Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c9.s2.118

v1.c9.s2.118

This inscription is a copy of the famous original epigraph called the Rāmānujācharya inscription at Śravaṇa Belgoḷa which is styled in the collections "SB 136". Now, there is no mention made of the City of Vijayanagara in these two inscriptions. All the other capitals and an important city are spoken of—Aṇeguṇḍi, Hosapaṭṭaṇa, Penu-goṇḍa, and Kalyaha, although, we confess, that there is no evidence till now of the last one having been a place of much consequence. If the capital called Vijayanagara had been founded by the time these two inscriptions were inscribed, nothing prevented the people from mentioning it amongst the other centres of the land. Even supposing it had been omitted in the original Rāmānujācharya inscription, the residents of Kalyaha—a place which, because of the fact of the inscription having been found there, we suppose must have been important both to the Jainas and the Śrīvaishṇavas,—would have rectified the error by including the name of Vijayanagara in their inscription. For we cannot conceive of the Jainas existing only at the centres of Anegundi, Hosapaṭṭaṇa, Penugoṇḍa and Kalyaha and not at Vijayanagara. In fact, as we shall see later on, the Jainas in Vijayanagara itself, when that capital was constructed, were so numerous that temples were built for them both by a Vijayanagara monarch and by one of the great Jaina generals. Hence, the point to be noted is that when these two inscriptions ("SB 136" and "Mg. 18") were engraved, the city of Vijayanagara did not exist.