Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c7.s1.16

v1.c7.s1.16

The forces of Islām soon spread themselves over the major portion of the land. From A.D. 1306, when Mālik Kāfūr started to subdue the Deccan,⁵ till about A.D. 1330, Dēvagiri, Warangal, and even Dōrasamudra fell. In A.D. 1309 that indomitable general invaded Warangal,—which was then under the Hindu Rāja whom Firishtah calls Ludder Deo (Rudra Dēva or Pratāpa Rudra Dēva),—by way of Dēvagiri.⁶ In the next year he marched against Dōrasamudra, the seat of the Hoysalas, and Ma'bar (i.e., the west coast) and took "Bilal Deo, Rāya of the Carnatic, prisoner".⁷ As the Ta'rīkhi-Firūz Shāhi gives it, "at the first onslaught Bilāl Rāi fell into the hands of the Muhammadans, and Dhūr Samundar was captured. Thirty-six elephants, and all the treasures of the palace, fell into the hands of the victors".⁸ The Minister for Peace and War, it may incidentally be noted, in the year A.D. 1309 was one Dēvappa Hariappa, the *sarvādhikāri* of Haḍavalike-nāḍ.¹ And the ruler who suffered the ignominious defeat was Ballāḷa III. That the Hoysalas received a crushing blow on this occasion there can be no doubt.² An inscription dated A.D. 1313 speaks of Ballāḷa Rāya, son of Vira Ballāḷa III, entering the city from Delhi, and the remission of all the taxes by the king as a mark of universal rejoicing. "When Pratāpa Chakravarti Hoysaṇa Vira Ballāḷa Dēvarasa was ruling a peaceful kingdom, after the Turuka war, on the occasion of his son Vira Ballāḷa Rāya, from Dilli entering the city on May 6th, 1313 (*Pramādhi-saṃvasarada Jēṣṭa- śudha- dasamiyalli*), he released the taxes, old and new, and those for destruction and injustice in Chikka Kūḍali and Hanasavāḍi, belonging to the god Rāmanātha of Kūḍali".³