Kalyana Karnataka · Deccan Inland Plateau
This plateau has held imperial capitals more often than any other part of the Kannada country — Manyakheta, Kalyani, Vijayanagara, Kalaburagi, Bidar — and its periods are set by which of them was occupied. The ancient period ends in 973 with the fall of the Rashtrakutas at Manyakheta; the medieval period is the long run of capitals in the doab and on the Bidar tableland, and it ends in 1724. The modern period begins there, with the founding of the Asaf Jahi state, and it does something no other Kannada region's does: it splits the place in two. Five of the seven districts stayed in the Nizam's dominions until 1947, while Ballari was ceded to the East India Company in 1800 and administered from Madras for a century and a half. That division is why Dakhni is a household language on one side of the Tungabhadra and not the other, and why the region has two unconnected histories of anti-colonial politics rather than one.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The plateau carries some of the earliest datable material in the Kannada country. Ashokan rock edicts stand near Koppal, at Palkigundu and Gavimath, and on the Bhima at Sannati a Buddhist complex at Kanaganahalli has produced Ashokan edicts and a stupa with a sculpted royal portrait labelled as Ashoka. The period's political weight, though, belongs to the Rashtrakutas, who took the Deccan from the Badami Chalukyas in 753 and, under Amoghavarsha I, made Manyakheta — Malkhed, in the Kalaburagi district — the capital of an empire that Arab geographers ranked with the great states of the world. Amoghavarsha's court produced the Kavirajamarga, the earliest surviving work on poetics in Kannada, which is to say that the language acquires a literary theory here before it acquires anything else.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 3rd century BCE | Ashokan rock edicts are cut at Palkigundu and Gavimath near Koppal and at Sannati on the Bhima. |
| 753 | Dantidurga overthrows the Badami Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas take the Deccan. |
| 814–878 | Amoghavarsha I reigns and moves the capital to Manyakheta, now Malkhed in Kalaburagi district; the Kavirajamarga is composed at his court about 850. |
| 944 | Al-Masudi records the Rashtrakuta king among the principal kings of the world. |
| 972–973 | Siyaka of Malwa plunders Manyakheta, and in 973 Tailapa II ends Rashtrakuta rule. |
| 982 | Indra IV, the last Rashtrakuta, performs sallekhana at Shravanabelagola. |
For seven centuries the region held one capital after another and the doab between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra was the frontier every one of them fought over. The Western Chalukyas moved to Kalyani about 1042 and under Vikramaditya VI ran the Deccan from it; Vijnaneshwara wrote the Mitakshara there, the commentary that became the standard authority on inheritance across most of India. In the 1160s the Kalachuri Bijjala II held the same city, and his treasurer Basavanna presided over the assembly at which potters, washermen, cobblers and women wrote vachanas — signed prose-poems in spoken Kannada, with no metre and no Sanskrit. Three centuries later the Bahmani sultanate ran the plateau from Kalaburagi and then from Bidar, while Vijayanagara held Hampi on the Tungabhadra, and the Raichur doab changed hands between them repeatedly by treaty and by battle.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1042 | Someshvara I moves the Western Chalukya capital to Kalyani, now Basavakalyana in Bidar district. |
| 1076–1126 | The reign of Vikramaditya VI, who dated documents in an era of his own. Bilhana and Vijnaneshwara are at his court, and the Mitakshara is composed there. |
| 1162–1167 | Bijjala II of the Kalachuris holds Kalyani as an independent ruler. Basavanna serves as his treasurer, and the vachana writers gather at the Anubhava Mantapa. |
| 1294 | The Raichur fort is built by Gona Ganna Reddy, a general of the Kakatiya queen Rudramadevi. |
| 1336 | Vijayanagara is founded by Harihara I and Bukka Raya I, first at Anegundi and then across the river at Hampi. Tradition connects the founding with Vidyaranya of Sringeri; that connection is tradition and not record. |
| 3 August 1347 | Alauddin Bahman Shah is proclaimed sultan; Kalaburagi becomes the Bahmani capital and its fort is dated to the same year. |
| c. 1425 | Ahmad Shah I moves the Bahmani capital from Kalaburagi to Bidar, renamed Muhammadabad. |
| 1472 and 1481 | Mahmud Gawan, the sultanate's chief minister, founds the madrasa at Bidar in 1472 and is executed on the sultan's order in 1481. |
| 1520 | Krishnadevaraya defeats Bijapur at Raichur and takes the doab; it changes hands again in 1565. |
| January 1565 | A coalition of the Deccan sultanates defeats Vijayanagara at Rakkasagi–Tangadagi on the Krishna, usually called the Battle of Talikota; the date is given as 23 or 26 January and is contested. Rama Raya was killed and the capital was plundered. Historians now caution that little evidence of damage has been found beyond the royal centre, and that the state and the town should not be conflated. |
