The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.147

v3.c29.147

In 1123 Vishnu is again on the banks of the Kāveri while his northern boundary is described as the Pērddore, that is, the river Krishna. In 1128 he is in his royal residence at Yādavapura (Mēlkōtte), and makes a grant from there to Mārbalatīrtha, the Saiva shrine on the Chāmundi Hill in Mysore. It was in this year that the Chālukya king Vikramāditya died, and his great contemporary Kulottunga died about a decade earlier and was succeeded by his son Vikrama Chola. This last seems to have carefully checked Hoysala aggression in the south so that Vishnu had to devote himself to acquiring territory in the north. Vikramāditya was succeeded by his son Sōmēsvara, with the title ‘Bhūlōkamalla.’ During the first year of his reign the boundaries of the Hoysala territory are defined exactly as before, with Sāvimalai for the northern limit. The new succession seems to have stimulated Vishnu’s activities afresh, and this renewed activity seems to have frightened Sōmēsvara. Even while Vikramāditya was alive this aggressive activity of the Hoysala chieftain attracted the attention of the king, who deputed a number of his more loyal governors, chief among them the Kadambas of Goa and the Sinda chieftain of Elberga, to check the rising Hoysala. The Sinda chieftain Achugi II who like the Hoysala Ereyanga, Vishnu’s father, laid claim to having rendered valuable services to Vikramāditya in his usurpation, seems to have inflicted a check if not a defeat on Vishnu’s general Gangarāja, which constrained him to suspend activities for some time. These were renewed after the death of the great king. In 1130 we find the Hoysalas supreme over the whole of the present territory of Mysore with some territory in the region of Kongu along the foothills of the Ghāts, together with portions of the district of Dhārwār, Nolambavādi or Eastern Mysore being in large part still out of the Hoysala territory. Even within the narrow limits of this territory he had enemies yet to overcome, such as the Chengālva and Kongālva chiefs along the Western Ghats. Gangarāja seems to have been so devoted to the Jain faith that he is given credit for having restored all the Jain shrines destroyed during the repeated invasions of the Cholas, and made Mysore shine like Kōpana (Koppal in the Nizām’s dominions). For some years Vishnu was chiefly engaged in the north against the chiefs on the frontier for the final acquisition of Banavāsi and Nolambavādi. For, in spite of the Mysore records, inscriptions of Sōmēsvara III show a series of governors in charge of Banavāsi, and Vīra-Pāndya is said to have been ruling from Uchangi-durga, the province of Nolambāvadi 32,000. Chālukya records of 1137 for the first time show Vishnuvardhana to be the *Mahāmandalēsvara* in charge of Gangavādi, Nolambavādi and Banavāsi, constituting the whole of the present State of Mysore. This year, therefore, may be regarded as marking an epoch in the rise of the Hoysalas to independence, and the ten years between the death of Vikramāditya and this must have been a period of struggle to reach this assured position¹. Even so, Bankāpur in Dhārwār must be regarded as the northern limit of his conquests, all Hoysala statements to the contrary notwithstanding. Vishnuvardhana then must be credited with having succeeded in uniting the whole of the modern Mysore State under his rule; but he did not venture to assume the royal dignity. During the remaining years of his life he devoted himself to securing his position on the northern frontier where things were moving fast towards disruption. He marked his accession to royal power in this year by the performance of the royal act of ‘*tulā-purusha*².’ He weighed himself against gold and distributed it among Brāhmans and other deserving recipients of charitable gifts. The next year he had to repulse an invasion of Dvārasamudra by Jagad-dēva and himself laid siege to Hangal in Dhārwār thereby making it clear that his position in the north was far from certain.