The Sevunas of Devagiri (An Old and Rare Book)

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THE period of the Sevunas, particularly in its later stages, is one of conflict. This conflict arose among the Deccan powers such as the Hoysalas, the Kakatiyas and the Sevunas, commonly known to history as the Yadavas of Devagiri, for political supremacy in the Deccan. By constant wars, each dynasty exhausted itself and fell an easy prey to the ambitions of the Sultanate of Delhi. Devagiri fell before Alauddin in 1296 and Halebid in 1311 A.D.

This sordid atmosphere was perhaps relieved by the advent and spread of the movement of the Mahanubhavas. The history of Mediaeval India, in a sense, is the history of its saints. Dr. A. V. Narasimha Murthy has rightly drawn our attention to the role of Chakradhara, the founder of this movement (pages 186-88). Despite the political shortsightedness, the Sevunas did achieve some stability, particularly under Bhillamav and Singhana in the Decean. The rise and fall of this dynasty in the Deccan is the theme of this book-a doctoral dissertation of the Andhra University which won for the author the award of a Ph.D. degree. There are useful chapters on administration, religion and education of the period.

New ground has been broken by the author in regard to the Karnataka origin of the Sevunas. Dr. A. V. Narasimha Murthy has shown admirable competence and objectivity in handling the historical material bearing on this subject.

This work is an attempt at writing a connected and coherent account of the Sevuna dynasty, more popularly known as the Yadavas of Davagiri. While my work on this topic was in progress, The Early History of the Deccan edited by Yazdani was published. It contained a chapter on the Sevuna dynasty by Professor Altekar. This was a very short and general account of the dynasty. Hence I continued my work to know in detail the history of this dynasty, with the help of the latest epigraphs and the original sources. I consulted all the relevant inscriptions, both published and unpublished, up to the year 1965. Besides, I have made use of literary sources in Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu and Marathi.

The present work contains fourteen chapters. The first chapter is devoted to a survey of the sources. In the second chapter I have examined the name and origin of the dynasty. The third chapter is set apart for chronology and the fourth examines the early history of the Sevunas when they were still a feudatory family. The next six chapters are devoted to six successive kings of the dynasty and their political achievements. The eleventh chapter is meant to give an idea of the downfall of the dynasty. With this the political history of the dynasty comes to an end. The remaining three chapters deal with the administrative, social.

religious and literary conditions of the contemporary times. The five appendices at the end deal with the various connected problems.

ved from him. I have made use of the comments and suggestions made by the renowned Indologists, Professor K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Dr A. L. Basham of the Australian National University and Dr J. D. M.

Derrett of the University of London. I am highly indebted to these three great scholars. I thank the authorities of the Andhra University for permitting me to publish the thesis.

I am grateful to my teacher, Professor M. Seshadri, Head of the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Mysore, for contributing a foreword to my work. Professor K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, who initiated me into the field of Indo-logy, very kindly permitted me to dedicate this book to him. I express my gratefulness to him for this kindness and dedicate this work to him as a token of my gratitude.

Dr G. S. Gai, Chief Epigraphist, Arachnological Survey of India, Mysore, was kind enough to permit me to utilise the published and unpublished inscriptions preserved in his office. I thankfully acknowledge his help without which I could not have made my account up-to-date. I also acknowledge the help of Dr C. D. Govinda Rao of the English Department, who very willingly went through the thesis. Dr B. K. Gururaja Rao and Mr H. М. Nagaraja Rao have helped me in reading the proofs and I thank both of them.

Dr H. M. Nayak, Professor of Kannada and Director, Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, has shown keen interest in the publication of this work. But for his continued interest this book would not have come out as early as this. I gratefully acknowledge his help. I also thank Mr G. H. Krishna Murthy of the Mysore Printing and Publishing House, Mysore, for the neat printing and Mr M. Sathyanarayana Rao of Rao and Raghavan for taking up the publication of this work.

Diacritical marks have not been used for those words which can be easily understood. Only in the case of technical and complex words the standard diacritical marks have been used.