| 1492–1619 | The Barid Shahis hold Bidar, Ali Barid Shah I taking the royal title in 1542; the line ends when Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur annexes Bidar in 1619. |
In 1724 Asaf Jah I made the Mughal Deccan into a state of his own, and five of these districts spent the next two hundred and twenty years in it. Ballari went the other way. Under the subsidiary arrangement of 1800 the Nizam ceded the country south of the Tungabhadra to the East India Company; Thomas Munro spent seven years there as Principal Collector and introduced the ryotwari settlement, which assessed each cultivator directly instead of through an intermediary and shaped landholding in the district for the next century and a half. The Raichur doab itself was assigned to the British in 1853 and restored to the Nizam in 1860. The consequence is a region in which two administrative systems, two revenue histories and two political vocabularies sit on the same soil.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1724 | Asaf Jah I establishes the Hyderabad state; Bidar, Kalaburagi, Raichur and the Yadgir country lie within it. |
| 1800–01 | The Nizam cedes the country south of the Tungabhadra, Ballari among it, to the East India Company; it is administered as the Ceded Districts of the Madras Presidency. |
| 1800–1807 | Thomas Munro serves as Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts and introduces the ryotwari settlement there. |
| 1 July 1818 | Sandur, held by the Ghorpade family, formally becomes a British protectorate under the Madras Presidency. |
| 1853–1860 | The Raichur doab is assigned to British administration and then restored to the Nizam. |
| 1857–58 | The Bedar chiefship of Surapura, in the present Yadgir district, acts against the East India Company under Raja Venkatappa Nayaka; the chiefship is extinguished in 1858. |
| June 1858 | Mundargi Bhimarao and Hammige Kenchanagouda are killed fighting Company forces at Koppal, after Koppaldurg fort had been taken. |
| 1876–78 | The great famine falls very heavily on Ballari district. |
| 1867 | Salar Jung I reorganises the Hyderabad administration into departments and divisions, the framework these districts were governed under until 1947. |
| 1938 | The Hyderabad State Congress is formed and declared unlawful under a Public Safety Act of 6 September; a satyagraha begins on 24 October and is suspended on 24 December after some three hundred arrests. |
| April 1946 | The ban on the Hyderabad State Congress is lifted. |
Rulers and commanders
Moved the Rashtrakuta capital to Manyakheta, now Malkhed in Kalaburagi district, and held it for more than sixty years. The Kavirajamarga, the earliest surviving work on poetics in Kannada, was composed at his court about 850 and is attributed to him or to a poet writing under his name.
Dynasty: Rashtrakuta. Seat: Manyakheta
Held the treasury under Bijjala II and presided over the Anubhava Mantapa, an open assembly at which several hundred writers, among them washermen, cobblers, potters and about thirty women, composed vachanas — short signed prose-poems in spoken Kannada. Later tradition makes him the founder of a new faith; modern scholarship treats him as reviving and reorganising a tradition already there, and notes that the poems and legends about him were written down long after his lifetime.
Dynasty: Administration of the Kalachuris at Kalyana. Seat: Kalyana
Built the fort at Raichur in 1294 under the Kakatiya queen Rudramadevi, according to its own foundation inscription. The doab's fort line, which every later power in this region fought over, starts with it.
Dynasty: Kakatiya. Seat: Raichur
Proclaimed sultan on 3 August 1347 by the officers of the Deccan provinces after they broke from Delhi. He made Kalaburagi the capital and minted his coin there; the fort in the city carries the same date.
Dynasty: Bahmani. Seat: Kalaburagi
A Persian merchant who became the sultanate's chief minister and effectively governed it during a minority, extending its territory and reorganising its provinces. The madrasa he founded at Bidar in 1472 taught religious and secular subjects and held a large library. He was executed on the sultan's order in 1481, a decision the sultan is recorded as having regretted until his own death the following year.
Dynasty: Bahmani. Seat: Bidar
Under him the empire reached its greatest extent, and the capital on the Tungabhadra took the form Portuguese visitors described. He took the Raichur doab from Bijapur in 1520, the single most fought over stretch of ground on this plateau.
Dynasty: Tuluva line of Vijayanagara. Seat: Vijayanagara
The first of the Barid line to take the royal title, in 1542. Bidar under the Barid Shahis was small but built heavily, and their tombs and the workshops of the city are where the bidri craft — zinc alloy inlaid with silver and blackened with soil taken from inside the fort — took its present form.
Dynasty: Barid Shahi of Bidar. Seat: Bidar
The last raja of the Bedar chiefship of Surapura, in the present Yadgir district. He acted against the East India Company in 1857–58; the chiefship ended in 1858.
Dynasty: Bedar chiefs of Surapura. Seat: Surapura
The history of Kalyana Karnataka from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)