Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c7.s1.5

v1.c7.s1.5

The political situation in southern India towards the end of the thirteenth century necessitated the disappearance of the old order of things in matters connected with the government, and to some extent, in questions related to the morality of the people. Four principal royal families held the divided sovereignty of the land south of the Vindhyas; and it seemed as if every one of these failed to introduce a government strong enough to preserve Hindu society on the time-honoured principles of the ancients. The western part of India was ruled in the north by the Yādavas; the regions now known as the Karṇāṭaka and Kanara were under the sway of the Hoysalas; the whole of the Malabar coast was within the jurisdiction of the ancient royal families of Travancore, Cochin and Calicut. On the eastern side the Kākatīyas governed the regions around Warangal; and the south of their kingdom was nominally under the equally, or perhaps more, ancient royal families of the Chōḷas of Tamilakam and the Pāṇḍyas of Madura. To the Hoysalas alone, of all these, was handed down the right of holding the hegemony over southern India; and so we find that about the end of the thirteenth century, the Hoysala arms had spread over almost the whole of southern India, excepting the Malabar coast.³