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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c14: Part VIII. The Yādavas of Seuṇadeśa

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c14

Language
English

Contents

Part VIII. The Yādavas of Seuṇadeśa

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by* PROFESSOR A. S. ALTEKAR

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I. Origin of the dynasty and early rulers.

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II. The Independent Sovereigns—Bhillama V—A.D. c. 1175-1191; Jaitugi—A.D. 1191-1210(?); Siṁhaṇa—c. A.D. 1210(?) -47; Kṛṣṇa—A.D. 1246-60; Mahādeva—A.D. 1260-70; Ammaṇa—A.D. 1270-1; Rāmacandra—A.D. 1271-1311; and Śaṅkaradeva—A.D. 1311-12.

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III. The Administrative system—king, feudatories and viceroys, council of ministers, provincial and district officers, prisons and the village *pañchāyats*, sources of revenue, military organization, and navy.

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IV. Religion—Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, the Liṅgāyat sect and new religious movements.

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V. Social conditions—caste system, women.

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VI. Education and literature.

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VII. Economic conditions.

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ORIGIN OF THE DYNASTY AND EARLY FEUDATORY RULERS

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THE history of the Yādava dynasty, which dominated the politics of the Deccan during the thirteenth century, goes back to the end of the ninth century. It is, however, not yet fully known during its earlier period. Few contemporary inscriptions have been found, and Hemādri, who has given us an account of the achievements of the house, contents himself by merely recording the names of its early rulers. As he himself lived towards the end of the thirteenth century, his information about the kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries is naturally often incomplete and inaccurate.

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The Yādavas profess to be descended from Yadu, a Purāṇic hero, and claim that their ancestors first lived at Mathurā and then migrated to Dvārakavatī or Dvārakā in Kathiawar. This belief of theirs is in perfect accordance with Purāṇic tradition, but we need not examine its historical accuracy, for it refers to times for which no records exist and has hardly any bearing on the history of the dynasty during our period.

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We may perhaps, however, accept the statement which occurs in the earliest Yādava records that they were originally immigrants into the Deccan from Dvārakā.¹ There is in fact nothing inherently improbable in this and it may well have actually been the case, since one of their feudatory families in Khandesh is known to have been an emigrant from Valabhi, another city in Kathiawar.² No Kathiawar records have, however, so far been found to prove that any Yādava family migrated thence to Mahārāṣṭra in the ninth century, nor do the actions or policies of the Yādavas show any anxiety to recover their patrimony there or to re-establish any political or cultural connexion with that country. The story in the Jain tradition of how the pregnant mother of the founder of the dynasty was saved by a Jain saint from the conflagration which destroyed Dvārakā and how she was later delivered of a son in her new home, looks more like mythological legend than actual history. The pretension that the Yādavas were once lords of Dvārakā is therefore so far historically unproved, and may be due rather to the fact that a descent from Yadu is claimed by the family than to its founders ever having really been emigrants from that city. It is interesting to note that the Hoysalas, who profess to be the descendants of Yadu, make the same claim to have been formerly lords of the city of Dvārakā.

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¹ A Yādava family was indeed ruling at Siṃhapura in Kathiawar in the seventh century A.D. (EI, i, 12), but it had no connexion with Mathurā, nor are its descendants known to have migrated to Dvārakā.

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² EI, ii, 225.

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Inscriptions from the Karnatak disclose the existence of some petty Yādava feudatories ruling in the Dharvar District towards the end of the ninth century,¹ which is just about the time when the Yādava house was first becoming prominent in the Nāsik District. As, however, there are no contemporary names common to these families and the Yādavas proper, it is not possible to claim a Karnatak origin for this group, though it is true that many proper names which appear to be Canarese do occur among those of the ministers of the family in later times.

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¹ Inscriptions from Bombay Karnatak, nos. 11, 22.

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The early patrimony of the clan lay in northern Mahārāṣṭra, where also was situated its later capital Devagiri, whilst Marāthi literature flourished at the royal court in later times. We may therefore most probably presume that the Yādava family was in fact an indigenous Marātha sept, which, on rising to political eminence, began to profess a descent from Yadu and to claim to have emigrated from Dvārakā in Kathiawar.

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The first member of the family to raise its fortunes and give it distinction was Dṛḍhaprahāra. Jain tradition records that he was a posthumous child, and that his mother was a Yādava lady rescued from the burning of Dvārakā by Jainaprabhasūri, and it tells us how people accepted him as leader and began to pay him taxes because he protected them from robbers.² About A.D. 860, which is the probable time of Dṛḍhaprahāra, conditions were somewhat unsettled in Nasik and Khandesh owing to the weak rule of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa emperor Amoghavardha I and his wars with the Pratihāra emperor Bhoja I. It is possible that this state of affairs may have encouraged the predatory tendencies of the Vindhyan tribes, from whose raids the people of Nasik and the Kandesh may have suffered. Dṛḍhaprahāra proved his ability as a warrior by protecting them, and thus brought his family into prominence. He founded the city of Chandrādityapura, the modern Chandor, forty miles north-east of Nasik, and made it his headquarters. It was, however, Seuṇachandra, the son of Dṛḍhaprahāra, who first secured feudatory status for his family; his house and patrimony continued to be named after him as Seuṇavaṃśa and Seuṇadeśa down to the thirteenth century, not only in Mahārāṣṭra but also in the Karnatak and Telangana.³ He founded a new city on the Sindineri called after himself Seuṇapura, and made it his capital. This town is probably the same as the modern Sinnar in the Nasik District. It seems that Seuṇachandra helped the Rāṣṭrakūṭas in their wars with the Pratihāras and was given feudatory status in recognition of his services. His principality probably did not extend beyond the Nasik District. He may be taken to have flourished from about c. A.D. 880 to 900.

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² IA, xii, 124.

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³ See IA, xiv, 314; EI, xiii, 198.

