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South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13: Lecture VI. Muhammadan Kingdoms in the Dakhan and South India

South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13

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Lecture VI. Muhammadan Kingdoms in the Dakhan and South India

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*Foundation of the Sultanate at Madura.*—At the time of death of the Sultan, Muhammad Tughlak, India south of the Vindhyas was divided into four well-marked divisions as before. The first might well be called the Dakhan with its capital at Deogir till recently under the Muhammadan governors of the empire, but asserting during the last four years of the Sultan's life, a defiant independence. Along side of it and occupying the other half of the Dakhan plateau and the corresponding coast districts, was the tributary Hindu kingdom of Telingana with its capital still at Warangal. South of the Krishna extended the territory of another tributary Hindu ruler, but more nominally subordinate than Warangal. This was the Hoysala kingdom which stretched from sea to sea and from the river Krishna almost to the Kaveri. South of this was the Pāṇḍya country in the days of its widest expansion; but at the time, divided among a number of petty Pāṇḍyan rulers, members in all probability of the main ruling family of the Pāṇḍyas. In the heart of this country was established a definite Musalman state which up to the year A.D. 1335 was subordinate to Muhammad Tughlak. In that year the Muhammadan governor of Madura threw off the yoke and declared himself independent. This Muhammadan ruler of Madura laid claim to authority over all Ma'bar, that is the whole of the Coromandel coast extending from Quilon to Nellore—in other words all the Tamil country. The actual extent of his territory, however, seems to have been limited to the territory of the Pāṇḍyas and the southern part of that of the Cholas, the Kaveri, possibly the southern Peṇṇār, marking the limit between them and the Hoysalas. These four states remained independent at the time that Muhammad Tughlak died.

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The year A.D. 1335 which marks the declaration of independence by Sultan Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Shah at Madura marks an epoch in the history of South India, just as it marks, the turning point in the successful career of Sultan Muhammad Tughlak. The declaration of independence by this remote province was the signal at the time for the middle states of the Hindus, either openly to throw off the yoke, or to set in train the movement which culminated in the abolition of Muhammadan rule in the south of India. Adequate knowledge of the history therefore of the Madura Sultanate, and of the newly founded Muhammadan kingdom of Deogir during the first decades of its existence, is a necessary preliminary to the correct understanding of the Hindu movements which culminated in the foundation of the empire of Vijayanagar.

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The Muhammadan Kingdom of Madura.—Malik Kafur's invasion of the south reaching as far as Madura and Rāmēśvaram, was described at length in a previous lecture. Amir Khusru's circumstantial account of this southern invasion was given in full. It was also pointed out that although a few places he mentions are not yet capable of satisfactory identification, enough of his account could be made out to justify the statement that the objective of Malik Kafur after he left the territory of the Hoysalas was the country of Vīra Pāṇḍya.¹ There is very little doubt left that he marched in support of Vīra Pāṇḍya's rival Sundara Pāṇḍya whose territory proper was Madura and the country round it. When he returned early in A.D. 1312 Malik Kafur in all probability left a garrison behind to safeguard the position of his protege Sundara Pāṇḍya. Almost the next year we find the Malabar King Ravi Varman Kulaśēkhara of Kerala in occupation of the country from the South Peṇṇār to as far north as Poonamalle, nay even to Nellore, indicating clearly that the so-called Muhammadan conquest meant at best no more than the occupation of Madura and a comparatively narrow district round it. Sultan Mubarak Khilji sent Khusru Khan against Ma'bar in A.D. 1318 either to regain the lost hold of the Muhammadans, or it may be to make a fresh conquest of it. Whatever was the actual purpose, Khusru remained a whole year in Ma'bar and hatched his plot there to subvert the ruling dynasty at Delhi. Barni complains of his ill-treatment of the Muhammadan merchants there, and states that he developed his hinduising plot while there. Barni certainly cannot be held to mean that he took any direct part in encouraging the Hindus to throw off the Muhammadan yoke in the South. For South Indian History this may be held to mean no more than that he brought back to loyalty a certain amount of territory which remained under their control in the distant South, if even that. The revolution that followed immediately loosened the hold of the Muhammadans in the South, or at least cut off communication between the head-quarters and the distant Muhammadan garrison in Madura. Although Muhammad Tughlak was compelled to retire from Warangal in A.D. 1328, one of his invasions to Ma'bar appears to have successfully reasserted the authority of Delhi in Madura.

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¹ The Malik pursued the 'yellow faced Bir' to Birdhul 'an old city of the ancestors of Bir.' Elliott iii. 90. Paras Dalvi desired that 'Bir Dhul' and 'Bir Pāṇḍya' might be reduced. Ibid, p. 88. This could mean no more than the Chola and Pāṇḍya country of Bir, of Vīra Pāṇḍya.

Muhammad's Conquest of the South

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account is given in some detail in connection with the lives of Piḷḷai Lokāchārya and Vēdānta Dēśika in the Sanskrit work Prapannāmṛtam, a work composed in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Some details of this story are found preserved in a Telugu work called Āchārya Sūkti Muktāvaḷi. One part of this story relating to the temple ritual is preserved in Koyiloḷuhu, which gives a date. A comparison of all these leaves no doubt that they refer to the same incident as the same characters figure in it, and the other details of the main story are practically the same. The date given in the Koyiloḷuhu is 1149 Śaka coupled with the name of the year Akshaya. The given year seems to be an error for 1249. The year Akshaya does not correspond to Śaka 1149 but does to Śaka 1249 except for a slight discrepancy. If this correction in the century is accepted the date would correspond to A.D. 1327-8, when an invasion was sent into the south by Muhammad-bin-Tughlak to re-assert the authority of the Muhammadans in the south. The story briefly is this:

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While the annual festival in which the god is taken overnight to the banks of the Coleroon river, a little to the south-east of Śrīrangam—a festival lasting a few hours—was being celebrated, tidings came that an army of the Muhammadans had come in and occupied parts of the Toṇḍamaṇḍalam (the two Arcots and Chingleput) and a small body of troops was marching rapidly towards Samayavaram about five miles from the north bank of the Coleroon. The principal Brahman citizens of the town, who had assembled at the celebration of the festival and who were in charge of the temple, not having got through the festival cast lots in the presence of the idol whether to stay or to go. They got an answer directing them to stay. They stayed over therefore to complete the festival, and in the meanwhile information was brought to them that the flying column of the Muhammadans was dashing past Samayavaram. They therefore made haste to wind up proceedings, and, sending away the god and the goddess, in a small palanquin under the escort of Lokāchārya (Piḷḷai Lokāchārya) and a few stout-hearted followers and carriers, the assembled multitude got themselves ready for the attack. They had not to wait long before they were actually attacked, and destroyed in large numbers.

