Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c7.s1.10

v1.c7.s1.10

But troubles were soon to befall the Yādavas. About the year A.D. 1294 'Alā-ud-dīn, the nephew of Jalāl-ud-dīn, the Khilji Emperor of Delhi, discovered Dēvagiri.⁴ And the story that followed is easily told. The Islāmic career of conquest which began in A.D. 1000 in northern India had come to stay, so it appeared, even in southern India. 'Alā-ud-dīn returned to Delhi laden with "six hundred maunds of pearls, two maunds of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires, one thousand maunds of silver, and four thousand pieces of silk, besides," continues Firishtah, "a long list of other precious commodities, to which reason forbids us to give credit".¹ This event, which led to the subjugation of Dēvagiri, is ascribed by Dr. Fleet, who bases his remarks on the accounts of Firishtah, to the year A.D. 1294. Sewell would have the event placed in A.D. 1293.² There is reason to believe, however, that the Muhammadan menace had already come to the land, even as far as the Hoysala-nāḍu, fifteen years earlier; for we find in a copper-plate grant from Bēlūr dated A.D. 1278, of the times of Vira Narasimha, who was ruling from the royal city of Dōrasamudra, that arrangements were made "to provide for the taxes which the residents from all parts in Vāraṇāsi must pay to the Turushkas".³ This compulsory levy, which was meant to eradicate an evil, only put off the danger for a worse day. The year A.D. 1278, therefore, may be taken to be the earliest date of the advent of the northern Muhammadan arms into the Karṇāṭaka proper.⁴