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The next three rulers of the family, Dāḍhiyappa, Bhillama I, and Rājiga, are shadowy figures who ruled from about c. A.D. 900 to 950. Then came Vandugi or Baḍḍiga, during whose reign the family came into political prominence owing to his marriage with Vohiyavvā, a princess of the Imperial Rāṣṭrakūṭa family and a daughter of Dhorappa, a younger brother of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa emperor Kṛṣṇa III. This prince was a notable warrior who took an active part in the numerous campaigns of his feudal lord and uncle-in-law Kṛṣṇa III. It thus is quite possible that Kṛṣṇa may have sanctioned an increase in the jāgir of his enthusiastic son-in-law, but the precise extent of the Yādava principality under Baḍḍiga is not known.

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The next ruler, Dhāḍiyasa (c. A.D. 970-85), is again one of whom little is really known. It was during his reign that the Rāṣṭrakūṭa empire was overthrown, but we do not know whether he offered any help to his imperial relative at this critical juncture. Not blood relationship, but the exigencies of the situation, usually dictate the course of rulers in political crises, and we find Bhillama II, the son and successor of Dhāḍiyasa, transferring his allegiance to the Cālukyas, who had brought about the fall of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, though he had himself married a Rāṣṭrakūṭa princess named Lakshmī.¹ Bhillama in fact became a staunch supporter of the new Cālukya empire founded by Tailapa II; ‘he compelled’, says a verse in his own copper-plate charter, ‘the goddess of Royalty to remain as a chaste wife in the house of Raṇarājaraṅga (Tailapa II)’. He took an active part in the war with the Paramāras, which eventually ended in the overthrow and death of King Muñja.² The enthusiastic assistance thus given to the Cālukya emperor evidently did not remain unrewarded, for we find the Ahmadanagar District added to his patrimony about this time. It is possible that some outlying territories of the Paramāra dominion in the direction of the Khandesh may also have been allotted to him, though so far we have no direct evidence supporting this view.

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¹ The view of Sir R. G. Bhandarkar that Jhañjha, the father of Lakshmī, was the Śilāhāra king of Thana of that name, is untenable. The latter prince flourished between c. A.D. 910 and 930, and it seems unlikely that a prince who ruled from c. A.D. 980 to 1000 could have been his son-in-law.

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² Sangamner plates, v. 16.

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As a result of his victories, Bhillama acquired the title of Vijayābharaṇa and he celebrated his success by erecting at Sangamner a temple to Śiva bearing the title of Vijayābharṇeśvara. The earliest Yādava grant recovered is a grant in favour of this temple given by this king. He eventually shifted his capital to Sindinagar, the modern Sinnar in the Nāsik District.³

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³ The Śilāhāra ruler Aparājitadeva (A.D. 975-1010) claims to have afforded protection to a king named Bhillama, who seems to be the contemporary Yādava ruler. Aparājitadeva was a partisan of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas while Bhillama was an adherent of the Cālukyas; it is therefore difficult to conjecture how the former could have helped the latter. Perhaps the statement refers to some alliance between the two at the time when both were feudatories of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas.

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No details concerning the reign of the next ruler, Vesugi, who had married Nayillādevī, a daughter of a Chālukya feudatory of Gujarāt, have come to light up to the present. He may be presumed to have ruled from about *c.* A.D. 1005 to 1025. He was succeeded by Bhillama III, who is known to us from a grant made by him.¹ We may place his reign between about A.D. 1020 and 1040. The status of the Yādava family was raised during his reign by his marriage with Āvalladevī, a daughter of his feudal lord, the Chālukya emperor Jayasiṃha I. He naturally took an active part in his father-in-law’s campaigns and may well have been of considerable help to him in his wars with the Paramāra ruler Bhoja I.

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¹ Kalas Budrak grant, *IA*, xvii, 117.

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The next two rulers were Yādugi and Bhillama IV. Their reigns lasted for only about ten years altogether and the fortunes of the family suffered reverses during this period owing to causes not yet known to us. After the death of Bhillama IV, his son Seuṇachandra II, we are told, restored and raised the fortunes of his family as the god Hari had once restored those of the whole earth during his boar incarnation. In the light of the recent discovery of a new copper plate of this ruler,² his accession has to be placed in *c.* A.D. 1050. The efforts of Seuṇachandra met with considerable success; he acquired the title of Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara and became also the overlord of several sub-feudatory families, one of which was then ruling in Khandesh. The Yādava administrative organization was also improved during his rule; in A.D. 1069 his ministry consisted of seven officers who all boasted high-sounding titles.³

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² The Deolali (Ahmadnagar District) copper plate of this ruler, exhibited in the Annamalai session of the All-India Oriental Conference on 26 Dec. 1955, is dated in Śaka 974 or A.D. 1052.

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³ *IA*, xii, 120.

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Seuṇachandra was further a skilful diplomat. When the struggle for the throne arose between the two brothers in his overlord’s family, he was able to judge correctly as to which would ultimately be successful. He threw in his lot with the younger son Vikramāditya and offered him substantial aid in overthrowing his elder brother, the reigning emperor Someśvara II. Victory was by no means easily attained, for the revolution in the Choḷa capital had put an end to Vikramāditya’s hopes of receiving any help from that quarter; the new Choḷa king Vira-Rājendra in fact had championed the cause of Someśvara II. Erammadeva, Seuṇachandra’s eldest son and destined heir, co-operated with his father in these campaigns against Someśvara II.⁴ He succeeded his father in about 1085 and may be presumed to have ruled down to about *c.* A.D. 1105. No events of his reign are known to us. He was succeeded in turn by his brother Siṃharāja, who is credited with having helped in the completion of the Karpūravrata of his overlord Vikramāditya VI by procuring for him a Karpūra elephant. His reign may be placed between about A.D. 1105 and 1120.

