History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c28.9

Language: English

v1.c28.9.1

Kapilendra had succeeded in conquering the whole of the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal as far as the South Arcot district. Except Khāravela no other king of Kaliṅga or Orissa had succeeded in ruling over such a wide stretch of the eastern coastland. His occupation of the South Arcot district was not temporary, as it lasted for over ten years. Neither was it a mere raid, as two inscriptions discovered in the villages of Munnur and Jambai clearly indicate. A considerable amount of misunderstanding exists amongst scholars, especially those who hail from Southern India about the true nature of the conquest of Kapileśvara in the Tamil country. With the exception of these two inscriptions in the South Arcot district, Kapilendra is chiefly known to us from votive records discovered at Bhuvaneśvara, Jagannātha temples in the Puri district of Orissa, the temple of Śrīkurmam in the Ganjam district of Madras, and a charter of a feudatory named Gāṇadeva of Koṇḍavīḍu in the Telugu or Andhra country. We are not in a position to determine the exact chronology of events of the reign of Kapileśvara from these records, as most of them are votive inscriptions. We get some help from the *Tārīkh-i-Firiṣta* and the *Burhān-i-Ma’āṣir*, but these records are always unreliable where Hindu kingdoms are concerned. Kapilendra was the contemporary of Bahmanī Sulṭān’ Alāuddin Aḥmad II, who ascended the throne on the 21st February, 1435.

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One of the earliest events mentioned in the *Burhān-i-Ma’āṣir* is the attempt on the part of the Bahmanī Sulṭān to conquer the uplands of the Telugu country. It is stated in this work that the leader of the Hindu chief of the highland of Telingana or that part of the Telugu-speaking country which lay above the ghats, was an Oriya. Kapileśvara is not mentioned by name but the statement in the Musalman history about the number of elephants possessed by this Oṛiyā chief proves that he was no ordinary chief but the great Gajapati king himself. This statement proves that soon after his accession Kapilendra was in possession of the Telugu country, not only the flat coastland between the foot of the Eastern Ghats and the Bay but also the greater portion of the eastern edge of the Deccan plateau, which the Musalmans had not yet succeeded in subduing. The Burhān-i-Ma'āṣir states that a chief named Sanjar Khān was engaged in the delightful pastime of raiding Hindu kingdoms and capturing non-combatants in order to sell them as slaves in Musalman kingdoms. Hearing this, the Bahmanī Sultan 'Alāuddin Aḥmad Shāh is stated to have said that it was dangerous to meddle with a man who possessed more than two hundred thousands war elephants, while he himself did not possess even two hundred. This is just the beginning of Kapilendra's activities outside Orissa proper, when he started to increase the original limits of the kingdom of the Gaṅgas to found an empire.

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According to the same Musalman history, a rebel chief named Muḥammad Khān was appointed to govern the district of Rāyāchal.¹ Though Varaṅgal was occupied in 1423, the northern districts of Telingana both above and below the Ghats remained to be conquered. According to the Tārīkh-i-Firishta Humāyūn Shāh Bahmanī desired to consolidate the conquest of Varaṅgal or Eka-śilā-nagarī by subduing the outlying districts. Khwājah-i Jahān was sent with a large army to capture Devārkoṇḍa. The Telugu chief of that place appealed to Kapilendra for help who was possibly his suzerain. Kapilendra marched so swiftly to the relief of Devārkoṇḍa that he caught the Musalman army unwares. The besieged Hindus also sallied out and attacked the besiegers from the other side. Caught at a disadvantage between two armies, Khwājah-i-Jahān was compelled to seek safety in flight. According to *Firishta* this battle took place approximately in A. H. 864=1459 A. D. The Bahmanīs never again attempted to conquer any part of Telingana during the lifetime of Kapilendra and the Musalman historians had to invent plausible excuses for this disgraceful defeat of the Musalman army and the subsequent failure of Humāyūn Shāh Bahmanī to retrieve the prestige of Bahmanī arms. It is possible that on this occasion, or a little before that, Kapilendra wiped out the Reḍḍi kings of Koṇḍavīḍu and other places. This was the relation between the Bahmanī Sulṭāns and the newly founded empire of Orissa.

