Page:A grammar of the Teloogoo language.djvu/23

Rh Although the Teloogoo would thus appear to have been a cultivated language at a very early period, it is hardly to be expected, among the different political and religious convulsions which have so often violently agitated the Deccan, that many of the productions of so remote an age should have reached these times. Accordingly, with the exception of the abovementioned works of Nunniah Bhutt, and some books composed towards the close of the twelfth century, during the reign of Pertaub Roodroo, one of the last kings of the Bellal dynasty, which succeeded that of Cadumba, we find that nearly all the Teloogoo works now current in the country were written after the dissolution of the ancient government of Telingana, and the establishment of the more modern empire of Vidianagara.

On the capture of Warunkul, the capital of the Bellal Kings of Telingana, by the Pattans, A. D. 1323, certain officers of these ancient princes are stated to have emigrated to the southern provinces, where they founded the celebrated city of Vidianagara or Vizianagara, the Bijanagur of Arrowsmith, and established a new dynasty of twenty princes I am indebted to the friendship of that able and distinguished officer Colonel McKenzie C. B. of the Madras Engineers, now Surveyor General of India, for the following translation of an extract from the Gutpurtee Manuscript in his valuable and extensive collection, containing, in the form of a prophecy, a chronological account of these kings. Numerous inscriptions, and grants of land, in the possesionpossession [sic] of Colonel McKenzie confirm the correctness of this account.

(Here the Account terminates in a prophetical annunciation of a Deliverer of the Hindoo Race.) From circumstances, observes Colonel Mc‘Kenzie, we may infer that this account was written A. D. 1630. known by the name of Raya or Royaloo, who gradually extended their sway all over the South of India, and reigned from the commencement of the fourteenth to the close of the sixteenth century. Of these kings, the most celebrated was Krishna Royaloo, a prince who reigned during the earlier part of the sixteenth century. He is highly renowned in Telingana for his piety in repairing the numerous temples in the Carnatick,