Deva Raya II

Deva Raya II (1424-1446 CE) was an emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire from the Sangama Dynasty. Perhaps the greatest of the the Sangama dynasty rulers, he patronised some of the famous Kannada and Telugu poets of the time. Kannada poets like Lakkana Dandesa, Chamarasa, Jakkanarya and Kumara Vyasa and among Telugu poets Srinatha, who was bathed in a shower of gold coins (tankas) were the most famous. It is said that Srinatha held the same position in his court as senior ministers and moved freely with the emperor. The King himself was a scholar and wrote Sobagina Sone in Kannada and Mahanataka Sudhanidhi in Sanskrit.

The Empire

Deva Raya II succeeded his father Veera Vijaya Bukka Raya after his short uneventful two year reign (Nuniz noted differently that his reign was for 25 years) was a monarch of the Vijayanagara Empire . Unlike his father, Deva Raya II was an effective and successful monarch. During his reign, Deva Raya II prevailed over his conquest of Kondavidu in 1432, repelled the invasions of Ahmad Shah I of the Bahamanis and retained the Mudgal fort in 1436 but lost some areas in the Raichur doab in 1443, defeated the Gajapati of Orissa three times in 1427, 1436 and 1441, restored the Reddi Kingdom of Rajamahendri to its former position, fought against the Sultan Ala-Ud-Din (centered around the forts of Mudgal and Raichur in the Krishna - Tungabhadra doab), and continued onwards to Kerala where he defeated the ruler of Quilon as well as other chieftains. He invaded Lanka and collected rich tributes there. The ruler of Calicut and even the kings of Burma ruling at Pegu and Tanasserim paid tributes. This information was obtained from the writings of Nuniz.

Abdul Razzak, the Persian ambassador who visited southern India in 1443 wrote that overall Deva Raya II has extended the Vijayanagara Empire from Orissa to Malabar, and Ceylon to Gulbarga as well as taking over multiple ports of South India. Even so, the issue with the Bahmani kingdoms had not yet been resolved and the two kingdoms continued to be hostile to each other throughout Deva Raya II's reign. Bahamani invasions were unsuccessful and eventually drove the Bahamani monarch Ahmad Shah I to move his capital to Bidar during his invasion of the empire in 1426.

By the end of his reign, Deva Raya II had succeeded in conquering all of South India as well as sending the empire into a golden age of prosperity. It was during this time that the explorer Nicolo Conti and Persian chronicler Abdur Razzak travelled here. Razzak mentions that the "ear of intelligence had never been informed that there existed anything equal to Vijayanagara in the world" and the "pupil of eye has never seen a place like it" (on an interesting side note the two explorers also commented on Deva Raya II's large harem in which 4000 queens followed him everywhere he went). Deva Raya II was succeeded by Mallikarjuna Raya.

Culture and the Arts

Other than the expansion of territory, Deva Raya II's rule was also a time when art and culture flourished throughout the kingdom. The King himself was a poet and authored, in Kannada, the Sobagina Sone, a collection of romantic stories in the form of a narration by the author to his wife. He earned the title Gajaventekara or Gajabetekara as he was well versed in the art of elephant hunting. Another explanation for this title was that he was an expert at defeating enemies who were a strong as elephants. It was during this time that many temples were constructed throughout the capital, art was encouraged, revenue was extracted through tributes from Ceylon (under the command of the naval leader Lakkanna who was also a Kannada poet), men of letters in Sanskrit and Vernaculars were promoted, and overall the kingdom entered an era of prosperity both economically and culturally that would be marked as the golden age of the Sangama Dynasty.

During his visit to Calicut in 1443 an assassination attempt on his life was made by his brother which was unsuccessful. The king was injured and this it seems may have been a conspiracy that Sultan Ala-ud-din knew of, who immediately sized the opportunity and demanded a large tribute from Deva Raya II. Deva Raya refused to pay and invaded Raichur, Bankapura and Bijapur. When it seemed Deva Raya was all but victorious, the Sultans forces pushed back the Vijayanagar armies to Mudgal and Deva Raya had to pay for peace.

References

• Dr. Suryanath U. Kamat, Concise History of Karnataka, 2001, MCC, Bangalore (Reprinted 2002)
• Prof K.A. Nilakanta Sastry, History of South India, From Prehistoric times to fall of Vijayanagar, 1955, OUP, New Delhi (Reprinted 2002)
• Carla M. Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India c.1350-1650, 2003, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521826136

External links

• AP Online
• History of Kanataka, Arthikaje
• Prabhu:Sangama