Kempe Gowda I
feudatory ruler under the Vijayanagara Empire
1510 CE to 1569 CE
Hiriya Kempe Gowda, well known as Kempe Gowda I, is a feudatory ruler under the Vijayanagara Empire.
The city of Bengaluru (Bangalore) is established by Kempe Gowda in 1537, as the capital of his erstwhile kingdom.
Bangalore is currently the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka.
Kempe Gowda is one of the well educated and successful rulers of his time.
Being a successor of Kempananje Gowda, the descendants of tghe Gowda lineage started as Yelahankanadu Prabhus (ruler of Yelhankanadu).The Yelahankanadu Prabhus were Gowdas or tillers of the land.
They belonged to the Morasu Vokkalu sect; their ancestors were migrants.
Fourth in succession from Rana Bhairave Gowda, founder of the dynasty of Avati Nadu Prabhus and great grandson of Jaya Gowda, who established a separate dynasty, is the famous Yelahanka Nadu Prabhus, Kempe Gowda I, who rules for forty-six years, commencing his reign from 1513.
Jaya Gowda accepts the sovereignty of the Vijayanagar emperor.
He later leaves Yelankanadu and is successful in planning and building Bengaluru Fort and Bengaluru Pete, the origins of the current city of Bengaluru.
He is also noted for his societal reforms and contribution to building temples and water reservoirs in Bengaluru.
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Hiriya Kempe Gowda is the son of Kempananje Gowda, who had ruled Yelhankanadu for more than seventyyears.
Kempe Gowda, who is reputed to have shown leadership skills during his childhood, was educated at Gurukula in Aivarukandapura (Aigondapura), a village near Hesaraghatta, for nine years.
It is said that Kempe Gowda got the vision of building a great modern city during a hunting expedition near Shivanasamudra (near Hesaraghatta) near Bengaluru.
He envisioned the city to have a fort, a cantonment, tanks (water reservoirs), temples and people of all trades and professions to live in it.
He conquers Sivaganga principality, thiorty miles from Bengaluru on the present Bengaluru-Pune highway.
Next he annexes Domlur, which is on the present road from Bengaluru to the old Bengaluru Airport.
Within this vast forest area, with the necessary Imperial permission of the Vijayanagar Emperor, Achyutharaya (Dasarahalli record dated 1532) he builds Bengaluru fort and the town in 1537 and moves his capital from Yelahanka to the new Bengaluru Pete on a ridge in the southern Mysore Plateau at an elevation of 3,113 feet (949 meters).
Bangalore is today the capital of Karnataka state.