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From out of this massacre Vēdāntachārya escaped, with the two little sons of Śrutaprakāśikāchārya, and the single manuscript of his famous commentary on the Śrī Bhāshya, and betook himself through unfrequented roadways to Satyamangalam on the borders of Mysore. Lokāchārya and his companions took their way to the south for safety. Fearing that they would be overtaken if they went along the road, they seemed to have kept more or less close to the road, but avoided the road-way and proceeded slowly through jungles and unfrequented tracts across the state of Pudukoṭṭa. They seemed to have marched in safety till they got to the southern frontier. Near Tiruppattūr they branched off, avoiding the main road from Tiruppattūr to Madura, probably because they had heard of the near approach of the enemy. Lokāchārya fled for shelter to Tirukkoshṭiyūr about six miles from Tiruppattūr on the modern road from Tiruppattūr to Śivaganga. It was probably on that occasion that the Muhammadan forces encamped in the temple precincts at Tiruppattūr, and it was too dangerous a proximity for Lokāchārya and his companions to continue in Tirukkoshṭiyūr. They therefore made a further detour to the east and getting through a more or less dense forest region, they came to a place called Jyotishkuḍi (Jyotishmatīpura), where they lived a few months.

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During their residence there, information reached them that the bulk of the citizens of Śrīrangam were massacred, the temple itself sacked and desecrated, and all those citizens that Lokāchārya knew and cared for had suffered death. On hearing this distressing account of what happened to his friends and companions he got ill and died. His companions stayed there till they completed the funeral ceremonies of their venerable leader, and marched across from there for greater safety to Sundarāchalam (Aḷagar-malai), where they stayed for about a year. Finding their position untenable even there, they marched down farther south by way of Eṭṭiyāpuram zamindari till they reached Āḷvār-Tirunagari and then across into the Travancore country. Going along from temple to temple of the Vaishṇava holy places on the west coast they reached at last Calicut. Starting from there again after some time they got into the Mysore country and stayed a short time in Terukkaṇāmbi. Setting forward therefrom again they reached as far as Punganur, apparently towards Tirupati. Finding the march dangerous, they retreated towards Tirunārāyaṇapuram (Melkoṭṭai), where they remained for some considerable length of time. When they felt the road ways safe, they carried the image across to Tirupati. The story closes that from Tirupati, the image was taken over to Ginji by Gopana and ultimately got back to Śrīrangam.

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This last incident seems merely the copy of what actually did take place in respect of their Ranganātha idol when Śrīrangam was sacked by Malik Kafur. The riddle is solved by what the accounts state as having taken place when the images were ultimately brought to Śrīrangam. When specifically stating that there were two images, the story relates that when the old image which the youngest of the three attendants preserved at the foot of the Tirupati hill, was brought at the instance of Gopana into Śrīrangam, they were all puzzled as to which was the genuine original image of the God. Not finding one old enough to bear testimony on direct knowledge, they ultimately lighted upon a blind washerman who was much past ninety years and who actually said that he had been for over half a century washing the clothes of the god and would by the smell of the water with which the god was bathed tell accurately which was the old image. The test was applied and he pointed to what was the original idol of the God. It is not an impossible inference to make from this story that the original image and the one that was substituted for it after that was carried away were both of them brought back by Gopana and the difficulty was to decide which of the two was the original image and therefore to be installed in the temple. So the discrepancy between the two stories as to the migration of the idol of Ranganātha is only apparent so far as the story goes, and is easily reconcilable; but how far the stories themselves are reliable is matter upon which light would be desirable.

