South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13.s1.25.3

c13.s1.25.3

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’.