Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c8.s16.13

c8.s16.13

He had a son by Pampā-Dēvī, who appears to have reigned next, under the name of Immaḍi-Bukka-Rāya or Bukka-Rāya II. But the reign was a very short one, of little more than a year. Dēva-Rāya or Pratāpa-Dēva-Rāya then succeeded, Harihara’s son by Mēlā-Dēvī or Malla-Dēvī, of the family of Rāma-Dēva, probably the Sēuna king. He also had the sons Chikka-Rāya-Oḍeyar, ruling in Āraga in the hill country to the west; and Virūpaṇṇa or Virūpāksha, who conquered the eastern countries down to and including Ceylon (EI. iii. 225), and in 1404 appears as if ruling in Vijayanagar (Tl 13). Perhaps he was a candidate for the throne on the death of his father. But Pratāpa-Dēva-Rāya gained it, and was crowned on the 7th of November 1406 (Hn 133). Some inscriptions seem to represent him as the founder of a Pratāpa dynasty. An interesting account is given in Dg 23 and 29 of the construction of a dam at Harihara in 1410 across the Haridrā. The struggles with the Musalmāns to the north continued unabated, and the pages of Firishta are filled with details relating to them. According to him, Dēva-Rāya, whom he calls Dewul-Roy, was forced to give his daughter in marriage to the Bahmani Sultān Fīrōz Shāh. At the end of his reign Dēva-Rāya inflicted a severe defeat upon the Sultān. A great slaughter of the Muhammadans followed, and the Bijāpur country was laid waste with all the treasured resentment of many years. These reverses killed Fīrōz Shāh. But his successor, Ahmed Shāh, drove back the Hindus, and desolated the possessions of Vijayanagar, massacring women and children without mercy. Whenever the number came to 20,000, he halted for three days and made a feast. The Hindus, in desperation, formed a plot against him, from which he escaped by a hair's breadth. Terms were then agreed to, and he retired to his own country, the capital of which he shortly removed from Gulbarga to Bīḍar, a hundred miles to the north.¹ Of these affairs there is little indication in our inscriptions, which generally represent the king as ruling a peaceful kingdom.