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In our discussion of the route taken by Malik Kafur, we have already indicated that the ordinary route taken by the invasion was in all probability the road from Trichinopoly to Māttūrkoḷam, and then perhaps to Kaḍambaravanam (Nārttāmalai), and from there to Pon-Amarāvati straight, cutting the Kuḍumiyāmalai road where at present the Pon-Amarāvati road leads off from it, or somewhere near. That apparently was the high road during the period of the Muhammadan invasions of South India. These fugitives from Śrīrangam, the account clearly states, kept alongside of the road but avoided it so that they may not be overtaken. They preferred to get along through forest tracts by secret path-ways not losing altogether the thread of the road. This direction would imply that their objective was the region round Tiruppattūr. The pursuing party would certainly have taken the road and clattered down along it to reach Tiruppattūr on the high road to Madura. These fugitives would naturally go to places where there were Viṣṇu temples which would afford accommodation and protection at once to themselves and the god (idol) in their charge. There is no vestige of it as far as my local enquiries went in Tirumeyyam which might have been along their route. They probably travelled further east than that, and finding perhaps the Muhammadans already in occupation of Tiruppattūr, or what is more likely, anticipating them, marched off to the great Viṣṇu shrine at Tirukkoshṭiyūr. There again the people of the locality have no memory of any asylum these fugitives found; but I discovered that in a chamber where there are images consecrated to the Āḻvārs in the temple there is an image of Piḷḷai Lokāchārya. It may possibly be that this Āchārya is done the honour because of his association with the temple on this occasion. It was then they discovered that even that was too close to the pursuing party to be safe, and they made a detour this time into the depths of the forest country by retiring into Jyotishkuḍi. There are two places which may be equated with this Jyotishkuḍi. The now important Śaiva centre of Kāḷaiyār Kovil is known by the name Jyotirvanam (the forest of Jyoti trees, Cardiospermum halicacabum), because that part of the forest was famous for Jyoti trees. This is the famous fortress of Kānappēr which figures as an important centre round which the Ceylon general had to fight on three occasions to take possession of it, and which he made his head-quarters for his campaigns further north; and as Kānappēr this figures as an old fortress in very early classical Tamil literature. What is more, local tradition tells us that just at the corner of the great tank attached to the Śaiva temple, remote from this temple, there was a shrine of Viṣṇu, which had suffered so much damage that sometime in the course of the last century or two they removed the Viṣṇu image and placed it in the back enclosure of this Śiva temple. It is very likely that the forests surrounding this temple-town would have provided the asylum that these fugitives sought, and this is what seems to be referred to in the account as Jyotishkuḍi. There is, however, another place about fifteen miles from this, straight down along the road to Paramaguḍi, but easier reached along a road about twenty-one miles from Śivaganga. That is the famous place of Iḷayānguḍi, which contains both a Śiva and a Viṣṇu temple. The Śiva temple contains inscriptions of the Chola Rājēndra of the eleventh century, which call the temple Rājēndra Cholīśvara, while the local inhabitants give the name Jyotīśvara, apparently from the miracle performed by Śiva in behalf of Iḷayānguḍi Māranār. Śiva appeared as a devout Śaiva, hungry and wet on a rainy night before the Nāyanār (devotee of Śiva). When he and his wife got some food ready under almost impossible conditions and invited the guest to partake of it, Śiva showed himself in a blaze of light.¹

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¹ pp. 77-79: Śekkiḷār's Periya Purāṇam or Ārumuga Nāvalar's Prose Version, pp. 68-70.

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Local enquiries there showed that the Viṣṇu temple of Krishna-Vēṇugopāla was older than this. One of the early Śaiva devotees takes his name from this place Iḷayānguḍi and is called Iḷayānguḍimāranāyanār as was stated already. The whole place is now more a Muhammadan town, and the place has practically ceased to be the Brahman centre that it once must have been. Two miles from this is a Muhammadan village now called Śoduguḍi which, in the registers of the Zamindari, appears as a Dharmāsanam village, that is a gift to the Brahmans; now it is entirely a Muhammadan village. This Śoduguḍi contains an obscure Vaiṣṇava temple, and it was suggested as a possible alternative to Kāḷaiyār Kovil as the equivalent of Jyotishkuḍi. For one thing Śoduguḍi is perhaps a little too for out and has not the attractions of Kāḷaiyār Kovil, which should have readily recommended themselves to the fugitives. Śoduguḍi by itself has none of the earlier associations of Kāḷaiyār Kovil and must have involved another very hard journey through forests. The actual Sanskrit name is given as Jyotishmatīpuram, the city of the Jyotishmatī trees. Jyotishmatī is the name of the tree Cardiospermum halicacabum. It seems more likely therefore that Kāḷaiyār Kovil is the Jyotishkuḍi, where they found shelter and where Piḷḷai Lokāchārya breathed his last, while Iḷaiyānguḍi, not Śoduguḍi is quite possible. The only other possibility is a little Brahman village about twelve miles from Aḷagarmalai, but there is nothing whatever to recommend it as the place. Aḷagar Tirumalai or Tirumālirunjolai is reachable by a shorter road from Kāḷaiyār Kovil, and by a somewhat longer road from Iḷaiyānguḍi, and that would be the place to which they would naturally retire for greater protection from either place. The well referred to in the account above from which water was drawn for divine service by the fugitives, is pointed out in this last place, but there is no recollection, in the locality of this particular incident, or of the image of Ranganātha having been there at all. When the Muhammadans got a firm footing in Madura, Tirumālirunjolai would certainly have become untenable and these fugitives with their idols must have retired farther into Tinnevelly, and thence into the Travancore country for safety. A study of the Muhammadan coins found in Madura confirms the second Muhammadan conquest of Madura implied in this account of the sack of Śrīrangam.

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We have coins of Muhammadan Tughlak among those found in Madura bearing the dates 1330, 1333 and 1334, a clear indication of the recognition of the authority of the Delhi Sultan in the distant south.¹ The coins of Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Shah so far available to us bear the equivalent of A.D. 1335, as the earliest date. This could be held to mark the date of his successful rebellion.¹ According to Ibn Batuta, Muhammad appointed Shariff Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Shah to be governor of ‘the country of Ma’bar, which is at a distance of six months journey from Delhi. This Jalalu-d-din rebelled, usurped the ruling power, killed the lieutenants and agents of the sovereign, and struck in his own name gold and silver money.’² The details that he gives of the legends upon the coins make it quite certain that this is the Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Shah of the Madura coins, which give the date, A.D. 1335, of the earliest known coins in his own name, as was pointed out above. This has to be noted carefully as it invalidates altogether the chronology of Ferishta. According to him this date would be about seven years later, namely A.D. 1341.³ It is this Ahsan Shah that both Barni and Ferishta refer to as Syed, Hasan, and Hussun, respectively. Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Shah apparently overthrew the army sent by the Sultan Muhammad and declared himself independent in the next few years when he felt certain that Muhammad was not likely to march upon him himself owing perhaps to the rebellion in the home provinces, such as Multan and Sindh. Ibn Batuta knew Jalalu-d-din as he had married one of the Sheriff’s daughters, and was the friend of the Sheriff’s son Ibrahim, the purse bearer of the Emperor Muhammad. When Muhammad heard of the rebellion, Ibrahim was sawn in two by Muhammad’s order for the rebellion of the father. This Ahsan Shah was murdered by one of his nobles in A.D. 1340 and he was succeeded by Alau-d-din Udauji one of the officers of Jalalu-d-din. This Udauji ruled for about a year. At the end of it, after a successful battle with the Hindus (infidels), when he removed his helmet to drink water, he was shot dead on the spot by an arrow from an unknown hand. A son-in-law of his who assumed the title Qutbu-d-din succeeded. He was killed in forty days, and was succeeded by Ghiyathu-d-din Dhāmaghani originally a trooper in the service of the Delhi Sultan. He had subsequently married one of the daughters of Ahsan Shah, and became a brother-in-law of Ibn Batuta. While Ibn Batuta was in South India on his way to China on the mission on which he was despatched by Muhammad in A.D. 1342, he met with an accident on the seas, and was hospitably received by this brother-in-law of his who, at the time, was engaged in a campaign against the infidels near Harekatu of Ibn Batuta (identified with Arcot in the translation). Ghiyathu-d-din sent a party to receive Ibn Batuta and take him to his camp. Ibn Batuta gives some interesting details of Ghiyathu-d-din’s doings which throw a lurid light upon the character of Muhammadan rule in the South. While Ibn Batuta accompanied him, when he moved from the camp towards the capital, he happened to fall in with a number of ‘idolaters’ with their women and children in clearing a road through the forest. He made them carry a number of stakes sharpened at both ends, and when morning broke he divided these prisoners into four groups, and led one party to each gate of the four entrances to the camp. The stakes that they carried were then driven into the ground at one end and the unfortunate wretches were impaled alive thereon. Their wives and children had their throats cut and were left fastened to the posts. Ibn Batuta exclaims in horror ‘it was for this reason that God hastened the death of Ghiyathu-d-din.’ It is hardly necessary to add to this blood-curdling story others from Ibn Batuta.

