Devagiri

Who holds it

Name

Jaitugi (Jaitrapala)

Title

King of the Yadavas, holding court at Devagiri

Since

reigning from 1191 or 1192

Born

not known

Family

Son of Bhillama V, who founded the city; his son and heir is Simhana.

Confidence

medium

Devagiri is Bhillama V's foundation (about 1187; Wikipedia says 'said to have been founded'). The realm record gives Jaitugi's reign and the two readings of its end.

Lord in 1200

Jaitugi, the king, in residence; the town below the hill under a royal officer whose name no source we read gives.

How things stand that morning

A capital at peace. The south is closed at the Krishna by the Hoysala stalemate of 1191-96; the east is quiet under the Kakatiya settlement of 1199; the hill is the refuge in any war.

Wealth

Plateau grain and cotton, pass tolls from the Ghats and the northern roads, the king's share of the pilgrim trade of Ellora, Nashik and Pandharpur. No figures are known.

Military

The royal household troops and the hill garrison; the field army is raised from the feudatories. No numbers are given in any source we read.

Threats

• A Hoysala raid up the Krishna if the stalemate breaks
• A quarrel over the succession if Jaitugi dies in 1200
• Raids from Malwa on the northern road (rare)

Charter

None known. Yadava grants to temples and guilds exist from the 1190s on (the Yadava realm record); none to a town corporation that we have read.

Council

No town council is recorded. As elsewhere in the Deccan the king's officer, the Brahmin judges of the royal court and the merchant headmen (mahajanas) would speak for the town (from memory of Deccan inscriptions; not attested for Devagiri).

Communities

Brahmin households of the court; Jain merchants and monks (the Ellora Jain caves were worked into the thirteenth century, Ellora article read); Kannada- and Marathi-speaking townsfolk; Shaiva ascetics. No Muslim merchant quarter is recorded for 1200.

Fairs and markets

Weekly markets in the plateau villages round the town (board: 'the Deccan market villages'); no dated fair for Devagiri itself.

Militia

No town militia known. The garrison is the king's household troops on the hill.

Walls and castle

The scarped rock and rock-cut ditch (Balakot) are the Yadava work the sources date. The three outer rings (Kalakot, Mahakot, Ambarkot), the Chini Mahal and the minarets are later or undated and are not drawn.

Trade and crafts

Black-soil grain and cotton from the plateau; cotton cloth from Paithan and Berar; horses landed on the Konkan coast and brought up through the Ghats; masonry and stone-cutting, with the basalt quarries and the Ellora masons near by (board).

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1200 or 1210Jaitugi dies and Simhana is crowned at Devagiri.Depends on: Which reckoning of Jaitugi's death holds: the realm record sets out both (Wikipedia and Mahalingam say 1200; Altekar says 1210). Stopped by: Nothing in the sources stops it; on the later reckoning nothing happens here in 1200.

Places of note

• The rock-cut ditch of Devagiri: Ditch round the base of the scarped hill (board 'devagiri-moat', placed on the fort).
• The town below the hill: The market town under the fort (board 'devagiri-town', coordinates corrected by the same 0.05 degrees as the fort).

Where the sources disagree

• Board 'devagiri-daulatabad' puts the fort at 75.271 E; the fort stands at about 75.215 E (the campaign board point is some 6 km east, in the town below). The campaign board's 'Khadki country' is the plateau east of the fort; Aurangabad is a seventeenth-century city and does not exist.
• Common accounts speak of the 'Daulatabad' walls as if Yadava. The Daulatabad Fort article dates only the scarped hill and the ditch to the Yadavas and gives the mosque 1318, the renaming 1327 or 1328 and the Chand Minar 1347-58 or 1446 (the page contradicts itself). Only the hill and ditch are drawn.

Evidence: The Daulatabad Fort and Seuna articles (read) give the founding, the scarped hill and the ditch; nothing we read describes the Yadava town below, its walls, its guilds or its governor, so those parts are general knowledge of Deccan capitals and are marked as such.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Yadava kingdom (Devagiri)

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Various (Kakatiya chancery and temple scribes), edited by P. Sreenivasachar (inscriptions of the 10th to 15th centuries; edited 1940 to 1942). The Kakatiyas of Orugallu (Warangal) are known for 1200 almost entirely from inscriptions, and this Hyderabad Archaeological Series corpus is the main printed collection. Read online
• Epigraphia Carnatica: inscriptions of the Mysore country, Various (Hoysala chancery and temple scribes), edited by B. Lewis Rice and R. Narasimhachar (inscriptions of the 4th to 19th centuries; the series ran from 1886 to 1905, revised from 1972). The Hoysala kingdom of Veera Ballala II (reigning 1173 to 1220) is documented almost wholly by the inscriptions in this series, arranged by district and taluk with full English translations. Read online
• Inscriptions of the Silaharas, Various (Silahara chanceries), edited by V. V. Mirashi (inscriptions of the 9th to 13th centuries; edited 1977). Collects the records of the three Silahara houses: North Konkan (Thana), South Konkan, and Kolhapur.
• Sanskrit and Old Canarese Inscriptions relating to the Yadava Kings of Devagiri, Various (Yadava chancery), edited by J. F. Fleet (inscriptions of the 12th and 13th centuries; edited 1876). The first collected edition of the Yadava (Seuna) records, with texts and translations, from the Indian Antiquary. Read online