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⁴ The Asvi record gives the credit of the enthronement of Vikramāditya VI to Erammadeva, whilst that of Hemādri attributes it to his father Seuṇachandra. We can perhaps reconcile the divergent testimony of the two authorities in the way indicated in the text.

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Yādava history again becomes obscure during the fifty years following the death of Siṁharāja. A Yādava king named Seuṇachandra appears to be ruling in the Nasik District in A.D. 1142,¹ but he is unknown to Hemādri. He was succeeded in *c.* 1145 by Mallugi who continued to be loyal to his feudal lord Tailapa III; for we learn that his general Dādā and the latter's son Mahīdhara were a constant menace to the troops of Bijjaṇa who were seeking to oust Tailapa.² Mallugi naturally took advantage of the unsettled times in which he was living and sought to extend his kingdom towards Berar by capturing Paṛṇakheṭa (the modern Patkhed in the Akola District) and then invading the kingdom of the Kākatīya ruler Rudra. This invasion was merely undertaken as a threat and embarrassment to the rulers concerned and did not result in any territorial gains. Mallugi's reign came to an end about A.D. 1160.

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¹ As proved by the Anjneri inscription, *IA*, xii, 126. Since he is not mentioned in the genealogy of Hemādri, R. G. Bhandarkar took him to be a sub-feudatory of the Yādavas.

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² *Sūktimuktāvali*, vv. 5-9; *EHD*, p. 184.

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Mallugi had two sons, Amaragāṅgeya and Karṇa. The former succeeded him, but died after a very short reign and was followed on the throne by his son Amaramallugi. After a short time the latter seems to have been overpowered by the usurper Kāliyaballāḷa, whose precise place in the genealogy is uncertain. Eventually a period of anarchy was ended by Bhillama V, a son of Karṇa,³ who managed to secure the Yādava throne for his branch of the family in about A.D. 1175.

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³ The genealogy of Bhillama outlined above differs from that given by Hemādri or the Paithan plates of Rāmachandra. It is based upon the Gadag record issued by Bhillama himself, who may well be presumed to have given correct information about the name of his own father to the drafter of the grant. Hemādri flourished a century later and may not have had correct knowledge. R. G. Bhandarkar, however, thought that the Gadag inscription was a forgery, and accepted Hemādri's account of the parentage of Bhillama.

The Independent Sovereigns

Bhillama V

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BHILLAMA V was the first Yādava ruler to claim imperial status and assume the imperial titles. This he did in about A.D. 1187, just four years before his death, at which time he also initiated a new reckoning of his regnal years. But his career had really begun at least a decade earlier.¹ In order properly to understand the significance of his reign, it is essential first to take a bird's-eye view of the political condition of the Deccan during the period.

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¹ The year A.D. 1184 which is given as the initial year of his reign by some records (e.g. ASR, 1930-4, p. 244) may be the year when he succeeded in making himself the complete master of the possessions of the main branch of the family.

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The Chālukyan power began to decline from about A.D. 1150. Tailapa III, who had then just ascended the imperial throne, proved unable to prevent the gradual usurpation of his power by his Kalachuri feudatory Bijjala. He was in fact a very weak ruler; even a much inferior vassal like the Kākatīya Proḷa had actually taken him prisoner on the battlefield. No wonder then that a masterful personality like Bijjala was easily able to win an independent status for his family against such feeble opposition. We find him claiming imperial titles in A.D. 1162, immediately after the death of his nominal sovereign Taila III, though in fact he had begun his own regnal reckoning six years earlier.

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Empires in Ancient India were generally not unitary states. They usually consisted of a loose federation of a number of feudal states, each of which was, as a rule, individually anxious to throw off the imperial yoke at the earliest convenient opportunity. This was the form of the Chālukyan empire. There were a number of feudatories under Taila III, like the Kākatīyas of Warangal, the Hoysaḷas of Dvārāsamudra, the Raṭṭas of Saundatti, the Śilāhāras of Konkan and the Yādavas of northern Mahārāshtra; these were not at all over-anxious to recognize the imperial claims of Bijjala. The latter on his part failed to consolidate his power and was assassinated in A.D. 1167. He was succeeded by his sons Soyideva, Saṅkama, Āhavamalla, and Siṃhaṇa in rapid succession; none of these showed any ability as a ruler. The Kalachūris were supplanted by Someśvara IV, a son of Tailapa III, about A.D. 1183.

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While these political revolutions were succeeding each other with lightning speed in the heart of the Chālukyan empire, its outlying feudatories like the Yādavas and the Hoysaḷas, who naturally could not be effectively controlled from the centre, were maturing their own imperial plans. The Hoysaḷas had once before become almost independent in the reign of Viṣṇuvardhana, but were eventually curbed by Vikramāditya VI. Ballāḷa, who was now on the throne, being an able ruler, was anxious to achieve what his grandfather had failed to realize. He refused to recognize the imperial claims of the weak successors of Bijjaḷa and fought two engagements with them in 1179.¹ From 1180 onwards we find him assuming the title Rājādhirāja and from 1185 the full imperial titles Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara Paramabhaṭṭāraka Pratāpachakravarti.²

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¹ EC xi, Dg. no. 44; vi, Md. no. 33.

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² Ibid. v, Hn. no. 70; Ak. no. 127.

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When the general political situation was so unsettled, it is no wonder that the Yādavas also should have attempted to secure imperial status for their family. For a time Mallugi was loyal to Tailapa. The victories of his general Dādā over Bijjaḷa had probably been won while he was professing to fight for his feudal lord. When, however, Tailapa had eventually succumbed to Bijjaḷa, the warfare carried on by Mallugi against the latter, his troops being then commanded by Mahīdhara, a son of Dādā, must have been undertaken with the object of overthrowing the Kalachuri power and acquiring imperial status for himself.