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¹ There is a Tamil inscription in the as yet unpublished collection at Pudukoṭṭa referring itself to the ninth year of Muhammadi Suratana (Sultan Muhammad). The record is in the Gñānapurīśvara temple at Panaiyūr in the Tirumeyyan Taluk of Pudukoṭṭa, and refers to the settlement of a dispute without the interposition of Government or Royal officers.

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¹ There is another inscription in the Pudukoṭṭa collection at Rāngiam referring itself to Ādi Sultan’s year 732, apparently the Hijra year, with details of date, the equivalent of Monday, March 9, A.D. 1332. Ādi Sultan is in all likelihood Muhammad; but it is barely possible it refers to Jalalu-d-din who must have become governor of Ma’bar in this year.

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² Elliott, iii. 618.

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³ Brigg’s Ferishta, vol. i, p. 23, Calcutta Edition of Cambray.

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His wars against the Hoysalas.—The Muhammadans could not have been left in peace, and there appears to have been ceaseless petty warfare particularly on the frontier.

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[Figure: Bēlūr : Royal Residence, N. W. View (by permission of the Mysore Archaeological Department)]

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Ibn Batuta mentions a great victory that his host gained over ‘Bilal Deo’ (Vīra Ballāḷa III). This last great Ballāḷa had at least three capitals Dvārasamudra in Mysore, Kundāṇi in Salem, and Tiruvaṇṇāmalai in North Arcot. During the last fifteen years of his reign he was constantly in the last place, apparently because of the predatory activities of these southern Muhammadans, and the need for protection along this frontier. Tiruvaṇṇāmalai is on the main line of communication between Madura and the North. According to Ibn Batuta, Ballāḷa aimed at the conquest of the whole of the Coromandel Coast, and was able to put into the field a hundred thousand men not counting about twenty thousand Muhammadans whose services he enlisted. As against this, according to him, the Muhammadans had about six thousand troops of which the half were worthless. ‘The conflict began at the town of Kabban,¹ and the Hindus routed their enemies who retreated to Mutrah (Madura) their capital.’ The Ballāḷa encamped close to the former, which is described as one of the chief strongholds of the Muhammadans, and invested the place closely. Finding it impossible to defend themselves any longer the garrison asked for terms, and the Hoysala king offered to let them return to Madura under a safe conduct if they surrendered the town. He gave them also a fortnight’s respite to send to the headquarters and obtain permission. On receipt of this offer which was read out in the mosque in the presence of all who had assembled for prayer the Muhammadans in Madura thought that the surrender of this fortress on any terms would be followed by their own destruction, and resolved to make an effort at raising the siege. They therefore secretly marched against the Hindu camp and threw the besieging army into confusion and ultimate flight. The old sovereign, who was about eighty years at the time according to Ibn Batuta, endeavoured to mount a horse and escape, but he was taken prisoner by Nasiru-d-din, the nephew of the Sultan of Madura. Not recognizing the old man, Nasiru-d-din was about to kill him, when a slave in attendance exclaimed ‘it is the king’. ‘Whereupon he (the Ballāḷa) was taken prisoner and treated with apparent consideration; and, whilst under promise of eventual release, all his riches were extorted from him. He was then murdered and his skin stuffed with straw was hung from the walls of Mutrah (Madura)’, where Ibn Batuta says he saw it suspended.¹ This was the lamentable fate of the last great king of that dynasty. This event must have taken place just in the last known year of Ghiyathu-d-din because soon after his return to Madura he lost his only son, his wife and his mother, by an attack of cholera, and himself died a fortnight later ‘from the effects of an aphrodisiac prepared by a Yogin (a mendicant given to the practice of exhibiting supernormal power).’ All these events had taken place before Ibn Batuta left Madura in the reign of his successor Nasiru-d-din.²

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¹ Kaṇṇanūr-Koppam, near Śrīrangam.

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¹ Madras Journal of Literature and Science for 1888-89, p. 53.

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² For the whole of this see Ibn Batuta, French translation by C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, iv, pp. 185-200. An English translation is appended.

