Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c14.s2.7

c14.s2.7

⁶⁸ According to the Prapannāmṛtam, a celebrated Śrī-Vaiṣṇava work, during the time of Virūpākṣa of Vijayanagar, "who secured the throne by the valour of his own sword", a change came over the faith of the Vijayanagar sovereigns. It is said that the relations whom Virūpākṣa had killed to gain the throne were born as ghosts, and haunted the palace in which Virūpākṣa lived, and hence he left it and lived in another palace. Two Vaiṣṇava Brahmans came to the old palace, saw the ghosts holding court and mistaking them to be living persons, read the Rāmāyaṇa to them to which they listened with great interest. After the course had been finished, they told the Brahmans that they were the ghosts of the relatives of Virūpākṣa who had been killed by him, and that by hearing the Rāmāyaṇa they had been rid of their piśāca life, and after presenting them with a large number of gold coins, they went to Heaven. Virūpākṣa who came to know of the whole story, began to entertain great reverence for the Rāmāyaṇa. He was also admitted to the Vaiṣṇava faith. And out of gratitude for relieving him from the trouble of the ghosts he changed the sign manual of Śrī Virūpākṣa for that of Śrī Rāma. (S. K. Aiyangar, Sources, pp. 6 and 71-73; also, Text I. 90).