Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c9.s4.8

v1.c9.s4.8

According to the Dharma-karta of the temple of Virūpāksha, who gave the information to Sewell, inscriptions in the temple record that the great gōpura of the first prākāra of the temple was originally built in A.D. 1199, when a certain Bōdhayya Rāya gave the village of Hampe, as a charitable gift for the use of the temple.³ The only ruler of the name of Bōdhayya Rāya known to Karṇāṭaka history is he who governed from his seat at Drugga in A.D. 1371.⁴ How a person could have given the village of Hampe to the temple which existed centuries before he built it, is a difficult matter to understand, especially when we realize the fact that in A.D. 1346 the sons of Sangama, whose patron deity was the god Virūpāksha of Hampe, had already declared themselves masters not only of Hampe proper but of the whole of the Karṇāṭaka. That the temple of Virūpāksha existed in that same year (A.D. 1199) is clear from an inscription of Śaka 1121 which mentions a grant of land by the son of Immaḍi Rājamalla, the ruler of Curagode-Chowdayah for the daily ceremony of Virūpāksha of Hampe.⁵ In the same year Hāchale, the wife of the same ruler Chauḍeya of the Serpent-race (Phaṇi-vaṃśa), granted lands for the maintenance of the same temple.⁶ The Hoysalas also continued the same tradition of bestowing grants on the temple. In A.D. 1236-7 the Pampāpati or Virūpāksha temple received gifts from the king Sōmēśvara.⁷