The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.188

v3.c29.188

Krishna next attacked the fortress of Kondavīdu (Kondavir) and a number of fortified places of lesser importance held for the Raja of Orissa in the neighbourhood. These he reduced in spite of the assistance which they received from the Sultans of Bīdar and Golconda, and he finally carried the fortress of Kondavīdu itself by storm. Here he took prisoner the Gajapati prince Vīrabhadra and a number of Orissa noblemen of high rank. All this took place in the first half of the year 1515. After a raid into the kingdom of Golconda he broke up his camp at Bezwāda and besieged and took Kondapalli, capturing the officers who held it for the Raja of Orissa. He then marched north-eastwards as far as Simhāchalam in the Vizagapatam district, taking several fortresses on his way. Here he halted and opened negotiations with the Raja of Orissa, who gave him a daughter in marriage and accepted the Krishna as the boundary between the kingdoms of Orissa and Vijayanagar, the retrocession of the territory to the south of that river being effected under the form of bestowing it on the princess as her dowry. Krishna’s achievement was meagre. He had fulfilled only part of his father’s behest, and had but recovered a province which had formerly belonged to the kingdom which he ruled: yet he was not ashamed to assume the vainglorious title of *Gajapatisaptāngaharana*, or appropriator of (Orissa’s) seven elements of royalty. On his return journey he was on the banks of the Krishna in July—August, 1516. After his return from this war he made large grants to temples in southern India for the repair of the damages which they had suffered in the Muhammadan invasions and built the small town of Hospet in memory of his mother Nāgalādēvi, giving it the name Nāgalāpura. At some time between the death of Yūsuf ‘Ādil Shāh in 1510 and this period Krishna’s troops, profiting by the discussions between the five kingdoms of the Deccan, had invaded and annexed the Rāichūr Doāb, and in 1520 Ismā‘īl ‘Ādil Shāh attempted to recover it, but was defeated¹. The battle, which is mentioned in one of Krishna’s inscriptions, was fought on May 19, 1520, at a place named Kembhāvī (‘Red Well’) and a Telugu poem exults in the reddening of the well with the blood of the Yavanas, or Muslims.