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Mallugi, however, did not live long enough to carry out his imperial plans and his death in A.D. 1170 was followed by chaos at the Yādava capital, a state of confusion which prevented the family from taking any effective part in contemporary political developments. Mallugi was succeeded by his eldest son Amaragāṅgeya, who seems to have died after a short reign. If Hemādri’s account is to be trusted here, Amaragāṅgeya was succeeded by Amaramallugi, Govindarāja, and Kāliyaballāḷa. We have no definite information either about the mutual relations of these rulers or about the causes which led to their quick disappearance. There is no doubt that the rapid succession of a number of inefficient rulers at the capital seemed to render every prospect of the Yādavas gaining the imperial position almost hopeless.

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While the descendants of Amaragāṅgeya were thus engaged in fighting with one another and thus weakening the Yādava power, his brother Karṇa and the latter’s son Bhillama were laying the foundations of another Yādava principality which was soon destined to extend its sway over the whole of the Deccan. About Karṇa’s career we have no definite information. He was probably a district officer or a sub-feudatory under his brother Amaragāṅgeya. He had an able son, Bhillama, who was quick to realize that the weak Kalachūri imperial rulers were no longer able to protect their petty vassals. He therefore decided not to fight with his cousins for a share in their small patrimony, but rather to bring under his sway the territories governed by a number of small kings in the Konkan and central Mahārāṣṭra. Like Shivaji in a later age, he began his career by capturing forts in the Konkan. He first defeated the king of Śrivardhana, a port in the Konkan, and then the ruler of Pratyantagaḍa, which is obviously the modern fort of Prachandagada or Torana in the former Bhor State. He then proceeded towards Sholapur where he put to death Billaṇa, king of Maṅgalaveṣṭaka or Mangalavedhe, a small town in that district.

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Bhillama had thus succeeded in securing a fairly large principality for himself in the northern Konkan and central Mahārāṣṭra, whilst affairs at the ancestral Yādava capital were rapidly going from bad to worse. Hemādri tells us that the Royal Fortune of the Yādava family abandoned the legitimate heirs and resorted to Bhillama, an uncle of the weakling on the throne, being attracted by his sterling merit and splendid qualities. In plain language this statement of the court poet means that Bhillama eventually felt himself justified in intervening in the affairs at Sinner, setting aside his cousin, the ruling king, and ascending the throne himself. The precise date of this intervention is not known, but we may not be far wrong in placing it about A.D. 1180.

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Bhillama was not content merely to get back his family patrimony in northern Mahārāṣṭra; he was anxious also to extend its boundaries and influence. The situation in the Karnatak was very much confused and unsettled owing to the triangular fight for supremacy which was going on among the Kalachūris, the Chālukyas, and the Hoysaḷas, but Bhillama does not seem to have thought at first of intervening in it. He turned his attention rather to Mālwā and Gujarāt,¹ in both of which provinces the situation was very favourable for an outside invader. Ajayapāla, the Chaulukya king of Gujarāt, had alienated his Jain subjects, and eventually lost his life at the hands of his own doorkeeper in 1176. His successor Mūlrāja II (1176-78) was a mere child, and was also his younger brother who succeeded him in 1178. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Chaulukya government, Vindhyavarman reconquered Mālwā from the Gurjaras and re-established the Paramāra power in its ancestral home. Vindhyavarman, however, was unable to establish himself firmly in Mālwā and moreover the struggle with the Chaulukyas, though successful in its immediate outcome, had weakened his power and depleted his resources.

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¹ There is no definite and decisive evidence to show that Bhillama's raids in Mālwā and Gujarāt preceded his wars with the Hoysaḷas. But we do know definitely that his hands were quite full with his southern expeditions from A.D. 1185 onwards, and thus it is almost certain that his invasion of Mālwā and Gujarāt must have been planned and carried out earlier when he had no danger to apprehend from the south. For the Kalachuris and the Chālukyas were then engaged in a deadly struggle with each other and with the Hoysaḷas. By first defeating the Paramāras and the Gujarāt Chaulukyas, Bhillama must have aimed at making his northern frontier safe, so that he might have no embarrassments from that direction when later engaged in the deadly struggle with the Chālukyas and Hoysaḷas.

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Bhillama therefore turned his attention to Mālwā and Gujarāt as territories which offered prospects to an invader. The statement in the Mutugi inscription,¹ dated A.D. 1189, that he was ‘a severe pain in the head of the Mālavas’ and ‘the dread roar of a cloud to the flocks of those swans, the Gurjaras’ seems to be more than merely hyperbolical. Yādava armies did actually overrun the whole of Mālwā and Lāṭa or southern Gujarāt. The Chaulukyas, who were just then preoccupied with the problem presented by the Muslim invasions, could offer no effective opposition, and some of Bhillama’s forces apparently penetrated the country as far as Marwar. For Kelhaṇa, the Chāhamāna king of Naḍḍūla, the modern Nadol in the former Jodhpur State, claims to have defeated Bhillama’s troops in that district. His opponent was far away from his base and so he must have decided to return home on meeting with strong opposition at the hands of Kelhaṇa. In the Mutugi inscription Bhillama is also credited with having defeated the kings of Aṅga, Vaṅga, Nepāla, and Pañchāla. This, however, seems to be an empty boast, for there is no real evidence that he ever advanced beyond Gujarāt. His armies returned from the boundaries of Rajputana, covered no doubt with glory, but without securing any permanent extension of territory in the domain of the Yādava kingdom. In the Gujarāt expedition, Bhillama received substantial assistance from his general Jahla, who managed to obtain a cheap victory over the Gurjara forces by skilfully introducing a maddened elephant in their midst, a manœuvre which led to the hasty dispersal and flight of the enemy.

