THE WORLD ATLAS

Realm · approximate borders · 1435–1540

Gajapati Empire

Kapilendra Deva seized the throne on the death of the last Ganga king (1434; Wikipedia 'Gajapati Empire'). Odisha and northern Kalinga.

Kapilendra took the Reddi lands: Rajahmundry (c. 1448) and Kondavidu (1454), bringing the frontier to the Krishna (Wikipedia 'Gajapati Empire'). Raids into Telangana and Bahmani territory were not annexations. During the succession war between Purushottama and Hamvira (who sought Bahmani help, 1471) the Bahmanis took Rajahmundry and Kondavidu; the frontier fell back to about the Godavari. Purushottama recovered the coast to the Krishna as the Bahmani state broke up, and the Gajapatis held Udayagiri until Krishnadevaraya took it in 1513. After Krishnadevaraya's campaigns (Udayagiri 1513, Kondavidu 1515) the 1519 peace left the Gajapatis the land north of the Krishna; Golconda soon pressed on the Godavari districts. Joppen's 1525 map instead gives the whole coast to Golconda.

See Gajapati Empire on the map in 1485

On the map
1435–1540
Capital
Cuttack

Rulers named in the sources

South Asia's regional kingdoms, 1000–1550

Between the Ghaznavid raids and the Mughal conquest, South Asia was shared by dozens of regional states: the Madurai Sultanate in the Tamil country, the sultanates of Gujarat, Malwa and Khandesh, the Reddi and Velama kingdoms of Andhra, the Gajapatis of Odisha, the Rajput kingdoms of Mewar and Marwar, the Ahom, Chutia, Kamata and Tripura kingdoms of the north-east, the successors of the Chera Perumals on the Malabar coast, and the Sinhala kingdoms of Gampola, Kotte and Kandy. Few medieval sources describe frontiers.

Sources