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The Sultans of Madura subsequent to Ibn Batuta’s departure.—This series of transactions took place between the years A.D. 1342 when Ibn Batuta was despatched from Delhi on his mission to China, and A.D. 1344 when finally he embarked for China from the port of Fatan (Paṭṭaṇam). The last known inscriptional date for Ballāḷa III is 1342. He died about the end of that year,³ Ghiyathu-d-din following in the course of a few weeks. Ghiyathu-d-din was succeeded by his nephew Nasiru-d-din who is said to have been a domestic servant at Delhi wherefrom he fled to his uncle Ghiyathu-d-din, soon after he became king. He obtained the consent of the nobles and the army for his accession by a lavish distribution of gold. Ibn Batuta himself received three hundred pieces of gold and a robe of honour. One of Nasiru-d-din’s first acts was the killing of a son of his own paternal aunt because he happened to be the husband of Ghiyathu-d-din’s daughter. Having murdered the husband he married the widowed princess. It was in this reign that Ibn Batuta was provided with a number of ships to proceed on his journey. He embarked at Fatan (Paṭṭaṇam) again, paid a short visit to the Maldives and Honawar, and set forward from there on a voyage taking Bengal, Sumatra and Java on the way to China ultimately. The only extant coin of Nasiru-d-din is dated A.H. 745 which would correspond to A.D. 1344. Then follows a break in the coins till we come upon one of Adil Shah with date A.H. 757 corresponding to A.D. 1356-57. He was followed in A.H. 761 (A.D. 1359) by Fakru-d-din Mubarak Shah for whom we have a number of coins bearing dates from A.H. 761 to 770 (A.D. 1368). Then came the last of the Sultans, Allau-d-din Sikandar Shah whose coins bear dates A.H. 774-779 (A.D. 1372-77). This find of coins of the Sultans of Madura¹ so far available gives us the history of Madura under the Muhammadans, meagre as it is. But it is well supplemented by Ibn Batuta for the greater part of the period. The dates of these coins range from A.D. 1335 to A.D. 1377-78 with what seems a comparatively large gap from A.D. 1344-1357, almost corresponding to the period of active rule of the Bahmani Sultan Alau-d-din I. What this gap might mean will appear later. The power of the Muhammadans in Madura appears to have come definitely to an end about A.D. 1377-78, the last year of the Vijayanagar ruler Bukka.

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³ September 8, 1342, is the date of his death, according to Kd. 75. Ep. Car. vi.

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¹ For this refer to Dr. E. Hultzsch's article in the JRAS, 1909. This supersedes previous contribution by Rodgers and others.

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Muhammadan dynasties of Madura.—The dynasty of the Sultans of Madura which flourished in the period of A.D. 1335 to A.D. 1378, a period of about forty-five years, has been confounded with the incorrect succession list given by Nelson in the manual of the Madura country, and adopted therefrom by Mr. Sewell in his Antiquities of the Madras Presidency, volume ii. Quite recent reports of the Epigraphist to the Madras Government adopt the same scheme also.¹ An examination of the list given both in Nelson and Sewell shows that the dynasty began with Ādi Sultan Malik Nēmi on the authority of the Mackenzie manuscripts—one of those documents based on the local accounts obtained and recorded by Colonel Mackenzie’s staff early in the nineteenth century. Of the six names that follow, it is possible to identify two or three with the Sultans of the coins of Madura whose history I have detailed above. The last three or four names seem not possible to recover or to equate satisfactorily. Adopting this list from Sewell, the Muhammadan dynasty is made to begin in A.D. 1310 and come to an end forty-eight years after, in A.D. 1358. This arrangement, it is hardly necessary to point out, is untenable since the discovery of the coins of Madura and their study. No Muhammadan dynasty of Madura could be held to begin earlier than A.D. 1335² and the dynasty lasted till A.D. 1378 according to these coins with a rather wide gap from A.D. 1345 to 1357. Further criticism of Nelson’s list would be superfluous.

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¹ Report for 1916, sec. 33, p. 126.

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² Refer to note above regarding the ninth year of Muhammad on p. 164.

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The Hoysalas during the period.—During the period of active rule of this dynasty, the Hoysala ruler was Vīra Ballāḷa III who ascended the throne in A.D. 1292 and continued to rule till A.D. 1342. During the last twenty years of his reign he had to be very active on the Tamil frontier. We have already pointed out that in the year A.D. 1316 he had restored his capital of Dvārasamudra so far that he is [Figure: Tiruvaṇṇāmalai, General View of town and temple (by permission of the Madras Archaeological Department)]

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said to have been ruling in great happiness¹ at his ancestral capital. This rebuilding of the capital by the Hoysala exhibits the Hindu rulers of the South taking advantage of the confusion that prevailed at head-quarters before Mubarak made his position secure on the throne at Delhi. We do not hear much of Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III from inscriptional sources till A.D. 1328-29, the year in which Muhammad-bin-Tughlak sent an invasion to the south after his own abortive expedition to Warangal. In spite of the re-building of his capital, the Hoysala does not figure either in the organization of the Mahratta country by Mubarak and the placing of Muhammadan garrisons in the various forts along the Hoysala frontier; or in the subsequent invasions of the Ma'bar (Tamil country) by Khusru Khan. He probably was able to reorganize his resources quietly and unobserved. It was possibly about this time that he went farther afield from Dvārasamudra and laid the foundations of the city generally called Hosapaṭṭaṇa or Virūpākṣapaṭṭaṇa, which ultimately became Vijayanagar, to secure his northern frontier. In the year A.D. 1328-29,² we hear of Vīra Baḷḷāḷa for the first time at Uṇṇamulai Paṭṭaṇam (Tiruvaṇṇāmalai).³ He was ruling in peace and happiness at the same place in A.D. 1342. In the meanwhile one record of his states that in A.D. 1339 (Śaka 1261) he was ruling in happiness in Śrī Vīra Vijaya Virūpākṣapura⁴ as his residential capital (Neḷēvīḍu).

