Dorasamudra

Who holds it

Name

Veera Ballala II

Title

King of the Hoysalas, lord of the royal city

Since

22 July 1173

Born

not recorded

Family

see Veera Ballala II

Confidence

high

Wikipedia (Veera Ballala II, Hoysala Empire)

Lord in 1200

Veera Ballala II, king (his governor of the city is not named in anything we read)

What the town holds

Capital of the house; the year of the move is not pinned (see the notes).

Allies and rivals

The Ayyavole and Nakara bodies fund the building.

How things stand that morning

Royal seat in peace. Where the king is on the morning of 1 January is not known: the campaigning season runs from January to April and the court often moves north with him.

Wealth

Royal revenue, temple endowments and the mint; no figure.

Military

The royal household troops and the dandanayakas' contingents; no numbers.

Council

Ayyavole and Nakara guild headmen are attested for Hoysala towns (see Ayyavole and Nakara guilds); the town's own headmen are not named

Communities

Brahmin ritualists of the Hoysaleshwara, Jain monks and merchants of the basadis, Srivaishnava teachers (the tradition of Ramanuja's stay at Melkote under Vishnuvardhana), the royal servants

Militia

The royal household troops; no numbers

Walls and castle

An earth and stone circuit, roughly a rounded square about two and a quarter kilometres across, with the tanks worked into the defence on the west side (board 'halebidu-fort-circuit', not checked against a survey); a city wall to keep out a raid and make a besieger commit, not a hill fort

Trade and crafts

Soapstone sculptors, masons and tank-diggers working for the king (the campaign board: workshops that cut soapstone for the whole kingdom); weavers and oil-pressers in the lower town are our inference. The royal coinage is Hoysala gold, but no source we read puts a mint here (the campaign board names the mint at Lakkundi); no figure.

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 to 1219 (range; month not known)The Kedareshwara temple at Halebidu is built, credited on the campaign board to Ballala II and Queen Ketaladevi (1200 in Wikipedia's temple table).Depends on: The king's building programme and a quiet capital. Stopped by: A war in the north that takes the treasury, or the king's early death.

Places of note

• Hoysaleshwara temple: twin Shiva temple, begun about 1121 and complete by 1160 on Wikipedia (the campaign board has it unfinished)
• Dorasamudra tank: the great tank; position approximate

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board puts the Kedareshwara temple in the 1200 town with a range of about 1200 to 1219. Wikipedia's Hoysala architecture table gives 1200 and its Halebidu page gives no date. On 1 January it is just begun or not begun, so it is not drawn as a feature of the town.
• Capital date: Wikipedia's Hoysala Empire page says Dwarasamudra 'became capital in 1062' and gives no reason for the shift; its Halebidu page says the 11th century. The campaign board (and the common account, from memory, not re-read) has a move from Belur in the twelfth century. Not pinned; by 1200 it is the capital on any reading.
• Board 'hoysaleshwara-temple' says the temple is not finished on this date and 'never will be', with the towers over both sanctums never carried up. Wikipedia's page for the temple dates the building from about 1121 to 1160 and says towers once stood over each sanctum and are missing today; no Wikipedia page we read calls it unfinished. We follow Wikipedia and mark the point.
• Board 'halebidu-fort-circuit' says the wall twice fails in the fourteenth century; that is later than 1200.

Evidence: The place, the tank, the temples and the court are firm; the town's own officers and its population are not in any source we read.

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

Primary sources for Hoysala kingdom

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.

• 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
• South Indian Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India), Various (Chola, Pandya and other chanceries and temple scribes), edited by E. Hultzsch, V. Venkayya, H. Krishna Sastri and successors (inscriptions of the 7th to 17th centuries; the series ran from 1890). The temple inscriptions printed here are the primary record of the Tamil country in 1200. Read online