallen gõpuras, präākāra walls and mandapas, appears to have been taken in hand in easy stages, and the turn of the ärōgyaśālā and its annexe the Dhanvantari shrine came when, in Saka 1415 (=A. D. 1493), Sriranga-Garudavahana-Bhatta, the hereditary Physician of the Srirangam temple and the author-to-be of the Divyasüricharitam, came forward to do his little bit in rehabilitating the Srirangam temple to its former state.
98
1 * Svasti Sri [*]* Šakā
2 bdam 1415-n
3
měl sella
4 ninra Pramādi-sa
(A.)
TEXT.
Front Side.
5 mvatsarattu Risha
6 bha-nāyarru pūru
7 va-pakshattu pañcha8 miyum Sömava-10
Loc. cit., pp. 12 and 103 et. seq. There seems to be some duplication in the Köyilolugu's narrative.
These facts are dealt with in Ind. Ant., Vol. XL, p. 138 and in greater detail in S. K. Aiyangar, South India and her Muhammadan Invaders, pp. 113 and 155 ff.
South India etc., p. 158.
Loc. cit., p. 104. Pillai Lōkacharya died on the way at Jyotishkuḍi.
Published by G. Harihara Sastri, Trivandrum.
Above, Vol. VI, pp. 322 ff.
There is some slight vagueness in the Köyilojugu narrative. The first image was brought back through the help of a Chandragiri-prabhu', while the second image was restored by Gopaps of Gingee. Apparently both these images were restituted on the same occasion, which necessitated the discriminative test applied by the temple washerman for their identification (p. 29). The Sanskrit verses referring to the restoration by Gopana do not make specific mention of two images, however.
No. 162 of 1936-37, No. 119 of 1908 and No. 64 of 1916 of the Madras Epigraphical collection.
A vadagalai mark (without the central line) flanked by a Chakra and a Sankha are engraved at the top of the inscription.
Many of the Sanskrit words are engraved correctly in Grantha letters.
10 The secondary length of the letter is engraved in the next line.