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He is further described in this record as the sole monarch by his own valour.⁵ In the following year a grant refers to the ‘ Paṭṭābhiṣheka (anointment) of the prince’ while Vīra Baḷḷāḷa was ruling.¹ This is apparently a reference to the coronation of the prince which, according to a Chikkamagaḷūr inscription, is said to have taken place at Hosapaṭṭaṇa. There is an inscription in the temple at Hampi referring itself to the Hoysalas, ² indicating thereby that Hampi was in the territory of the Hoysalas. There is further an inscription of A.D. 1354 (Śaka 1276) which states that Bukka was ruling from Hosapaṭṭaṇa. The next year he is said to be in Vidyānagara his capital. This series of facts would put it beyond doubt that Hosapaṭṭaṇa and Vidyānagara are the same Vīrupakshapaṭṭaṇa or Hampi, and that this had been recently fortified against eventualities sometime in or before A.D. 1339 ³ by the Hoysala Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III himself. It is clearly stated in another record of Bukka that it is after the conquest of all the kingdoms that Bukka changed the name of his capital city to Vijayanagar.⁴ It would be a safe inference therefore to make from this sequence of facts that Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III was apparently preparing himself for possible campaigns both on the northern frontier and on the southern, and had his son anointed against eventualities, though this could only have meant the anointment of the prince in the Yauva Rajya (heir-apparency) as Vīra Baḷḷāḷa is definitely stated to be ruling.

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The next year a record from Mālūr gives Vīra Baḷḷāḷa his full titles, and among them is one which ascribes to him the setting up of a pillar of victory at the beginning of ‘the bridge’ at Rāmēśvaram (Sētu Mūla Jayastambha).⁵ This would be of date A.D. 1342 (April-May). The next year (the Śaka year) he is said to be fighting at Trichinopoly against the Muhammadans. This statement is found clearly enough in a viragal (hero-stone) at a village in the Kaḍūr district. It was a stone set up in honour of a gauḍa (a rural magnate) Kankayya who fell in battle with the Muhammadans ‘and went to heaven along with the king.’ The stone was in fact set up in Śaka 1290 in the year Plavanga, but the actual occurrence of the death, referred to in the record,¹ is stated to have taken place (twenty-five years earlier) in the year Chitrabhānu preceding, Āśvyūja Śu. 8 (a date corresponding to A.D. 8th September 1342). But the most important point in the reading of this inscription is the place. I have been able to examine the inscription through the kindness of Rao Bahadur R. Narasimhachariar, Director of Archæological Researches in Mysore, and the reading is Chirichirapaḷi. It is only the latter ‘ra’ that is worn in the first half, but there is little doubt that it is ‘ra’.

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The whole word therefore is Kannaḍa pronunciation of Trichinopoly, which must be the locality of the battle in which Vīra Ballāḷa III fell.² We have a more or less circumstantial account of this transaction from Ibn Batuta, who was in the country at the time, and was in Madura soon after. The battle took place apparently as was stated already between Gyathu-d-din, the Sultan of Madura and a relative of Ibn Batuta, and Vīra Ballāḷa III. But Ibn Batuta calls the place of battle Cobban, the nearest South Indian equivalent of which could be only Koppam. With this particular record of Vīra Ballāḷa before us we must of necessity look out for a Koppam of some strategical importance to have become the scene of such constant wars between the Muhammadans and the Hoysalas. Luckily for us we have a reference to a Koppam in an inscription of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya I. In the preamble to this inscription¹ he refers to the place Kaṇṇanūr as Kaṇṇanūr-Koppam. And this is obviously the Koppam, or Cobban of Ibn Batuta. In connection with this identificaton it must be borne in mind that according to the account of this Muhammadan traveller who certainly did know what he was describing, this Cobban was a place of vital strategical importance; for, according to him, if Cobban fell the position of the Muhammadans in Madura, would have become impossible. To this description Kaṇṇanūr would answer very well.

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That Kaṇṇanūr passed into the possession of the Muhammadans either during the invasion of Malik Kafur himself, or in the interval between that and this last battle is clear as the place which was the capital of Vīra Rāmanātha, and perhaps even his son, to the time of accession of Vīra Ballāḷa III, does not find mention in any of the records of this Vīra Ballāḷa. The change of capital to Tiruvaṇṇāmalai in A.D. 1328 as we know it, it might have been much earlier, finds an explanation in this that Kaṇṇanūr must have been lost to the Hoysalas before that period and must have become the base of active operations against the Hoysala territory in the Tamil country. It is as a counter-work to the Muhammadan position in Kaṇṇanūr which is on the trunk road leading from the north to Madura that Tiruvaṇṇāmalai must have been pitched upon as the capital of the Hoysalas. Tiruvaṇṇāmalai connects with the Hoysala capitals Kundāṇi and Dvārasamudra, on the one hand, and with Kaṇṇanur on the other, and is certainly well situated for preventing reinforcements reaching the Muhammadans from the north.

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The distance between Trichinopoly and Kaṇṇanūr is only about eight or nine miles at the best, and if anything like a large army of 1,00,000 operated on the side of the Hoysalas, as Ibn Batuta clearly states that that was the strength of the army, this distance between the two camps would be even necessary.¹ The town Trichinopoly is referred to by that name, although not yet found in inscriptional records, in the Tēvāram of Sambandar in the seventh century A.D. and is referred to as the head-quarters of a small division, Tiruchirāppaḷḷi Uśāvaḍi,² under Dēvarāya I in the fifteenth century. There is the probability that the place is referred to by this name in the fourteenth century in a Puḍukoṭṭa Inscription of the eighth year of Tribhuvanachakravartin Parākrama Pāṇḍya which contains a signature Tiruchirāppaḷḷi Uḍaiyān. Hence it is clear that the Cobban of Ibn Batuta is no other than Kaṇṇanūr, and it is in that vicinity that the last battle of Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III was fought.

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¹ Md. 100 Ep. Car. iii.

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² Db. 14 Ep. Car. ix.

