The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c14.s1.t2: Jaitugi
The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c14.s1.t2
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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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¹ BG, I, ii, 521.
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² ASR, 1928-9, p. 172.
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³ At one and the same village, Kandgall, two records suggest that A.D. 1200 was the first regnal year, but a third one shows that it could not have begun before 1210. ASR, 1928-9, p. 118.
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⁴ Kandgall inscriptions, dated in A.D. 1220 and 1208 respectively, are stated to be in the twentieth and eighth regnal year respectively of King Siṃhaṇa. ASR, 1928-9, p. 118. See also SMHD, ii, 58.
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⁵ ASR, 1928-30, p. 175. The Kallaru stone inscription (EC, viii, Sb. no. 293) suggests 1208-9 as the initial year.
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⁶ The Kadkal inscription (IA, xii, 100), the Kuppataru inscription (EC, viii, Sb. no. 250), and the Elevata inscription (ibid., Sb. no. 402) suggest a third date.
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⁷ It is possible to argue that Siṃhaṇa ascended the throne in A.D. 1200 and that a second coronation took place in 1210 to mark some important conquest, when a new regnal reckoning was initiated. This, however, does not seem to have been actually the case.