Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c9.s4.4

v1.c9.s4.4

The second name which has made the region famous is that of the god Virūpāksha, the patron deity of Hampe. The locality was known as Pampā-kshētra or Bhāskarakshētra.⁴ But the former was the more popular name of the two. Sewell records a tradition that at Pampā there existed a town as early as A.D. 1100.⁵ There is every reason to believe that a town existed at Hampe anterior to that date. Pampā is mentioned in a grant of the Western Chālukya ruler Vinayāditya dated in Saka 611 expired (A.D. 689-90).⁶ It has been suggested that the reference here is only to a *tirtha* and not to a town.⁷ Since Vinayāditya Satyāśraya would not have pitched his "victorious camp" "located on the bank of the Pampā”, if that region had not contained a temple in it, and since we cannot conceive of a Hindu temple in the early times without some sort of a town around it, we believe Pampā in A.D. 689-90 was perhaps a town of some celebrity. Indeed in the times of the Western Chālukya king Jegadēkamalla Jayasimha, Hampe was already a town. This we gather from an inscription dated Śaka 940 (A.D. 1018-9) which records a royal visit to Pampāpura.¹ In A.D. 1112 it figures as Svāmi-Pampā-sthala in a grant of the Western Chālukya general Mahādēva.²