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¹ Sūktimuktāvali, Introduction, v. 11. गुर्जरभूम्रटकंटकविषमेऽतिदुर्गमे चैन। भगदत्तकीर्तिभाजा दुष्टगजः स्वेच्छया नीतः॥ G.O.S. edition reads गुर्जर for गुर्जर; it is obviously a wrong reading.

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Bhillama’s expedition to Mālwā, Gujarāt, and Rajputana clearly did not result in any material addition to his dominions. It, however, increased his self-confidence and made him feel that he might well launch an equally successful attack against his southern neighbours and thus secure the imperial position for his house. While he was engaged in the north, rapid changes had taken place in the Karnatak. The Kalachuri power, which had been previously weakened by the attacks of the Hoysaḷa king Ballāḷa, was finally overthrown by the Chālukya ruler Someśvara IV in A.D. 1183. Someśvara, however, does not appear to have been himself a military leader; the victory was almost entirely due to the genius and energy of his commander-in-chief, Brahma. A number of contemporary records describe this general as the upholder of Chālukya glory and as a fire of destruction to the Kalachuri family. He was a skilful leader of the elephant phalanx and had managed to capture sixty of the enemy’s elephants in the decisive engagement which sealed the fate of the Kalachūris.²

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² EI, vi, 96.

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Someśvara, however, was not destined to enjoy the fruits of his general’s victory for very long. The Hoysaḷa ruler Ballāḷa decided to make a bid for the imperial position and Bhillama also felt that he had an equally good chance of success in this direction. The attenuated and weakened Chāḷukya empire was thus invaded almost simultaneously from the north by Bhillama and from the south by Ballāḷa. Someśvara decided to deal with the southern invader first and dispatched his general Brahma against Ballāḷa. This time, however, Brahma was unable to win a victory for his master. His strong elephant phalanx was outmanœuvred by the more quickly moving cavalry divisions of Ballāḷa and the Chāḷukya power was completely shattered. Someśvara made no attempt to defend his capital at Kalyāṇi. We find him swiftly retreating and setting up his new seat of government at Jayantipura or Banavāsi, whence he continued to maintain a precarious existence down to 1189 with the help of his Kadamba feudatory Kāmadeva.¹

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¹ *EC*, xi, Cd. no. 93.

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It is very probable—though there is no definite evidence on the point—that Ballāḷa pressed his successful advance still farther and actually captured Kalyāṇi, the imperial capital. It is extremely unlikely that he would have allowed it to remain in the hands of a Chāḷukya army when its chief had deserted his capital and fled to Banavāsi.

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Such was the general political situation when Bhillama decided to throw out a challenge to Ballāḷa, and to make a bid for the imperial position in the Deccan. The Hoysaḷa army was no doubt flushed with its recent sensational victories, but it seems to have been at the same time considerably weakened by them. For Bhillama was able to secure a resounding victory over it and to plant his imperial Eagle-flag on the ramparts of Kalyāṇi, which had been the capital of the Deccan for about two centuries. Ballāḷa had to beat a hasty retreat to his own capital of Dvārāsamudra, and the whole of the southern Chāḷukya empire, which he had conquered from Brahma and Someśvara,² who promptly occupied the whole territory and pursued the retreating Hoysaḷa forces at least as far as the Hassan District in Mysore State. Periya Sahana, the commander-in-chief of his cavalry, seems to have taken a leading part in this brilliant campaign. The new territories were in any case put under his charge.³ Certain records of Bhillama seem to indicate that he started a new reckoning of his regnal years in 1187;⁴ it is probable that this was the year of his epoch-making capture of Kalyāṇi.

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² The statement of Hemādri that the Hoysaḷa king was killed at or after the fall of Kalyāṇi must be incorrect, if it is intended to refer to the reigning Hoysaḷa ruler Ballāḷa. Probably some collateral prince of the Hoysaḷa family may have fallen while defending this city.

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³ *EI*, xv, 59.

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⁴ *SIER*, 1930, App. E, no. 18.

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Ballāḷa had been long planning to secure the paramount position in the Deccan for his family and he was not prepared to give up the struggle even after the loss of Kalyāṇi. He spent a couple of years in reorganizing his forces and then began his march northwards with a view to reoccupying the southern provinces of the defunct Chālukya empire. By June, A.D. 1189, he had managed to establish his supremacy over Banavāsi and Noḷambavāḍi,¹ and thence proceeded to invade the Bijapur and Dhārwar Districts, probably as a prelude to the ultimate capture of Kalyāṇi.

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¹ EC, v, Ak. no. 57.

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Bhillama was not slow to realize the danger threatening him from this new move by Ballāḷa. He marshalled a strong force consisting of 200,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, and moved out to meet the invader. In June, A.D. 1191, we find him already encamped at Gadag in the Dharwar District in the course of his southward march. Soon after this date the two rival claimants for the sovereignty of the Deccan met each other at Soratur in the neighbourhood of Dharwar where a sanguinary battle was fought. This time Ballāḷa was completely successful and the Yādava army was defeated with great slaughter. ‘In order further to sow the seeds for the growth of his glory’, says a contemporary Hoysaḷa record,² ‘this emperor of the south prepared the ground by his conquest and from Soratur as far as Belvola, made it fit for being turned up by the ploughshares of the cultivators, having manured it with the bodies of the myriad brave warriors of the Sevaṇa army.’

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² Annegiri plates, dated A.D. 1192; EC, v, Cn. no. 179.

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There may be some exaggeration in the language used in this record, but there can be no doubt that the Hoysaḷa victory was a decisive one. Jaitrapāla, the Yādava general, tried to stem the tide of victory by taking shelter in the stronghold of Lokkiguṇḍi (modern Lokkundi), but Ballāḷa captured the fort without much difficulty. The Yādava general was killed while defending this place, and after its loss the Yādava retreat degenerated into a complete rout. Ballāḷa captured a number of important forts such as Erambara (Yellurga in the Hyderabad State), Kurrugod (near Bellary), Gutti (about 50 miles east of Bellary), and Hangal. The Yādavas were all driven across the Kṛṣṇā and the Malaprabhā and the territories to their north completely cleared of them, these rivers continuing for twenty years thereafter to be the boundary between the two contending powers.

