South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.15

c9.s2.15

The four kingdoms of the Peninsula.—India south of the Vindhyas in the last decade of the thirteenth century and the first of the fourteenth was thus divided into four well-marked kingdoms. The first was, as was stated above, the Yādava kingdom of Dēvagiri with its Capital at Dēvagiri (Deogir). It was ruled by the last great Yādava, Rāmacandra, who ascended the throne in A.D. 1271 and ruled till some time in A.D. 1309-10. The eastern half of the Dekhan and the Telingana coast was under Queen Rudrāmba of the Kākatīya dynasty with Capital at Warangal in the Nizam's Dominions. Sometime in A.D. 1291 she raised her grandson Pratāpa Rudra to the throne and retired. Pratāpa Rudra ruled from A.D. 1291 to A.D. 1328. The frontier of these two kingdoms came to almost a line drawn from Goa, or a little north, to the mouth of the northern Peṇṇār, somewhere to the east of Nellore. The whole country south of this was divided along a diagonal line say from Chidambaram or Cuddalore, along the main roads of traffic to Tiruvaṇṇamalai and Kundāṇi getting into the tableland a little way north of Hosur and from there to the Krishna, along eastern Mysore. The line proceeded further west along the mountains right down the Palghat gap to the sea. All north of the first line roughly belonged to the Hoysalas and all south to the Pāṇḍyas; the more open country along the coast right up to Nellore on the great Madura-Madras road, was a debatable frontier between these two powers. The last great ruler of the united Hoysala empire was Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III who succeeded his father Narasimha III in A.D. 1291-2 and ruled till his death in A.D. 1342. He was succeeded by a son Baḷḷāḷa IV, who perhaps ruled for three years more. All through this period the kingdom of the Pāṇḍyas in the south was held by a remarkably gifted ruler who gave the country peace and prosperity. This was Māravarman Kulaśekhara I, whose forty-fourth year we have records of. He ascended the throne in A.D. 1268 and ruled till sometime in A.D. 1311-2. The dissensions between his two sons brought in the Muhammadan intervention which took the form of the first Muhammadan invasion of the south.