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³ It must be noted that the two names are not the same though they both refer to the same place. The first means 'lady of unsucked breast' a name of Pārvatī. The second means the hill unreachable. These are respectively the names of the Goddess and God, at Tiruvaṇṇāmalai.

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⁴ Vīra Baḷḷāḷa anointed his son with the style Vira Vijaya Virūpāksha Baḷḷāḷa. The new capital bears this name also in this record. Compare with these the statement of Ferishta that the Baḷḷāḷa called the city after his son's name Beeja. Briggs I. 427.

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⁵ Hoskote 43 Ep. Car. ix.

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¹ Bn. III. Ep. Car. ix.

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² A.S.R. 1907-08, p. 236, note 2.

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³ Mr. Rice notes the date as 1329 on page 107 of Mysore and Coorg from inscriptions. It is obviously an error as Śaka 1261 cannot be A.D. 1329.

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⁴ ‘ Vijitya viśvam Vijayābhidhānām viśvōttaram yō nagarīm viyadatta. CN. 156 of A.D. 1378 Ep. Car. v.

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⁵ Mr. 82 Ep. Car. 10.

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¹ Kd. 75. Ep. Car. vi.

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² Mr. Rice has wrongly read the name as Beribi (Mysore and Coorg) from inscriptions, page 108. This error is found in the translation of Kd. 75. Ep. Car. vi. The transliteration gives it as Chirichi-paḷiyalu. The Kannaḍa version gives it Chirichi-paḷi. Hence the difficulty and the need for verification.

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¹ Sen Tamil, vol. 4, p. 515, reprinted with translation below.

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¹ Consult Orme's early campaigns of the British in this locality, or better Mr. Hemingway's Trichinopoly Gazetteer.

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² Ep. Rep. for 1914, sec. 27.

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About eleven months after this event we have a record of a grant made on the occasion of the coronation of the Hoysala prince by Baḷḷappa Daṇṇāyaka. This Baḷḷappa figures several times in the records of Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III, and it is just possible that he was ‘the son-in-law of the Baḷḷāḷa’ of the Kolar records. In this grant which is dated Śaka 1265 Svabhānu, sometime in A.D. 1343 (July-August), Vīra Baḷḷāḷa is not mentioned as ruler, and we are therefore led to infer that this time it is the anointment of the prince as sovereign. The last record of this new ruler, who might for convenience be named Baḷḷāḷa IV, or Virūpāksha Baḷḷāḷa, is one dated the following Vyaya which refers itself to the time of Baḷḷāḷarāya. This would be the equivalent of A.D. 1346-47, and we hear no more of the Hoysalas after this date.

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Ibn Batuta in South India.—It was during this period that the Algerian traveller Ibn Batuta who entered India in A.D. 1333 and resided in the court of Sultan Muhammad for about ten years, stayed sometime in South India in the course of his embassy to China in behalf of the emperor. Sultan Muhammad received an embassy from China requesting permission to repair or rebuild a temple in a place called Sambhal, probably the one in Eastern Rajputana. The Sultan declined permission on the ground that under the Muhammadan law it was not permissible to allow of the erection of heretical temples unless those that wish to build them paid the Jiziya (poll-tax on infidels). If the Celestial Emperor would agree to put himself on those terms Muhammad would have no objection to grant the permission. Ibn Batuta with the necessary paraphernalia of the mission started from Delhi and proceeded across India to the coast of Konkan, wherefrom he proceeded along the coast by way of Goa, but took ship for Calicut at a port called Kandahar. He halted at Honawar (Hinur) where he remained a guest of Sultan Jamalu-d-din Muhammad. After a three days' sail from there he reached the island Sindabur; therefrom he set forward on the two months' march along the coast to Kuḷam (Quilon). He had to pass through the territory of ‘the twelve Sultans of Malabar,’ passing through the towns of Abusah and Fakanur. He came to Mangalore after a three days' sail from the latter place.

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The next important port that he touched at was Hili (near Cannanore) which at that time was one of the three ports of call for the Chinese merchants on the Malabar coast, namely, Hili, Calicut and Kuḷam. Starting again from there, he passed Jarfattan and two other coast towns, Dahfattan and Budfattan, till he reached Fandaraina. Starting thence he reached Calicut where the embassy was to take ship on its voyage to China. There happened to be at the time in this port thirteen Chinese vessels composed of the three kinds; large ships or Junks, the middle-sized ones called *Zan*, and the small ones known as *Kakams*. Each junk was manned by 600 sailors and carried 400 warriors. They contained decks, cabins, saloons and holds for merchandize. Each oar of these ships was worked by fifteen men, and every junk was accompanied by three of the smaller craft. Three of these ships were set apart for the imperial mission, and before all of the men could embark all the junks had to leave the port owing to stress of weather, and several of them suffered shipwreck. Ibn Batuta who remained on the shore was left there and the Kakam containing all his belongings set sail as soon as it saw the fate that had overtaken the fleet as a whole. Ibn Batuta hearing that the Kakam would put in at Kuḷam started towards the place by the river-way and reached Kuḷam in safety in ten days. He found it a handsome town frequented by Chinese merchants, the port being most conveniently situated for them.

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The town was under its Hindu ruler. He therefore met the Chinese envoys who had travelled down from Delhi and who had also suffered shipwreck in the voyage. Giving up the idea of returning to Delhi which he entertained for a little while, he accepted the advice of an imperial agent at Calicut and proceeded to Honawar, where he was the respected guest of the Sultan. He took part in an expedition against the island of Sindabur which was ultimately conquered by the Sultan of Honawar. While there he learnt from two of his slaves that managed to return to India, that all his property including his slaves were taken possession of by others and had been dispersed over Java, China and Bengal. Notwithstanding this depressing news he returned to Sindabur as he promised, and, as disturbances broke out there again, he left the place and reaching Calicut resolved to pay a visit to the Maldive islands. There he stayed for sometime and contracted relations that made his departure difficult. Finally he managed to obtain permission to depart. He out. It is just possible that he also fell in fighting against the Sultans of Madura about that particular period, say about A.D. 1345, that Muhammad bin Tughlak had involved himself in the greatest difficulties in his empire, and there was a famine if the chronology of the Muhammadan historians could be accepted without question.

