Page:Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1911-12.pdf/340



HIS dynasty of Vijayanagara kings to which the alternative name Karnata is frequently applied in modern epigraphical literature, includes in it potentates who strived-and perhaps strived successfully-to maintain with unabated energy the empire which was started nearly two and a half centuries ago by the adventurous brothers Harihara I and Bukka I and which, subsequently, was embellished by powerful and enlightened monarchs such as Harihara II, Devaraya I, Devaraya II, Narasimha, Krishnaraya and Achyuta. For over one century, practically from the time of Sadasiva almost down to the British settlement on the Coromandel coast, despite the crushing defeat sustained by the combined Hindu forces in the memorable battle of Talikota and the merciless devastation of the capital town of Vijayanagara by Muhammadan desperadoes, it must be said to the credit of the Karnata kings that they did not allow their prestige as emperors of the vast Vijayanagara kingdom to suffer in any appreciable degree. Following closely in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessor the great Krishnaraya, they seem to have upheld a liberal policy' which conduced towards bringing peace and plenty into the kingdom. We have seen how the foreign travellers Ibn Batuts, Nicolo de Conti, Abdur Razzak, Nuniz aud Paes, by their accounts of the Vijayanagara empire in the different periods of its history have supplied us, to a considerable degree, with reliable and authentic information of the contemporaneous kings of that dynasty and of their times. The same must be said of Gaspar, Correa, Manuel Barradas and Cæsar Frederic whose valuable notes greatly help us in unravelling a portion at least of the history which followed the death of Sadasiva, the last of the second or Tuluva dynasty of Vijayanagara kings. Literature and inscriptions remain nevertheless to be the main sources from which we derive any correct or connected account of the period under reference.

In the concluding paragraphs of my thesis on the kings of the second Vijaya- nagara dynasty, I have discussed at full length the nature of the intrigues that followed the death of Achyuta and the eventual elevation to the throne of Sadasiva