Page:1866 Architecture Dharwar Mysore.pdf/14

 been equal to the Mahomedan kingd om of Beejapoor, as that afterwards existed in its most prosperous period. With this reign the power of the Chalukyas had attained its highest eminence, and from the fifth to the eleventh century those memorials of its splendour wete erected which are now attributed to it.

As was general with all Indian kingdoms, its fall was rapid, and the result of treachery. Vikram was followed by his son, Someswara III, who in time was succeeded by his two sons, in order of birth, the last being Teilapa II, whose minister, Vijala, of the Kalabhurya race, usurped the regal authority, and expelled his sovereign from the capital.

The exact date of this event is not traceable; but the usurper’s name occurs in an inscription, dated

S. 1079, A. D. II 57; and this affords a period of thirty years between the death of Vikram II, the Great, in

a.d •

1127, for the reigns of three kings and the revolution, which is consonant with probability.

The

extinction of the dynasty, however, had not been effected; for although Vijala proclaimed himself king in S. 1084,

a.d.

1162, there are inscriptions which state that Teilapa resided at Kulyan up to S. 1079,

1167,

a.d.

Teilapa II. was succeeded by his son Someshwar IV, or Veer Someshwar, who was fated to be the last king of his race. He succeeded his father in S. 1104, a.d. 1182, when Kulyan was distracted by the feuds between the new sect of Lingayets and the Brahmins which had momentous political as well as religious significance, and for a time again raised the fallen fortunes of his dynasty,

An inscription at Anigiri, in the Dharwar collectorate, very simply and yet comprehensively records the vicissitudes.of the dynasty, and is quoted by Mr. Walter Elliot as follows :—

“ In the Kuntal Des, by their wisdom and strength of arm, reigned the Chalukya Rajahs: afterwards, by conquest, the Rattas became supreme; the Chalukyas were then restored. Subsequently the Kala Bhuryas became masters of the land, after whom, by the appointment of Bramh, Vira Chalukya Soma ascended the throne. Vira Bomand, the son of Danda Nayk .... having vowed that he would uproot the destroyers of “ his master, and make the Chalukyas again lords of the earth, became the destroying fire of the Kala“ bhurya Kala.”

Veer Someshwar and Vijala had probably divided the kingdom between them, the former holding the capital and northern provinces, the latter the south-western or Kuntala Des: but a last inscription without date, at Ablur, records that Bomanda Danda Nayk had re-established the whole of the Chalukya kingdom.

None of the Chalukya inscriptions quoted by Mr. Walter Elliot are, however, of so late a date as it that upon the Agrahar, or college, at Beejapoor, which commemorates the grant of some land to the local temple of Nara Sinha (Vishnu) by Chalukya Mula Devara, in S. 1114, a.d. 1192, who may have been the son of Veer Someshwar, and actually the last of his race.

With distraction within and hereditary feuds without, external enemies were not long in taking advantage of the local disturbances. The Yadavas, or Jadows, a Mahratta dynasty which had risen at Deogurh (Dowlutabad), and become very powerful, invaded the Chalukya kingdom from the north, and almost simultaneously, the Bellals of Dwara Samoodra (Hullabeed) advanced from the south.

There is a tradition of a great battle between these new rivals for supremacy (recalling the legendary dynastic battle of Kooroo Kshetra in the Mahabharut) having been fought not far from Moodgul, in the Rachore Dooab, which ended in the defeat of the Bellals and the establishment of the Yadavas as monarchs of the whole of the Chalukya kingdom, Curiously enough, also, on the same stone at Beejapoor which records the Chalukya grant in S. 1114,

a.d.

1192, there is another by Shankrappa Danda Nayk, minister of the Yadavas, confirming the former, and adding some further portions of land for the endowment of the college, which is dated S. 1162, in the forty-sixth year of the reign of Yadava Narrayan.

a.d.

1240,

An interval of forty-eight years occurs between the two dates, which no doubt was that occupied by the conquest and settlement of the Chalukya kingdom by the Yadavas of Deogurh.

From Teilapa to Veer Someshwar, eleven princes had reigned in a period of 216 years, or on an average about nineteen and a-half years each.

For the most part, the princes of the Chalukya dynasty appear to have been Hindoos, attached to the Sivaic form of worship of the phallic emblems, common to the Sivaic sect of Brahminism. It is probable they were originally disciples of the great Brahmin missionary Shunker Acharya, who propagated those tenets and the Poorans from whence they were derived, very extensively in the south of India. Almost all the temples attributed to them in the southern Mahratta country (Kuntala Des) are dedicated to Siva, and a few only to Narasinha, or Vishnu, whose “ boar ” incarnation was the distinguishing emblem of the dynasty, and was carried on /

their standards.

Whether the princes ever joined the Brahmins in crusades against the Jains and Buddhists