Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c20.s3.15

v2.c20.s3.15

We shall presently have an occasion of referring to the public women who accompanied the army. But it was not only women of this kind who went with the army. We have evidence of queens who accompanied the king during his campaigns. Chinnādēviammā and Tirumalādēviammā were with Kṛṣṇa Dēva Rāya when in A.D. 1515 he conducted the siege of Koṇḍavīḍu. It was in the company of these two that the Emperor visited the temple of Amarēśvara near Dharaṇikōṭa where he bestowed the munificent gifts known as tulāpurusha, sapta-sāgara, and presented some villages to it.² Women seem to have carried on fights in which they had lost their husbands. In A.D. 1386 or thereabouts, Bommambe, wife Mahāvīra Mādarakāḷa, continued the fight in which her husband died and lost her life too.³