South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c6.1

c6.1

IN the course of writing the introductory chapter to my forthcoming history of the Empire of Vijayanagar, I was led to an investigation of the actual circumstances under which that Empire came into being, and, as a consequence, the condition of South India on the eve of the Muhammadan invasions. The result of this investigation is set forth in the following six lectures delivered as ‘the Third Course of Special Lectures in the Department of Indian History and Archæology’ at the University of Madras. The first lecture traces the decadence of the Chola Empire, and shows how it split up into a number of chieftaincies. The disruption is traced to the pressure of the Pāṇḍyas from the South, the natural tendency to independence of the feudatories within, and a fratricidal war arising among the members of the Chola ruling family itself. The next traces the revival of the Pāṇḍya power which had been reduced to subordination by the Cholas very early in their imperial career. The re-assertion of their independence began with the weakening of the Chola power about the middle of the twelfth century, and culminated in the establishment of the Pāṇḍyas as one of only two South Indian Powers in the middle of the thirteenth. The third lecture concerns itself with the first invasions of the Dakhan by Alau-d-din and Malik Kafur. In the fourth it is pointed out that there is satisfactory evidence of Malik Kafur's invasion having reached as far south as Madura and Ramēśvaram, and that the character of the invasions had nothing of conquest or occupation of territory in it. The fifth lecture bears upon the career of Muhammad Tughlak and the character of the invasions of South India sent by him. Muhammad's policy was conquest and extension of his empire, and was thus opposed to that of Alau-d-din. Muhammad’s empire was, it is pointed out, the largest that the Muhammadan empire ever reached in India and carried in it the seed of dismemberment. An attempt is made to arrange the chronology of Muhammad’s reign on rational lines on the basis of the History of the Sultanate of Madura founded in his reign. The sixth contains a somewhat detailed exposition of the foundation and further history of the Sultanate of Madura, and its wars against the Hoysalas who, under their last great ruler, Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III made a patriotic effort to dislodge the Muhammadans from the South. The Hoysala King fell in the effort, and brought his dynasty to an end in carrying on this great national war of the Hindus. Some of the more prominent officers of his empire discharged their debt to cause and country by ultimately succeeding where their master had failed, and giving visible embodiment to their success in elevating to the dignity of ‘ Capital of the Empire ’ a new foundation of the last great Hoysala, Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III.