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BEFORE entering upon the History of the Adil Shahy Dynasty of Beejapoor, during the existence of which the magnificent memorials of its sway which form the illustrated portion of this work had their origin, it is necessary to sketch briefly, the antecedent Mahomedan power out of which this Dynasty arose; and the disruption of that power into separate independent kingdoms which, under various vicissitudes, existed until their final subversion and extinction by the Moghul Emperors of Dehli. Without this course, the Mahomedan conquest of the Deccan would fail to be understood; as it was only in its second phase of divided sovereignty that that conquest became supreme in the total extinction of those local ancient Hindoo dynasties which preceded it, and eventually merged into the paramount Mahomedan dominion of Dehli.

Of the ancient Hindoo sovereignties of the Deccan there is little known, or of the extent of those several kingdoms or principalities, the names of which have transpired from time to time in inscriptions on pillars, copper tablets of grants, or from other sources; and it would serve little purpose to attempt to detail dynasties which gradually disappeared, and were succeeded by others in the untraceable waves of revolution which have passed over the country. The memorials which survive them, the Buddist Cave Temples of Karli, Ajunta, Darasew, and Ellora, and the vast extension of the latter by Hindoos; the numerous other temples of the same character, both Buddist and Hindoo, which exist in the Deccan proper, and in the countries adjacent to it—the many fine Hindoo temples, and scarped forts,—all combine to give assurance of the more than ordinary power and wealth of their designers and constructors; but are, nevertheless, untraceable as the remains of particular local dynasties, or indicative of the extent of their dominions. It is perhaps most probable that after the extinction of the Hindoo kingdom of Malwa, which attained its greatest power under its celebrated king Vicramaditya, and that of the Deccan proper under Shalivahana, both co-existent in the century before, and that following the Christian era, the country was divided into smaller states or principalities, incapable of any prolonged existence, or of attaining that dignity which should secure them a place even in traditional history. Of these, the two last were probably the Chalukya kingdom (possessed by a Rajpoot family, whose capital was at Kulliani, a city about twenty miles south-west of Beeder, in the dominions of His Highness the Nizam), and the Yadava, Yadow, or Jadow family, of Deogurh, the modern Dowlutabad, who were unquestionably Mahrattas.

By inscriptions upon the temples and monoliths in various parts of the Canarese provinces, and Southern India, which were collected by Mr. Walter Elliot, of the Madras Civil Service, and published in the fourth volume of The Journal of the Asiatic Society,” the Chalukya kingdom can be traced up to the end of the twelfth century, and was then possibly on the decline. A new sect, termed Lingayet, dissenters from Hinduism professed by Brahmins, and intolerant of all image worship except of the Phallic emblems, had sprung into as existence; and there still exists a local tradition, that the last Prince of the Chalukya race, a convert to the new faith, abjured royalty, and became an ascetic. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the Jadows of Deogurh became possessed of Kulliani, and probably of as much of the Chalukya territory as they could hold, and were in their time the most powerful princes of the Deccan proper. Their territory may have been bounded by the to the west, the Tapty river to the north, with an irregular line to the east and south, representing the sea frontier of the powerful “Andra” dynasties of Wurungul and Beejanugger, by whom the paramount sovereignty of the whole of Southern India was most probably shared.