Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c17.s3.t2.13

v2.c17.s3.t2.13

In the light of this observation it is not too much to say, we believe, that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and earlier, perhaps when orthodoxy was rampant among the people, the attachment of the parents to the children and the regard of the latter for the former must also have been especially noticeable. This only can explain the following epigraphs which deal with the filial love of the people. Honnana Gauḍa, son of Chikkaṇa Gauḍa, of Ānevāḷa, in about A.D. 1430, erected the basti of Brahma-dēva and Padmāvati, in order that Bommaṇṇa Gauḍa, the son born to him might obtain merit.² What precisely they meant by the phrase might obtain merit (puṇyav āgabēk endu) is told to us in a record dated A.D. 1590 which says that Piriya Rājayya Dēva Mahā-arasu, son of Śrīkaṇṭha Rājayya, king of Nañjarāyapaṭṭaṇa, in order that his (?) adopted son Prāṇadhāreya Piri-Oḍeyar might attain to Kailāsa, made in his name a grant of Pirisamudra for the lights of the Kārttika-pūjā of the god Annadāni-Mallikārjuna of Śrigiri.³ As regards the attachment which a mother felt for her daughter, we have an epigraph dated A. D. 1530 which relates that when Vīra Bhairava Oḍeyar was ruling over Kārkaḷa, and his younger sister Kāḷala Dēvī was protecting the Bāguñji-sīme, on the death of her daughter Ramā Dēvī, she gave in her name gifts in kind and money for the offerings of the god of Kallabasti in Tuḷuva.¹