Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/234

 188 PROVINCIAL DYNASTIES the kingdom of Mysore, but the whole country between the Krishna '(or rather its tributary, the Tungabhadra) and the Kaveri, stretching from coast to coast, from Mangalore on the west to Conjevaram on the east, and from Karnal on the north to Trichinopoli on the south. Yet this great Hindu empire was repeatedly forced to pay tribute to the Bahmanids, and never succeeded in winning a victory over them. Vijayanagar coveted the triangle of land between the upper course of the Krishna and the Tungabhadra Rivers, known as the Raichur Doab, with its fortresses of Mudkal and Raichur, and the campaigns of the fourteenth and fif- teenth centuries centred in this territory; but the Bah- manids steadily kept their grip on it, and never per- manently lost a fortress or a mile of ground. In the earliest campaign the raja led thirty thousand horse, one hundred thousand foot, and three thousand ele- phants to the assault of Mudkal in the debatable land, and for a brief moment in 1366 triumphed in the cap- ture of the fortress and the massacre of the Moslems. But Mohammad I, the son of Hasan Gangu, was soon on his track. Standing on the banks of the Krishna, he vowed that he would neither eat nor sleep till he had crossed in face of the enemy and avenged his slaugh- tered saints. He crossed, and the raja fled, abandoning his camp and seventy thousand men, women, and chil- dren, on whom the Sultan wreaked his vengeance with- out mercy. The Bahmanid kings had no bowels of com- passion, and it is related of one of them that whenever the number of Hindus massacred at one time reached