A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c16.24

c16.24

Prolaya Nāyaka was dead, but his work was continued by his cousin Kāpaya. He saw that the considerable number of amirs and their slaves, the Muslim merchants and the numbers of Hindu converts to Islam scattered all over the country, might throw effective obstacles in the way of his attempts to restore Hindu rule and Hindu dharma in the Deccan. He set about his work with caution and entered into an understanding with Ballāla III of Dōrasamudra, who was the most powerful Hindu ruler in the South at that time. Ballāla strengthened the northern marches of his kingdom and prepared to meet any attacks from Devagiri. He also sent aid to Kāpaya Nāyaka in his struggle against the Muslims in Telengana where a defeat was inflicted on Malik Maqbul, the governor of Wārangal, who fled to Devagiri, and thence to Delhi, leaving Telengana free from Muslim rule (1336). Soon after, Kāpaya and Ballāla together entered the northern districts of Ma'bar, the area known as Tondaimandalam. They ousted the Muslim garrisons from the forts of that country and entrusted the task of its administration to a scion of the line of Sāmbuvarāyas, the native rulers of the region at the time. Other Hindu kingdoms came up elsewhere. The Koppula chiefs of Pithāpuram made themselves masters of the coastal region from the Godāvari to Kalinga; the Reddis of Kondavidu formed a principality which extended from Śrīśailam to the Bay of Bengal; and the Velamas raised a small state round Rājakonda in the hilly tract of the Nalgonda district of Andhrapradesh. The power of the Tughlak sultans was thus completely broken all over the Deccan except in the Maratha provinces. In Ma'bar half the territory had been recovered for Hindu rule, and although the rest was held by a Muslim ruler, he was a rebel against the sultan.