History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c79.s1: § 2. The Nayak family of Shorapur.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c79.s1
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§ 2. The Nayak family of Shorapur.
v5.c79.s1.1
The cradle-land of the Berads was Mysore, from which they advanced into the Raichur doab and then further north into the country beyond the Krishna and even the Bhima. We are here concerned only with the Berad Nayaks or chieftains of Shorapur, lying in the fork between the Krishna and the Bhima. Their earliest capital was Sagar, some 72 miles east of Bijapur city. When this was lost to the Mughals (1687), the Nayak built a new capital at Wagingera, twelve miles south-west of Sagar. At the close of Aurangzib's reign even this fort was taken from him, and the Nayak removed his seat to Shorapur, on the eastern face of the same hill-mass as Wagingera and four miles from it. Here the last of their princes, though brought up by Colonel Meadows Taylor with fatherly care, joined the Sepoy Mutiny, and when captured and sentenced to confinement shot himself dead (1858). With him the line ended.
v5.c79.s1.2
∗ Meadows Taylor's *Story of My Life*, 3rd ed., 144, 210—213. *Bombay Gazetteer*, xxi. 163, xxiii. 91.
v5.c79.s1.3
The Berad principality is now included in the Nizam's territory, but in the seventeenth century it was a vassal State of the kings of Bijapur. Pam Nayak,[*] its ruler, had loyally helped his sovereign Adil Shah during Aurangzib's siege of Bijapur (1686), and six years earlier had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mughal general Dilir Khan. But in November 1687 he had been attacked by an imperial army under Khanazad Khan and forced to give up his kingdom and fort of Sagar and visit Aurangzib's Court at Bijapur, where he died in a few days.
v5.c79.s1.4
∗ This name is given variously in M.A.—Padam (p. 239), Pam (490 and 491), and Pid (264, 304 and 305). The Dilkasha calls him Pam (95a).
v5.c79.s1.5
The position of the Berad country, midway between Bijapur and Golkonda, and the martial but predatory character of its people made it very necessary for Aurangzib to keep it under his control. Bijapur is only 72 miles west, the rich and holy city of Kulbarga is 50 miles to the north, and the important strategic post of Malkhed (the gate to the Haidarabad kingdom) is some 45 miles north-east of Sagar. The whole of the country bounded by these three towns, and even Bidar (60 miles north-east of Kulbarga) and Raichur (in the south, across the Krishna), lay within easy range of the raids of these unsubdued savages. Having lost their dominion at the surrender of 1687, their chiefs had now no resource left to them except to rebel, build new strongholds among the hills, and rob the Mughal territory around in imitation of the Marathas and afterwards in concert with them. The examples of the profitable defiance of the imperial power set by Dhana Jadav and Santa Ghorpare were not lost upon the Berad leaders. The Kulbarga district was kept in constant disturbance and the roads were closed to caravans by persistent but elusive bands of Berad horsemen for many years after the fall of Sagar. [Akhbarat.]