of the Krishna the whole country was still under Hindu domination,
but the supremacy of the old dynasties was shaken to its base by the
rapidly advancing terror from the north. With the accession in 1325 of
Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi things became worse still. Marvellous stories
of his extraordinary proceedings circulated amongst the inhabitants
of the Peninsula, and there seemed to be no bound to his intolerance,
ambition, and ferocity.

Everything, therefore, seemed to be leading up to but one
inevitable end -- the ruin and devastation of the Hindu provinces;
the annihilation of their old royal houses, the destruction of their
religion, their temples, their cities. All that the dwellers in the
south held most dear seemed tottering to its fall.

Suddenly, about the year 1344 A.D., there was a check to this wave
of foreign invasion -- a stop -- a halt -- then a solid wall of
opposition; and for 250 years Southern India was saved.

The check was caused by a combination of small Hindu states -- two
of them already defeated, Warangal and Dvarasamudra -- defeated,
and therefore in all probability not over-confident; the third, the
tiny principality of Anegundi. The solid wall consisted of Anegundi
grown into the great empire of the Vijayanagar. To the kings of this
house all the nations of the south submitted.

If a straight line be drawn on the map of India from Bombay to Madras,
about half-way across will be found the River Tungabhadra, which,
itself a combination of two streams running northwards from Maisur,
flows in a wide circuit north and east to join the Krishna not far from
Kurnool. In the middle of its course the Tungabhadra cuts through a