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A Sanskrit drama named *Gaṅgādāsa-Pratāpa-Vilāsam* by Gaṅgādhara states that after the death of Devarāya II the Bahmanī Sulṭan combined with the Gajapati king and invaded Vijayanagara territories,¹ but were defeated by the Vijayanagara emperor Mallikārjuna. Both statements are unreliable, because, in the first instance, the relations of Kapilendra Gajapati were never cordial with Devarāya II and his death was hailed with great delight and relief by the Musalmans of the Deccan. Devarāya II died in February 1449 and the accession of his son Mallikārjuna took place in the same year. The war with the combined armies of Kapilendra and 'Alāuddīn Aḥmad II (1436-58) must have taken place in 1451. A war had indeed taken place, because the inscriptions of Kapilendra discovered in the South Arcot district prove that his occupation of the northern portion of the Tamil districts lasted for more than ten years.

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It is impossible, for reasons mentioned above, that Kapilendra had allied himself with the Musalmans of the Bahmanī State and, in the second place, it is absolutely impossible to credit the dramatist Gaṅgādhara and believe that Mallikārjuna was successful in repelling the invasion, because the Jambai inscription in the South Arcot district states clearly that the repairs to the temple of Śiva had ceased for ten years before 1472-73.¹ Two inscriptions discovered at Muṇṇur in the South Arcot district prove that Kapileśvara had conquered the whole of the northern districts of the Tamil country as far as Tiruvarur in the Tanjore district and Trichinopoly. These two inscriptions are dated Śaka 1386=1464-65 A. D. The king mentioned is Kapileśvara or Kapilendra, but the form of the titles is queer : *Dakṣiṇa-Kapileśvara-Kumāra-Mahāpātra*. The inscription records the gift of some land for the *Ahamvīra-bhoga* and repairs to the temples of Perumal-Purushottama and Tirumala-ttanamudaiya Śiva in the village of Muṇṇur in the *Taluga* of the same name on Thursday of the bright half of Puṣyā of the Śaka year 1386=7th June 1464. A. D. This record proves that inspite of the queerness of the title Kapilendra was the master of the South Arcot district even towards the close of the reign of Mallikārjuna of Vijayanagara. A copy of the same inscription was found on the east and north walls of the deserted temple of Viṣṇu in the same village.

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The first record is to be seen on the east wall of the central shrine in the Āḍavalleśvara temple.¹ Gaṅgādhara’s statement can, therefore, be rejected completely. The Munṇur inscriptions prove that even in 1464 Kapilendra was in possession of almost the entire eastern sea-board of the Vijayanagara empire. In his chapter of the Vijayanagara history Professor S. K. Ayyangar has once more repeated his previous statement and ignored the more reliable contemporary record.² Even that learned South Indian Epigraphist, the late Mr. H. Krishna Sastri, was compelled to admit that, “it establishes also that the earlier conquest by Gajapati was not a passing inroad only but almost an occupation of the southern country right upto Tiruvarur in the Tanjore district and Trichinopoly.³ Inscription No. 1 of 1905 clearly indicates that Kapilendra’s conquest of the South Arcot and Tanjore districts took place about 10 years before 1471, *i. e.*, sometime before 1461. These three records prove that the emperor Mallikārjuna of Vijayanagara, instead of succeeding in driving out Kapilendra, was so far humiliated as to consent tacitly to the cession of the eastern districts of the Vijayanagara Empire to Gajapati Kapilendradeva of Orissa. As Mallikārjuna ruled till 1467,⁴ no other construction can be put on the evidence of the inscriptions of Kapilendra discovered in the South Arcot district. These districts were never recovered by the emperors of the Yādava or Vodeyar dynasty.

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After Kapilendra’s death, when the empire became divided, Sāḷuva-Narasiṁha succeeded in reconquering the country as far as the mouth of the Godāvarī.