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The Sultan, Muhammad, perpetrated the double blunder of recalling the capable Katlagh Khan from Deogir and appointing the incompetent and unpopular slave Aziz Himar, Governor of Malva, whose perfidy to ‘the foreign amirs’, at the instance of the Sultan himself, created the rebellion in Gujarat which terminated only after the death of the Sultan. Nasarat Khan broke out in rebellion in Bidar and Einu-l-Mulk of Oudh followed near the imperial head-quarters at Sarg-Dwari. It is to this date that the Muhammadan historians refer the rising in Telingana under Krishnappa Nayaka,¹ one of the sons of Pratāparudra II of Warangal. This series of rebellions all over the empire would not have been lost upon the more distant south. There is an inscription of date A.D. 1328 when a Māchaya Daṇṇāyaka was ruling at Penugoṇḍa as a subordinate of Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III. Somewhat later Ibn Batuta himself says that his friend at Honawar, Jamalu-d-din Muhammad was the greatest Sultan in the West Coast. He was himself subordinate to ‘an infidel king whose name is Horaib.’ This Horaib could be no other than Hariappa Uḍaiyar or Harihara, the eldest of the five brothers to whom is given the credit of having founded the empire of Vijayanagar. This must have been before A.D. 1344. The latest known date for this Harihara is A.D. 1346.¹ A record of date equal to A. D.

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1352 (Śaka 1274)² refers to ‘Vīra Bukka Rāyalu, ruling at Dhorasamudra and Penugoṇḍa.’ The same grant refers to Bukka as an ‘elevator of the Hoysala empire.’ It would be difficult to regard this position of Bukka as having been achieved in a very short time, and by a person unconnected with the Hoysala administration. There is one other fact which exhibits a similar tendency and which must be noted here. In the early wars of Alau-d-din Bahmani when he marched south from Daulatabad after the death of Muhammad bin Tughlak there figures on the southern frontier, and therefore the more uncertain frontier of his, a Hindu chieftain by name Harib in the region of the Konkan coast up to Jamkhaṇḍi. A little further to the east of it between Bijapur and Gulbarga figures another Hindu chief by name Kapras; and further east another Hindu chieftain still of the name Kampraz. This has reference to the year A.D. 1352. These three Hindu chieftains are obviously no other than Hariappa (Harib), Bukkappa Razu (Kapraz) and Kampa Razu (Kampana, Kamparazu), the three elder of the five brothers to whom inscriptions of the time ascribe the foundation of the empire of Vijayanagar; the two other brothers Muddappa and Mārappa are found just behind this front line.

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One of them was the Viceroy obviously under Hariappa of the Malē and Tuḷu Rājya with his capital at Āraga in the Shimoga district of Mysore, and the other was in charge of Muḷbāgal Mahārājya in the south-eastern corner of Mysore, and fronting the Tamil country. This series of facts that emerge from a scrutiny of the inscriptional records of the period leads necessarily to the inference that the wars were still going on, and the kingdom of the Hoysala had to fight on the two sides, of which the northern side presented this impenetrable wall of garrisons under the five brothers, fighting to stem the new flood of Bahmani invasions and keep it within its bounds.

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¹ This was apparently the eldest son and successor of Pratāparudra who died according to Shamsi Siraj Afif on his way to Delhi whereto Muhammad sent him probably in A.D. 1328. (Elliott iii. 367). This is confirmed by a Telugu historical manuscript Pratāpacharitam, according to which his death took place at Mantenna on the Godavari. This Mantenna is otherwise called Mantrakūṭa and figures in the inscriptions of the Kākatīya Rudra I (vide Anamakonda Ins. *Indian Antiquary*, xi. 20.)

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¹ A. S. R. 1907-08, p. 236 and Refces. in Note 7.

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² Ep. Rep. for 1918, Sec. 47.

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Vijayanagar : East General View from the Hēmakūṭam Hill (by permission of the Madras Archæological Department)

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The explanation of the break in the coinage of the Sultans of Madura.—What actually did take place in the same period on the southern frontier is not equally clear; but a record at Tirukaḷākkuḍi referring itself to the thirty-first year of a Māravarman Vīra Pāṇḍya, which gives details of date to equate it satisfactorily, refers to the conquest of the Muhammadans in the south by Kumāra Kampana, the son of the third of the five brothers, Bukka. This record states ‘the times were Tulukkan (Muhammadan) times; the *dēvadāna* (gifts to gods) lands of the gods were taxed with *kuḍimai* (dues of cultivation); the temple worship, however, had to be conducted without any reduction; the *uḷavu* or cultivation of the temple lands was done by turns by the tenants of the village; at this juncture Kampana Uḍaiyār came on his southern campaigns, destroying Tulukkans, established a stable administration throughout the country and appointed many chiefs (Nāyakkanmār) for inspection and supervision in order that the worship in all temples might be revived regularly as of old.’¹ The date of this record from the astronomical details given has been equated with A.D. 1358 (Friday, September 7). If by 1358 all this had been done by Kumāra Kampana—and there is no particular reason to doubt the record—then the invasion by Kampana of the south must have taken place somewhat earlier. Does this not offer the explanation of the break in the coinage of the Sultans of Madura? If it does, it means the Vijayanagar invasions had taken place during this period, and either the Madura Sultan Nasiru-d-din himself (or his successor) had suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Hindus and the rule of the Muhammadans had been put an end to, at least temporarily. Its revival about this time, A.D. 1355-56, in Madura must be a comparatively faint effort, and when even the nominal rule in Madura was put an end to sometime in A.D. 1375-6, the time had arrived for the Vijayanagar ruler Harihara II to announce himself formally to the world as the ‘Emperor of the South’.

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