History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c28.9.6

v1.c28.9.6

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.