The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.182

v3.c29.182

It was during his reign that the Sāluva chieftain, whose ancestral territory lay around Chandragiri or Nārāyanavanām in the modern district of Chittūr, and whose ancestors for a few generations had been working loyally in behalf of the kingdom, comes into prominent notice. Mangū or Mangirāja of this family bore an honourable share in the southern campaigns of prince Kampana, and his successors, several of them held important positions in the state, and one of them had married into the royal family. Narasimha or Narasingha found an opportunity for signal achievement in the aggressive activities of the monarchs of Orissa who had penetrated certainly as far as Nellore, and either at this time or a little later, as far south as the South Arcot district. He developed his resources early and gradually extended his influence in the neighbouring provinces of the kingdom of Vijayanagar so as to be able to offer effective resistance to these aggressions. He was so far successful that his control was more or less acknowledged over the greater part of the kingdom. Having thus consolidated his position he marched into the southern possessions of Orissa and gradually pushed the invaders back so that when the attention of Muhammad Shāh Bahmanī III was drawn to the political condition of the Telingāna coast about 1476, he found Sāluva Narasimha posted in great strength on the banks of the Godāvarī at Rājahmundry. Muhammad's efforts to dislodge him do not appear to have been attended with success, and he had to content himself merely by carrying a raid across his territory as far south as Kānchī¹. While Narasimha was opposing the Bahmanī king, a change had taken place in the kingdom of Vijayanagar; either Mallikārjuna died, or was put to death by a younger brother, by name Virūpāksha. This latter, whether guilty of his brother's death or no, put to death all who could dispute his possession of the throne, and carried on the administration so inefficiently and oppressively that the eastern and southern provinces transferred their allegiance to Narasimha. On the west coast his maladministration caused the Arab horse-traders who had settlements on the west coast to transfer their places of business from the ports of the kingdom to those beyond the Vijayanagar frontier. Sāluva Narasimha decided that the only way of saving the kingdom was to depose Virūpāksha and seize the throne for himself, and in 1487 Narasa, who commanded his troops, deposed the tyrant and assumed the government of the kingdom on behalf of his master. This was the first usurpation in the kingdom, and Narasimha found his justification in the perils which menaced it. Virūpāksha's reign corresponded with the reign of Purushottama Gajapati of Orissa. Purushottama's records assert that he penetrated as far south as Kānchī, carried off a princess of Kānchī, and married her in peculiarly romantic circumstances. Narasimha ruled as king for six years, during which period he recovered most of the revolted provinces, but failed to conquer the Rāichūr Doāb, which was retained by the Bahmanī kingdom, or to recover Udayagiri, which remained in the possession of the raja of Orissa. On his death-bed he entrusted the kingdom and his two sons to Narasa, begging him to carry on the administration, to enthrone whichever of his two sons should prove the fitter for rule, and to recover Rāichūr, Umagal, and Udayagiri. Narasa placed one of Narasimha's young sons on the throne, but this prince died as the result of wounds that he received in an expedition into the Rāichūr Doāb. Narasa circumvented court intrigues, placed the second son of Narasimha upon the throne, and carried on the administration as before. He died in 1505, and it was his son, Vīra Narasimha, that deposed the Sāluva ruler Narasimha II.