The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s18.2

c8.s18.2

With the preceding chapter, the history of the supreme dynasties ends. But the account would not be complete without a detailed notice of some of the more important feudatory families, hitherto mentioned only incidentally, by the agency of which,—in addition to the *Mahâpradhânas*, *Daṇḍanâyakas*, and other officials,—the paramount sovereigns carried on the administration of their dominions. The members of these great feudatory families enjoyed a status very different from that of the ordinary officials; inasmuch as,—instead of being only individual officers, of haphazard origin, selected for their personal abilities and invested with special powers, and transmitting their authority perhaps for a couple of generations, but seldom, if ever, for more,—they were the hereditary governors of provinces: and, though unquestionably subordinate to whatever dynasty from time to time exercised the supreme sway, they evidently possessed certain powers, *e. g.* the right of waging war with each other, which fell but little short of actual sovereignty, and occasionally assumed an attitude which rendered it necessary for the paramount sovereigns to undertake operations against them and reduce them to obedience, as, for instance, when Vikramâditya VI. deputed the Sinda prince Âchugi II. to repulse the Hoysalas and to attack the Kâdambas of Goa.¹ Their half-independent position is indicated, sometimes by the absence of any reference in their records to the supreme sovereigns; sometimes by the use of a technical expression, to indicate the nature of their power, which is intermediate between the technical expressions of paramount sovereignty and of inferior governorship;² and sometimes by their records being dated in their own regnal years. On the other hand, that they were always feudatory in theory, is explicitly shewn, by the mention of the paramount sovereigns in the preambles of their records, followed by the use of the technical expression, of feudatory subordination in connection with their own names, and sometimes simply by the records being dated in the regnal years of the paramount kings.