08-18-2006, 05:26 AM
Sunder, the following is Nilakanta Sastri's account of these wars:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On 21 March 1365, Muhammad sat on the throne at Gulbarga, and celebrated the occasion with great dclat. He ordered, according to Ferishta, that the singers and dancers who entertained him on this occasion should be paid by a draft on the treasury of Vijaya-nagar, and despite his ministers' remonstrances he insisted on the literal execution of this rash order. When his messenger took the draft to Vijayanagar, Bukka (Ferishta calls him Krishnaraya) had him paraded on an ass in his city, and then crossed the Tunga-bhadra and seized Mudgal. Muhammad was furious and in- continently marched against Bukka though only with a moderate force. Bukka withdrew with his cavalry to Adoni, leaving the infantry to face the enemy and defend the country. Muhammad plundered and killed the defenceless inhabitants in the villages before he retired into Mudgal for the rains. The rest of his army then joined him; he marched in the direction of Adoni and, early in 1367, a battle was fought at Kauthal, south of the Tunga-bhadra. The Muslims gained the victory, thanks to their guns and their cavalry, the Hindu artillery not coming into play till it was too late, and their commander Mallinatha being mortally wounded. Ferishta is very definite that guns were used by both sides on this occasion and that the gunners were generally Europeans and Ottoman Turks. After his defeat, Bukka eluded Muhammad's pursuit for three months, and finally shut himself up in his capital. Not having the strength to besiege the vast city, Muhammad feigned sickness and retreated. Bukka ventured to attack him, but he had to retire into the city again after losing many men and some treasure. Muhammad then took to the promiscuous slaughter of all the inhabitants of the country and proclaimed his intention of not stopping until his draft was honoured by the ruler of Vijayanagar; the war was then ended by Bukka consenting to this. Four hundred thousand Hindus, ten thousand Brahmin priests among them, lost their lives in the massacre. So shocked were both sides by the dimensions of the slaughter that an agreement was made to spare non-combatants in future wars. Though violated on occasions, this agreement did do something to mitigate the horrors of the perpetual contest between the two states.
Ferishta's account of Muhammad's wars with Vijayanagar cannot be accepted at face value. He retails as a cause of the first war an improbable story of a large issue of gold coins by Muhammad which were melted down by the Hindu bankers of his kingdom at the instance of the Hindu rulers of neighbouring kingdoms. In his account of the second war he calls the Vijayanagar ruler Krishnaraya and mentions his general Bhojmal of whom history knows nothing. Again, according to Ferishta himself, the Krishna river was recognized as the boundary between the two kingdoms by the terms of the treaty which ended the war: this virtually conceded the claim of Vijayanagar to the territory between the Krishna and Tuiigabhadra, which would not have been the case if Muhammad had been so uniformly successful in the war as Ferishta would have us believe.
A History of South India, Nilakanta Sastri, Pg 265 and 266
http://dli.iiit.ac.in/cgi-bin/Browse/scrip...e=2020050057668<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On 21 March 1365, Muhammad sat on the throne at Gulbarga, and celebrated the occasion with great dclat. He ordered, according to Ferishta, that the singers and dancers who entertained him on this occasion should be paid by a draft on the treasury of Vijaya-nagar, and despite his ministers' remonstrances he insisted on the literal execution of this rash order. When his messenger took the draft to Vijayanagar, Bukka (Ferishta calls him Krishnaraya) had him paraded on an ass in his city, and then crossed the Tunga-bhadra and seized Mudgal. Muhammad was furious and in- continently marched against Bukka though only with a moderate force. Bukka withdrew with his cavalry to Adoni, leaving the infantry to face the enemy and defend the country. Muhammad plundered and killed the defenceless inhabitants in the villages before he retired into Mudgal for the rains. The rest of his army then joined him; he marched in the direction of Adoni and, early in 1367, a battle was fought at Kauthal, south of the Tunga-bhadra. The Muslims gained the victory, thanks to their guns and their cavalry, the Hindu artillery not coming into play till it was too late, and their commander Mallinatha being mortally wounded. Ferishta is very definite that guns were used by both sides on this occasion and that the gunners were generally Europeans and Ottoman Turks. After his defeat, Bukka eluded Muhammad's pursuit for three months, and finally shut himself up in his capital. Not having the strength to besiege the vast city, Muhammad feigned sickness and retreated. Bukka ventured to attack him, but he had to retire into the city again after losing many men and some treasure. Muhammad then took to the promiscuous slaughter of all the inhabitants of the country and proclaimed his intention of not stopping until his draft was honoured by the ruler of Vijayanagar; the war was then ended by Bukka consenting to this. Four hundred thousand Hindus, ten thousand Brahmin priests among them, lost their lives in the massacre. So shocked were both sides by the dimensions of the slaughter that an agreement was made to spare non-combatants in future wars. Though violated on occasions, this agreement did do something to mitigate the horrors of the perpetual contest between the two states.
Ferishta's account of Muhammad's wars with Vijayanagar cannot be accepted at face value. He retails as a cause of the first war an improbable story of a large issue of gold coins by Muhammad which were melted down by the Hindu bankers of his kingdom at the instance of the Hindu rulers of neighbouring kingdoms. In his account of the second war he calls the Vijayanagar ruler Krishnaraya and mentions his general Bhojmal of whom history knows nothing. Again, according to Ferishta himself, the Krishna river was recognized as the boundary between the two kingdoms by the terms of the treaty which ended the war: this virtually conceded the claim of Vijayanagar to the territory between the Krishna and Tuiigabhadra, which would not have been the case if Muhammad had been so uniformly successful in the war as Ferishta would have us believe.
A History of South India, Nilakanta Sastri, Pg 265 and 266
http://dli.iiit.ac.in/cgi-bin/Browse/scrip...e=2020050057668<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->