Indian Antiquary Vol 43

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JANUARY, 1914.
66
king Vira Pandya; and that, as we do not know of any earlier Muhammadan invasion of the Pândyan kingdom prior to Kâfûr's in 1310, the Vîra Pâúdya during whose reign Visalaya Dêvar reconsecrated the Tirupatûr temple must be identified with that Vira Pândya, who, according to Sewell, 25 had succeeded Sundara Pândya II and was attacked and defeated by the Mahomedans under Kâfûr;" that Vira Pandya's accession must have therefore taken place somewhere about 1310 A. D.; that he ruled as late as 1356, the time" by which the Mahomedans slowly began to clear away," thereby enabling a safe reconsecration of the temple. There are some difficulties in accepting this version. As I have already endeavoured to shew, the Mahomedan conquest of Madura took place really after 1324. Vira Pândya's accession must have been before that year and not necessarily, as Mr. Krishna Sastri says, in 1310. A corroboration of this is afforded by the fact that the Muhammadans were overthrown in Madura by Vijayanagar not before 1370. It seems to me, under these circumstances, that Vira Pândya must have come to the throne some time between 1310 and 1324, and that the reconsecration of the Tirupatûr temple must have taken place between 1356 and 1370. The Pândyan monarchs thus continued to rule during the Muhammadan occupation, but with the sword of Damocles hanging over their head all the while.
SECTION II.
The Vijayanagar Conquest.
From this reign of terror the kingdom was rescued by the young and growing power of Vijayanagar. This is not the place to describe the various circumstances which gave rise to this state, a state which, ever since its rise, remained the bulwark of Hindu independence for more than two centuries. It is sufficient to state that, immediately after the sack of Warangal in 1324 and the final overthrow of the Hoysalas by the Muhammadans in 132626, the two royal adventurers, Harihara and Bukka, once the servants of the. ill-fated Pratapa Rudra, entered the service of the principality of Anêgundi, and on its destruction by the Muhammadans in 1332, laid the foundations of an extensive empire by founding, in the year 1336, with the help of Vidyâranya, the glorious city of Vijayanagar. 27 From this time onward, Vijayanagar grew at the expense of the Hoysalas on the one hand, and the Musalmâns on the other. For, even though, even after 1327, the Ballala king, Vira Ballala III,28 managed to retain some vestige of power (till 1342), and even though he had a successor in Vîra Ballâļa IV, yet they were, ever since their great defeat, mere petty chiefs, leading a precarious life and holding a limited power at Tonnûr (12 miles N, from Srirangapatam). The imperial power passed for ever from their hands into those of the obscure, but more vigorous, house of Vijayanagar. The five brothers Harihara, Bukka, Kampaṇa, Muddappa and Mârappa, conquered province after province, till at last the state of Vijayanagar was circumscribed by the ocean on three sides and by the Krshna on the other. Within a generation after the foundation of Vijayanagar this wonderful result was achieved. Never was an empire so rapidly made and a power so well established in the history of South India.
25 Antiquities II, p. 222.
26 Wilks, Hist. of Mysore, I, p. 7. Note Wilks' interesting remarks about the ruins of Dwarasamudra.
27 Sewell's Forgotten Empire; Suryanarayana Rao's Never to be Forgotten Empire; Wilks I, 8-9; for a curious version of the origin of Vijayanagar see Salem Manual; I. p. 44.
28 Inscriptions 499 and 509 of 1902 give some information about Ballala (1340-1341 A. D.) The Ballalas exercised authority at Tonnar till after 1347. See Wilks I, p. 10; Madura Manual, I, 140; Rice's Mysore Gazetteer, p. 342; Sewell's Antiquities II, 177.