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A Hoysaḷa record dated A.D. 1198 tells us how Ballāḷa moistened his sword with the blood of the Pāṇḍya king, whetted it on the grindstone of the head of Bhillama and sheathed it in the lotus mouth of Jaitugi.³ It is known that the battle of Soratur was fought sometime toward the end of A.D. 1191, which is also known to have been the period of the accession of Bhillama’s son and successor Jaitugi.⁴ It is also known that Kāmadeva, the Pāṇḍya king of Ucchangi, and Jaitugi, the general of Bhillama, both died while fighting against the Hoysaḷas.

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³ EC, vi, Belur no. 77.

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⁴ Bijapur inscription shows that December 1196 fell in the sixth regnal year of Jaitugi; BG, 1, ii, 521.

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May we then accept the claim of Ballāḷa that he killed in battle not only Jaitugi and Kāmadeva but also his chief foe Bhillama V? Probably not, for this claim seems to be an exaggerated one. The Gadag inscriptions of Ballāla, issued within a year of his sensational victories and engraved at a town which had witnessed his victorious marches and battles, state that the Hoysaḷa ruler killed in action only Jaitrasimha, who is also expressly described therein as the right hand of Bhillama. This document was composed by Agniśarman under the express direction of King Ballāla and it is very unlikely that it would have omitted to mention the death of Bhillama on the battlefield, had it in fact taken place. It appears that Bhillama, who was already an ageing man, was much shaken by this defeat, which finally shattered all the dreams of his life, and died broken-hearted soon afterwards. Poets of the later Hoysaḷa records, therefore, felt themselves justified in describing their master as having used the head of Bhillama as a whetting stone for his sword.¹

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¹ Messrs. Venkatasubbayah and Srikantya have given a different version of the events of the Yādava-Hoysala struggle. They argue that the battle of Soratur took place just before December 1190, that Bhillama reorganized his forces and reinvaded the Hoysaḷa kingdom about June 1191, recapturing then most of the forts previously wrested from his hands, that he was defeated a second time and killed sometime between June and December of 1191, and that Ballāla recaptured the forts in the course of the next two or three years (IHQ, iv, 120; NIA, i, 414). It seems most unlikely that if Bhillama had been so signally defeated in the battle of Soratur, as he is said to have been in the Hoysaḷa records, he could so soon have reorganized his forces and succeeded in the course of only six months in driving Ballāla from most of the forts which had been taken from him just before.

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Before concluding our account of the career of Bhillama, we have to refer to the story of the marriage of Pṛthvīrāja Chāhamāna with Śaśivratā, a daughter of Bhānu, a Yādava king of Devagiri, as narrated by Chandbardai in his *Pṛthvirāja Rāso*.² With his usual poetic embellishments and exaggerated descriptions, the bard tells us how Śaśivratā and Pṛthvīrāja fell in love on hearing of each other in the songs of a wandering bard who visited each court in turn; how their love for a time appeared destined to be frustrated since Śaśivratā’s marriage had been otherwise arranged by her father with Virachandra, a nephew of Jayachandra, the king of Kanauj; and how Pṛthvīrāja galloped off to Devagiri in the nick of time and managed to carry away the willing princess, leaving his army behind him to defeat the Yādava and Gāhaḍavāla forces. Pṛthvīrāja and Jayachandra may in some sense be regarded as rival kings of Pañchāla, and Yādava inscriptions claim, as we have shown above, that Bhillama had defeated the king of that country. It is, however, very difficult to say whether any historic facts are reflected in the bardic story narrated by Chandbardai. The name of the Yādava king Bhānu in his account is somewhat similar to that of Bhillama and there is nothing inherently improbable in the idea that a Yādava king should have planned his daughter’s marriage with a prince of the Kanauj family. But unless some reliable historical evidence should become available to show that the Gāhaḍavāla and Chāhamāna armies did really move into the Deccan to fight a battle there with each other, one cannot accept the story as historical. It may be a bardic invention with the object of showing that the feud between Pṛthvīrāja and Jayachandra was one of long standing and did not originate merely with the marriage of Saṃyogitā. The account of the marriage of Śaśivratā is merely a revised edition of the story of the svayaṃvara of Saṃyōgitā; it also contains a serious anachronism when it represents Devagiri as the Yādava capital in about 1180. Bhillama is not known to have had a son named Narendra as the Rāsao asserts (25, 174). As matters stand today, it appears to have hardly any actual historical foundation.

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² *Samaya*, 25.

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Whether Bhillama was killed on the battlefield or not, there can be no doubt that his career had a very tragic end. A series of victories which he had won, first against the Paramāras and Gujarāt Chaulukyas and then against the Karnatak Chālukyas and the Hoysaḷas, had naturally led him to think that he would remain the undisputed overlord of the Deccan, but all his plans were upset on the fateful battlefield of Soratur. The territory between the Kṛṣṇā and the Tuṅgabhadrā, which was destined to be the bone of contention for centuries between the Deccani and Mysorean powers, slipped away from his hands and was annexed by the Hoysaḷa king Ballāḷa II, who captured and occupied all the important forts and cities in it. Bhillama was more than sixty at this time and he must have died broken-hearted, just as the Peshwa Nānasāhib did after the battle of Pānipat.

