- H.C.]
The proper territory of the Kingdom of Warangol lay inland, but the last
reigning prince before Polo's visit to India, by name Kakateya Pratapa
Ganapati Rudra Deva, had made extensive conquests on the coast, including
Nellore, and thence northward to the frontier of Orissa. This prince left
no male issue, and his widow, RUDRAMA DEVI, daughter of the Raja of
Devagiri, assumed the government and continued to hold it for
twenty-eight, or, as another record states, for thirty-eight years, till
the son of her daughter had attained majority. This was in 1292, or by the
other account 1295, when she transferred the royal authority to this
grandson Pratapa Vira Rudra Deva, the "Luddur Deo" of Firishta, and the
last Ganapati of any political moment. He was taken prisoner by the Delhi
forces about 1323. We have evidently in Rudrama Devi the just and beloved
Queen of our Traveller, who thus enables us to attach colour and character
to what was an empty name in a dynastic list. (Compare Wilson's
Mackenzie, I. cxxx.; Taylor's Or. Hist. MSS. I. 18; Do.'s Catalogue
Raisonne, III. 483.)
Mutfili appears in the Carta Catalana as Butiflis, and is there by
some mistake made the site of St. Thomas's Shrine. The distance from
Maabar is in Ramusio only 500 miles - a preferable reading.
NOTE 2. - Some of the Diamond Mines once so famous under the name of
Golconda are in the alluvium of the Kistna River, some distance above the
Delta, and others in the vicinity of Kadapa and Karnul, both localities
being in the territory of the kingdom we have been speaking of.
