________________
August, 1916)
THE HISTORY OF THE NAIK KINGDOM OF MADURA
133
ing material from which the historian can give a clear and complete estimate of his character and conduct, his virtues and vices. The Jesuit missionaries say that Virappa was a tyrant, who allowed his ministers to oppress his subjects with impunity; but this is, in all probability, a statement based more on prejudice than on truth; for, as we shall see presently, the questionable means which Robert de Nobilis adopted to convert the people, naturally provoked a severe condemnation from Muttu Virappa, and the Jesuits, seeing their freedom curbed, did not hesitate to blacken his name. However it was, there is no doubt that Virappa was loyal to his imperial suzerain. A copper plate of 1609, Saumya, the very year of his accession, says that that Emperor Venkata gave the village of Nâganallûr or Muttu-Vira-mahîpâlasamudram to certain Brahmans at the request of Muttu Virappa..7 In 1617, again, Venkata records a gift for Virappa's merit at Trichinopoly.68 A copper plate charter of 1620 in mixed Tamil and Grantha characters says that Raghunathadeva Mahârâ ja, the son of Sri Venkatadêva Maharaja, was the agent of Muttu Virappa at Urayur.
The War of Imperial Succession, 1615-17. The most important event in the reign of Muttu Virappa, however, was the part he took in the great war of succession which broke out immediately after the death of Venkatapati I. in 1614. It was with the co-operation of Muttu Virappa that Jaga Raya, the champion of the deposed and putative son of Venkata, extended the contest, when he was defeated59 in the vicinity of Chandragiri, to the southern parts of the Empire, as against Echchama Naik, and the really legitimate and successful candidate, Rama, usually styled Râma IV. Muttu Virappa seems to have believed that the defeated party was in the right and that the victor (Rama) was a usurper. He therefore joined Jagadêva, while the Tanjore Naik, Achyutappa, or his son Raghunatha (Achyutappa had about 1614 installed his son Raghunatha as the king of Tanjore) and joined the right cause. Barrados does not give the result of the struggle, for he wrote in December 1616, by which time the war had not ceased. "There are now assembled in the field," he concludes, “in the large open plains of Trichinopoly, not only 100,000 men, which each party has, but as many as a million of soldiers." But Rama eventually won, as an inscription at Penukonda, dated 1620, sufficiently testifies. Indeedci that he succeeded in making his power in the south even by then is clear from an inscription at Ammankuruchchi in Pudukkottai state.
57 Madr. Ep. Rep. 1905. --
58 Inscription 135 of 1905. The year mentioned there is Pingala ; but it is doubtful, nay certain, that it was not Venkata I. who gave the grant. Because he died in 1615. But even if he was a relation of the imperial family, the inscription is an evidence in favour of Virappa's vassalage. On the other hand, inscriptions 122 and 123 of 1907 found at Alvar Kuruchchi and dated respectively 1610 and 1619, do not mention a suzerain. The former of these is at the Vanniyappar shrine and records a gift of land for Muttu Virappa's merit to the deity. An insc. of 1617 records gift of certain privileges to the vil. lagers of Adichchanai, by one Chinna Tippa Râhuttar Aiyan, to Viroppa's merit (Ep. Rep. 1911, No. 556). An inscription of 1613 in the eastern tower of Madura (Antiquities, I, 292) and two others of the same place in 1623, the last year of tho Karta, also do not mention the suzerain.
59 The civil war, as described in detail by Barrados, is fully reproduced and discussed by Sewell, in his Forgotten Empire. The Pudukkottai plates of Varatunga Rama Pandya seems to refer to this war, but it is difficult to see how events which happened after 1614 have found mention in a record of 1583. See Trav. Arch. Series, p. 57.
60 Inscription 11 of 1896 and Sewell's Antiquities, II, p. 27-8. The name of the Tamil year given here, Kalayukti, is wrong by two years. That he was recognized by Chima Raja Udayar of Mysore is seen in a grant of 1623. See Mys. Ep. Rep. 1908, p. 23.
61 Ep. Rep. 1915, p. 43-4.
