Page:1866 Architecture Dharwar Mysore.pdf/18

 The Yadava Dynasty of Devagiri. 9 great army of 100,000 horse, under Mullik Kafoor, an enterprising general, was dispatched to the south. This occurred in S. 1228, A.D. 1306, twelve years after the first invasion, when very probably the Hindoos had ceased to apprehend further molestation. It was of this occasion that the beautiful Déwul Ránee, daughter of the Rajah of Goozerat, who was on her way to Deogurh to be married to the son of the Yádu Rajah, fell into the hands of a Mahomedan detachment, and was sent to Dehli, where she was married to King Alla-oo-Deen's son, Khizr Khan. The king's wife, Kowla Dévi, had been the wife of Déwul Ránee's father, and one of the objects of the expedition was to bring away the young princess. Under other circumstances this might have been impossible; but the nuptial party, proceeding to Deogurh, was met by chance near the caves of Ellora by part of the advanced guard of Mullik Kafoor's army, and a skirmish ensued, in which the princess's horse was wounded by an arrow and fell, and her capture followed. This romantic event was celebrated by a Persian poem of much tenderness and beauty, which is still in existence. Ráma Déva did not long hold out against the Mahomedans, who, leaving a portion of their army to invest Deogurh, rapidly overran the country. On Mullik Kafoor's return he accompanied him to Dehli where he was hospitably received and entertained, and dismissed with honour and respect. This kindness probably influenced his future life, for the tribute to Dehli was regularly paid, and in S. 1231, A.D. 1309, he entertained Mullik Kafoor, on his return from the north, and accompanied him to his frontier at Indoor, near Beeder, on his march against the kingdom of Wurungol. On the Rajah's return to Deogurh he died, and was succeeded by his son Shunkul, or Shunker, Déva.

This prince may be considered the last of the Yádava dynasty. He was by no means of the same accommodating or submissive spirit as his father, and by his haughty contempt of, and resistance to, the Mahomedans, brought their whole power against his kingdom. In 1310, Mullik Kafoor returned to Deogurh on his march southwards to Dwára Samoodra, and was indifferently received by the Rajah; but nothing hostile occurred till 1312, when Shunkul Déva having withheld his tribute, Mullik Kafoor attacked and defeated him. On this occasion Shunkul Déva was seized and put to death, and the whole of his kingdom-"from the ports of Dabul and Chaul to Rachore and Moodgul"-annexed to the empire of Dehli. During the troublous times of the Mahomedan Empire which followed the acquisition of the Deccan, Hurpál Déva, brother-in-law of Shunkul Déva, made a gallant effort to recover the kingdom: and at the period of the Emperor Alla-oo-Deen's death, in A. D. 1316, had wrested many provinces from the Mahomedans; but two years afterwards his son, Moobarak Khilji, marched in person to the Deccan, when Hurpál Déva fled, was captured, flayed alive, and decapitated by this cruel tyrant, and his head stuck on the gate of Deogurh. Thus fell the last of the great Yádava princes. The remainder of the family retired to estates in the fastnesses of the western Ghâts, and never again attempted resistance; they are now represented by the Jadows of the Mahratta Deccan, a numerous and respectable family. The history of their capital after the death of Hurpál belongs to that of the Mahomedans in the Deccan, with which this memoir has no concern.

The dominions of the Yádavas extended from the Nerbudda, or at least the Tapty, to the north, westwards to the sea at the ports of Dabul and Chaul, and to the east and south from Berar to Indoor, near Beeder, and thence probably, in nearly a direct line, to the Tumboodra river and the sea. When they had overcome the Bellal Yádavas of Dwára Samoodra, their frontier probably met that of the Chola Rajahs of Kunchi, in the present Mysore country, if indeed they did not possess the plateau as far as its southern edge. This extent of territory is very great, and the dynasty must have been one of the wealthiest of the southern Hindoos; but the remains of it now existent are comparatively very few. It is possible that the earlier princes may have created the curious fort of Devagiri, or Deogurh, and made it their capital; and it is certainly one of the most remarkable works in India, a large isolated hill upwards of 500 feet high and upwards of a mile in circumference having been scarped all round through solid trap rock to the height of 120 to 150 feet perpendicular from the ground, leaving a wide, deep ditch; access to the top being through a tunnel excavated in the centre of the hill. But other dynasties, preceding and succeeding Sháliváhana, anterior to the Christian era, are perhaps the more likely authors of this great work; nor is it at all inconsistent with the geographical position assumed by Ptolemy, that Deogurh, or the remains of that city which existed on the table-land between the fort and the caves of Ellora, may have been the Tagara or the Plithana which are named in the Periplus, and were assuredly places of trade and consequence in the Deccan at the period of his existence, Antiquarians have been unable, hitherto, to determine the exact positions of these places; but for many concurrent reasons, which need not be detailed here, the inference in favour of the ancient city near Deogurh