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The tragic end of Bhillama should not, however, blind us to his greatness as a warrior and statesman. He was a self-made man; he had inherited hardly any patrimony. He had to carve out a principality for himself in the northern Konkan and southern Mahārāṣṭra. His intervention in the affairs of the Yādava clan of Sinner was no doubt a usurpation from one point of view, but there can be no doubt that the Yādava family would never have become the overlords of the Deccan had third-rate rulers like Amaragāṅgeya and Kāliyaballāḷa continued to be at the helm of its affairs for very much longer. Bhillama not only consolidated his power in Mahārāṣṭra, but also carried out successful raids into Mālwā and Gujarāt, which brought glory to his arms and riches into his treasury. He intervened in Karnatak politics at the right moment and managed to oust both the Chālukyas and the Hoysaḷas. His armies at one time overran and occupied the whole of the Raichur Doab. He had well and truly laid the foundation of the Yādava empire. For we should not forget that even after the decisive victory at Soratur his opponent Ballāḷa did not dare to cross the Kṛṣṇā and march into Mahārāṣṭra. The Yādava armies, though defeated, were not annihilated, and the enemy dared not beard the lion in his own den. To conclude, like most founders of empires, Bhillama was a soldier, a statesman, and a man of tact and vision.

Jaitugi

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(A.D. 1191 TO 1210(?))

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Bhillama was succeeded by his son Jaitugi towards the end of A.D. 1191. It was once believed that this prince met his end during the Karnatak campaign of his father, but that view is no longer tenable. The Jaitugi or Jaitrasimha, killed in the Hoysaḷa war, is obviously the person of that name mentioned as Bhillama's feudatory general and minister in a Gadag record.¹ Had Jaitugi, the crown prince, fallen in the war, Hoysaḷa records would not have failed to mention his relationship with the Yādava king; they would certainly not have remained content merely to record his name. In fact, Hemādri definitely mentions him as having ruled, and contemporary records have also been found which refer to his reign and thus support the historian.²

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¹ *EI*, iii, 219.

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² Fleet, *BG*, i, ii, 521.

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The affairs of the Yādava kingdom were in a critical state at the time of the accession of Jaitugi.³ It appeared as if the Hoysaḷa armies, flushed with their recent victories, would cross the Kṛṣṇā and overrun the whole Yādava kingdom. Jaitugi was undoubtedly a soldier of great courage and resolution, for he was not at all unnerved by the recent disasters. He reorganized his forces and presented such a strong front that Ballāḷa had to give up the idea of pressing his victories further and crowning them with the capture of Kalyāṇī and Devagiri. The two sides tacitly accepted the Malaprabhā-Kṛṣṇā line as the boundary of their kingdoms and neither made any attempt to cross it for nearly two decades.

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³ A Hoysaḷa record dated 1194 (*EC*, v, Arsikere no. 5) no doubt mentions Ballāḷa's capture of the fort of Lokkundi from Jaitugi. But it does not refer to this as a recent event; the capture of the fort there mentioned was in all probability really that which took place while it was held by the minister Jaitrapāla, who actually died while defending his command during the preceding reign.

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Jaitugi, however, was anxious to rehabilitate the military reputation of his army by obtaining victories elsewhere, and decided to launch an offensive against the rising power of the Kākatīyas in Telangana. The Yādavas felt that since they were the successors of the Chāḷukyas, all the former feudatories of the latter should at once automatically recognize their overlordship. The Kākatīyas not only did not do so, but exploited the critical situation which had arisen following the disastrous Karnatak campaign by launching an attack on the Yādavas from their rear. It would appear that on at least one occasion the Kākatīya armies penetrated as far as the Yādava capital under the generalship of Mahādeva, the brother of the reigning king.⁴ Jaitugi had to bide his time for a while. When affairs on the Kṛṣṇā front became more settled about A.D. 1194, and it was evident that there would be no immediate danger of a Hoysaḷa invasion, he launched a sudden hurricane attack against the Kākatīyas. The reigning Kākatīya monarch Rudra was killed in the course of the campaign;¹ Hemādri grows eloquent in describing how Jaitugi performed a human sacrifice by immolating a victim in the shape of the fierce Rudra, the king of Telangana.

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⁴ The Garavapada inscription, *EI*, xviii, 351. This incident could not have happened during the short reign of Mahādeva himself, for at that time the Yādavas were in effective occupation of the greater portion of the Kākatīya kingdom. It could have happened only during the reign of Rudra, when the Yādavas were engaged in a deadly struggle with the Hoysaḷas.

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¹ In Hemādri’s *praśasti*, the Kākatīya king killed in war is described as Raudra, which would suggest that not Rudra himself, but a son of his, was killed on the battlefield. If Rudra had died a natural death instead of being killed in the war, there would not have supervened that chaos in the Kākatīya kingdom which has been so graphically described by the Pālampet inscription (*Hyderabad Arch. Series*, Monograph 3). And in fact Rudra is not known to have had a son; he was succeeded by his brother Mahādeva. We have, therefore, to conclude that in Hemādri’s *praśasti*, *raudra* is a clerical mistake for *rudra*, due to a scribe anxious to differentiate between the two consecutive words in the expression *rudrasya rudrākṛteḥ*. Dāsgupta’s suggestion that Raudra may refer to the successor of Rudra—his brother Mahādera (*IC*, iv. 475)—seems very improbable. A brother is never denoted by this *tadhita* word-formation.

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The death of the king on the battlefield broke down all the Kākatīya resistance; for a Kākatīya record itself describes how chaos followed that event and how a number of chieftains ‘sought to claim the hand of the Kākatīya Royal Glory, who for a time found herself in a thorny jungle’.²

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² Pālampet Inscription, *Hyderabad Arch. Series*, Monograph 3.

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The death of Rudra took place soon after A.D. 1195. The Kākatīya history during the next few years is obscured by a veil of considerable confusion and uncertainty. It appears that either in the fateful battle in which Rudra was killed, or soon thereafter, Jaitugi succeeded in taking prisoner Gaṇapati, who was a nephew of the dead Kākatīya monarch. This prince remained in captivity at Devagiri, but resistance to the Yādava invaders continued to be offered by his father Mahādeva, who had succeeded his brother Rudra in about 1196. Mahādeva was ably assisted by Racherla, one of Rudra’s generals.

