A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c16.25

c16.25

We may well believe that this general anti-Islamic movement did much to disturb the loyalty of Harihara and Bukka to the sultan and to kindle in their minds a longing to serve their country and their ancestral religion in the old way. Their meeting with Vidyāranya (‘Forest of Learning’) thus probably furnished them with the best and perhaps the only means of following the promptings of their hearts; it needed a spiritual leader of his eminence to receive them back from Islam into Hinduism and to render the act generally acceptable to Hindu society. Thus it happened that the trusted Muslim agents of the sultan of Delhi, who were sent to restore his power in the Deccan, turned out to be the founders of one of the greatest Hindu states of history which later distinguished itself pre-eminently in the defence of ancient Hindu culture against the onslaughts of Islam. After establishing their sway over Kampili at first for the sultan, and conquering more territory in the same manner, the two Sangama brothers returned to the Hindu fold, proclaimed their independence, and founded a new city opposite to Anegondi on the south bank of the Tungabhadra to which they gave the significant names Vijayanagara (‘City of Victory’) and Vidyānagara (‘City of Learning’), the second name commemorating the role of Vidyāraṇya in these momentous events. Here, in the presence of God Virūpāksha, Harihara I celebrated his coronation in proper Hindu style on 18 April 1336. He undertook the rule of the kingdom as the agent of the deity to whom all the land south of the Krishna river was supposed to belong, and his successors kept up the practice he started of authenticating all their acts of state by the sign manual of Śri Virūpāksha.