Indian Antiquary Vol 51

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

Page 239

DEOEMBER, 1922)
THE ORIGIN, ETC., OF THE VIJAYANAGARA EMPIRE
231
conquest being signalised by the foundation of a temple, called Hoysalesvara, there. The Chola sovereignty had lost by this time its integrity and suffered disruption. Its chief seats were two, Tanjore and Kaichi. The first was under the weak king Rajaraja III. The second was under the rule of that family of the Chôļas who called themselves Siddhis, under one of whom, Manmasiddhi, Tikkana the Telugu poet was a minister. Sometime between A.D. 1230 and 1250 Sundara Pandya II of Madura had invaded the Chola capital Tanjore and burnt it. Rajaraja III subsequently prostrated at his feet and at the cost of his independence regained the capital. In the neighbourhood of this disintegrating Chola dominion, the Sengeni chiefs, calling themselves Sambuvarayas throughout their political career as the feudatories of the Cholas, gradually rose into independence, which they achieved in about 1339 A.D. just about the time of the dawn of the Vijayanagara House.
The years 1253 and 1254 A.D. were very eventful for the history of South India. The weak Chôļa was yielding before the advancing Påndya. Sundara Pandya established his superiority over the Hoysalas of Dvårasamudra and over the Cholas both of Tanjore and Kânchi. He had taken Srîrangam from the Hoyrala. In the hostilities between the Hoy. sala and the Påndya, the Chola king Rajaraja III managed to recoup and get the upper hand, and eventually ousted the Hoysala from his ancestral dominion by defeating Somesvara about 1254 A.D. 1253 A.D. saw the Pandya rise, and 1254 A.D. saw the Chola riso. The ascendencies of both were temporary only. The balance of ascendency was now very unsteady and easily and quickly tilting. Though in the south the Hoysala was now defeated by the Pandya and now by the Chola, he had the most substantial dominion and power of the three ; for when the torrent of Muhammadan invasion from the north rush down in 1306 A.D. and later, the Hoysala was in a condition to contribute much to the check of the stream. At this period there were other potent kingdoms in Peninsular India. The Yadavas and the Kakatiyas were in no less prosperous and powerful condition than the Hoysalas. In the latter half of the thirteenth century the extreme south was & whirlpool of discords, fights and captures; the Chola house divided into many branches and passing through the last convulsive stages of a shattered and lingering sovereignty; the Pandya house trying to absorb it, but corroded inwardly by the cancer of domestio dissension; the Hoysala strong, but yet weak hare owing to remoteness from the northern branch and capital.
While this was the political condition of the south, a small rocket of discord Aies up from Madura and falls as a signal at Delhi. Mr. Sewell informs us, on the authority of the Muhammadan historian Wasaf, that Sundara the son and murderer of Kalês Devar (i.e., Kulasekhara) gained the throne of the Pån lya in 1310 A.D. by defeating his brother Vîra, and being defeated by him later, fled to Delhi, to bring in Muhammadan intercession on his behalf'. It is to be noted that none of the other powerful kings of the south undertook to fight for this discontented Påndya prince. The capture and sack of Madura ip 1311 A.D. was thus but the outcome of family dissensions in the Pandya house, a phenomenon similar to the intervention of Baber in the affairs of the Lodis of Delhi.
The Pa dyes and the Hoysalas succumbed to the ravages of the Muhammadans. The Chola dominion was but lingering. The Kakatiyas had also bent under these same waves of alien conquest. As Mahmud of Ghazni's conquests of 'infidel' India were only series of plunders in the name of Islam and the Prophet, the southern invasions of Malik Kafar too were but sallies of greedy militaryism. It was not the legitimate and natural ontoome of the expansion of a people into foreign lands through the pressure of population at home or of adventures in quest of settlement, as was the expansion of the English into America, India