Mallikarjuna and Virupaksha I. -- Rajasekhara and Virupaksha II. --
The Dakhan splits up into five independent kingdoms -- The Bijapur
king captures Goa and Belgaum -- Fighting at Rajahmundry, Kondapalle,
and other parts of Telingana -- Death of Mahmud Gawan -- The Russian
traveller Nikitin -- Chaos at Vijayanagar -- Narasimha seizes the
throne.

I have already stated that the period following the reign of Deva
Raya II. is one very difficult to fill up satisfactorily from any
source. It was a period of confusion in Vijayanagar -- a fact that
is clearly brought out by Nuniz in his chronicle.

A.D. 1449 is the last date in any known inscription containing mention
of a Deva Raya, and Dr. Hultzsch[148] allots this to Deva Raya II. It
may be, as already suggested, that there was a Deva Raya III. on the
throne between A.D. 1444 and 1449, but this remains to be proved. Two
sons of Deva Raya II., according to the inscriptions, were named
Mallikarjuna and Virupaksha I. respectively. There are inscriptions
of the former dated in A.D. 1452 -- 53 and 1464 -- 65,[149] and one
of the latter in 1470.[150] Mallikarjuna appears to have had two sons,
Rajasekhara, of whom we have inscriptions in the years A.D. 1479 -- 80
and 1486 -- 87, and Virupaksha II., mentioned in an inscription dated
A.D. 1483 -- 84, three years earlier than the last of Rajasekhara.

Dr. Hultzsch, in the third volume of the EPIGRAPHIA INDICA, p. 36,
gives these dates, but in the fourth volume of the same work (p. 180)
he notes that an inscription of Rajasekhara exists at Ambur in North
Arcot, which is dated in the year corresponding to A.D. 1468 --
69. I have also been told of an inscription on stone to be seen at