"In the meanwhile, the three men in charge of the idol heard of the advance of the Muhammadans closer to the hill ; fearing for their safety and that of the idol, the chief man tied himself down to the idol and asked the two others gently to let it down the slope of the hill, himself being always on the underside so that the idol may not suffer damage. Having got down safely, the three men lived on there in an isolated glen in the forest at the foot of the hill unfrequented by ordinary people. In the meanwhile, people at Srlrangam thinking it impossible to recover the idol, made and consecrated others, instead of those of both the god and the goddess. In the meanwhile the three men continued to live on doing their daily service to the god in the usual fashion. For a period of fifty-nine and a half years from the date of the sack, of which two years were spent in the palace of the Sultan, the idol of Srlrangam found its shrine in that sequestered glen. In the course of this long stay, the father and the uncle had died and the son had grown up to be an old man of eighty, looking more like a forest man than a civilized one. Feeling that his end was drawing near this one man showed himself to the hill folk about and let them understand how and why he happened to be there. Information of this reached the town by means of these people, and it happened to be the time of Gopana, who was in charge of Narayanapuram (Narayanavaram) near Chandragiri under the newly formed kingdom of Vijayanagar. He carried the idol to his later head-quarters at Ginji where he placed it in the temple called Singavaram even now, in a safe place difficult of approach even from Ginji itself. When Prince Kampana had over-powered the Muhammadan garrisons in the various localities in South India and brought the whole of it under the control of Vijayanagar, Gopana, his chief adviser got the idol re-installed in the temple at Srlrangam in the Saka year, 1293, A.D. 1370-71, in the year Paritapi, month Vaikasi, date 17."
January 1, 1970