Chikka Devaraja - Legacy

Legacy

According to Subrahmanyam 1989, the state that Chikka Devaraja left for his son was "at one and the same time a strong and a weak state." Although it had uniformly expanded in size from the mid-seventeenth century to the early eighteenth, it had done so as a result of alliances that tended to hinder the very stability of the expansions. Some of the southeastern conquests described above (such as of Salem), although involving regions that were not of direct interest to the Mughals, were nonetheless the result of alliances with Mughal Faujdar Diwan of Sira and with Venkoji, the Maratha ruler of Tanjore. For example, the siege of Trichnopoly had to be abandoned because the alliance had begun to rupture. Similarly, in addition to receiving a signet ring and a Sword described above, a consequence of the embassy sent to Aurangzeb in the Deccan in 1700 was formal subordination to Mughal authority and a requirement to pay annual tribute. There is evidence, too, that the administrative reforms mentioned above might have been a direct result of Mughal influence.