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Mahādeva’s efforts to drive out the invader proved as unsuccessful as those of his brother, and he too died on the battlefield in conflict with the Yādava invaders. A Kākatīya record clearly admits this fact when it describes in flowery terms how this ruler fell asleep in the battlefield on the temple of his royal elephant and awoke in heaven to find his head resting on the bosom of his heavenly spouse.

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The death of Mahādeva intensified the chaos in the Kākatīya kingdom. Darkness and confusion prevailed all around, life and property became unsafe, and Brāhmans could no longer discharge their religious functions. It seems that for a time Jaitugi sought to annex the whole kingdom and administer it from Devagiri. He did not succeed in this effort and he therefore eventually decided to follow the traditional policy of Hindu princes which recommends that a conqueror should reinstate a relative of the last ruler upon the throne of the conquered country. Gaṇapati, the son of Mahādeva, was already a captive in his hands³ and he decided to place him on the Kākatiya throne, naturally after securing a promise from him that he would rule as a loyal feudatory.

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³ Ibid.

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At what exact date Gaṇapati was released from imprisonment in Yādava capital and reinstated in his kingdom we do not know.¹ There was un-questionably an intervening period of anarchy as suggested by the Pālampet inscription. We need not, however, now suppose that the period was a long one or that Gaṇapati continued to live as a captive in Devagiri until about 1210;² for an inscription of his has been recently discovered which shows that he was ruling as a king in 1203.³ His later inscriptions prove that A.D. 1198 was his first regnal year and we may therefore conclude that he was really released in that year soon after the death of his father. Gaṇapati for a long time continued to be a loyal feudatory of his overlord.

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¹ The view of R. G. Bhandarkar that Gaṇapati was kept in prison by his uncle Rudra (EHD, p. 186) and the conjecture of N. N. Dasgupta that he was imprisoned by his father for misconduct (IC, iii, 474) are both untenable. The issue is clinched by the expression *yudhi dhritam* which shows conclusively that Gaṇapati was taken prisoner in war.

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² This is the view of Dr. Ram Rao, who thought that Gaṇapati might have dated his regnal years not from the time of his actual accession but from the time of the death of his father. (JAHRS, vi, 54.) His main argument in support of this suggestion was that there are no inscriptions of Gaṇapati prior to A.D. 1209.

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³ *A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts*, p. 40.

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Very few other political events in the reign of Jaitugi are known. He is credited with the defeat of the kings of the Pāṇḍyas, the Choḷas, the Mālavas, the Lāṭas, the Gurjaras, the Turushakas, and the rulers of Nepāla and Pāñchāla in one record.⁴ But there is no doubt that most of this claim is a mere empty boast. The Yādava armies certainly did not again cross the Kṛishṇā after their disastrous defeat in the earlier reign, and thus the alleged victory over the Choḷas and the Pāṇḍyas must be purely imaginary. The claim to the overthrow of the kings of Nepāla, Pāñchāla, and the Turushakas seems to be equally unfounded. The statement, however, that he defeated the kings of Lāṭa (southern Gujarāt) and Mālwā may perhaps refer to some frontier skirmishes with the forces of these states which lay to the north of the Yādava kingdom. It does not seem probable that the Yādava armies ever penetrated deeply into any of these principalities during the reign of Jaitugi. His hands were in any case too full of the Hoysaḷa and Kākatiya affairs. Exploiting the situation created by the discomfiture of the Chaulukya king Bhima at the hands of Aibak, Subhaṭavarman, the Paramāra ruler of Mālwā, attacked King Siṃha of southern Gujarāt, who was a Chaulukya feudatory. It is likely that, taking advantage of the preoccupation of Subhaṭavarman with this affair, Sahadeva, a general of Jaitugi in charge of the northern frontier, may have carried out a raid into Mālwā. This seems to be the only historic fact underlying the claim to the defeat of Mālava, Lāṭa, and Gurjara kings put forward on behalf of Jaitugi in the Mangoli inscription.

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⁴ Mangoli Inscription, EI, v, 33.

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Sankama was the chief minister (*mahāpradhana*) and general of Jaitugi.⁵

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⁵ BG, i, ii, 521.

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He was given the fief of the Tardavadi one thousand. Probably he had been largely responsible for the success of the Kākatīya campaign. There were a number of feudatories in the kingdom, not all of whom had yet transferred their allegiance to the new imperial power. In Khandesh, however, the Nikumbha brothers Soideva and Hemāḍideva were ruling as loyal vassals of the Yādava king.

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Jaitugi was not merely a soldier. He had a real love for scholarship and patronized men of learning. Lakshmīdhara, a son of Bhāskarāchārya the famous astronomer, was selected by him as his chief court pandit. Like his father, Lakshmīdhara also excelled as a scholar.

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It is difficult to state when precisely the reign of Jaitugi came to an end. A.D. 1196 is so far his latest known date from inscriptions,¹ and a solitary record of his successor Siṃhaṇa suggests that he began to rule as early as A.D. 1197.² But epigraphical evidence is very conflicting on this point.³ One set of records would show that A.D. 1200 was his first regnal year;⁴ a second set suggests that it may be A.D. 1207⁵ and a third set indicates that he ascended the throne only in A.D. 1210.⁶ There is no doubt that Jaitugi continued to rule after A.D. 1197; for otherwise he could not have been credited with the restoration of Gaṇapati, which did certainly not take place before A.D. 1198. It seems that from A.D. 1200 onwards Siṃhaṇa was formally associated with his father in the administration as *yuvarāja*, and therefore some of his later records are seen counting his regnal years from that date. The balance of evidence seems to show that Jaitugi continued to rule throughout the first decade of the thirteenth century and was succeeded by his son only in 1210.⁷

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