South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c14.s1.67

c14.s1.67

The two inscriptions of which the text and translation follow are records relating to Muhammadan rule and are dated in the Hijira years 761 and 771 respectively. The first of them at Tirukkolakkuḍi in the Tiruppattūr Taluk of the Ramnad District is noticed by the Epigraphist in his Report, and as there is no actual indication of the era of the date 761 it is referred to the Kollam era of Malabar beginning with the year A.D. 825. On this basis the two inscriptions would be respectively of dates A.D. 1586 and 1596. This would be a period with which the substance of the inscriptions would hardly agree. That was the period of the Vijayanagar emperor Veṅkaṭapati Rāya in whose time the authority of Vijayanagar was acknowledged in the south, and there were no powerful Muhammadan potentates whose authority could have been acknowledged in the same region. But the matter is now put beyond a doubt that these refer to the Hijira era by the name of the month in the second inscription which apparently was not known to the epigraphist at the time that that report was issued. It refers to the year 771 of a Rājādhirāja Sakalaṇṛapakulakkōn. This gives us no lead except the suspicion that that 771 might be a Hijira date.