Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c6.30

c6.30

An inscription from the Bangalore taluk states that Bukka I was Co-ruler with his brother Harihara I.¹⁴ When fixing the regnal period of Vijaya Rāya, Gopinatha Rao concludes that he might have ruled only for six months. His conclusions are based on the following evidence. Dēva Rāya I appears to have died in 1422. Harihara III, a son of Dēva Rāya I, made a grant in A.D. 1422 in order that his father “might attain with certainty to the world of merit.”¹⁵ Vijaya Bhūpati ascended the throne, but as Dēva Rāya II appears in a few epigraphs with imperial titles in Ś1345 (A.D. 1423),¹⁶ Vijaya Rāya must have died by then. He argues that since grants are made for the merit of Dēva Rāya I in A.D. 1422, and since Dēva Rāya II appears with imperial titles early in 1423, Vijaya Rāya must have occupied the throne only for six or seven months.¹⁷ But the assumption of imperial titles by Dēva Rāya II did not mean that Vijaya Rāya had died by that time for we find a few inscriptions of Vijaya dated 1424-5.¹⁸ Vijaya Rāya I was himself ruling over the Mulubāgal Rājya between 1406 and 1416. On the strength of these facts, Venkayya and Krishna Śāstri are inclined to think that Vijaya Rāya and Dēva Rāya II were Co-regents respectively under their fathers.¹⁹ Venkayya concludes his argument by remarking, “it may of course be supposed that Vīra Vijaya was consecrated king while his father was alive and reigning, and the same might have been the case with Dēva Rāya II.” Gopinatha Rao, however, asserts that “there is no precedent in the history of the first Vijayanagar dynasty for anointing a person before the death of his predecessor.”²⁰ But it appears that the essential difference between these two views is due to the fact that they seem to hold that the Yuvarāja and the Co-regent were two different persons. But such an assumption is beside the mark, for in the light of the inscriptions bearing on this question, we have to assume that it was generally the Yuvarāja that was the Co-ruler during the time of his predecessor, during which period he assumed imperial titles and ruled more or less independently in his province. Though the sons of a ruling sovereign were generally sent out as provincial viceroys, yet it was only one among them that was nominated the Yuvarāja or Co-ruler; and he ascended the throne after the death of his predecessor.²¹