ame "Bangalore" represents an anglicised version of the city's Kannada name Bengal?ru (Kannada pronunciation: (About this soundlisten)). It is the name of a village near Kodigehalli in Bangalore city today and was used by Kempegowda to christen the city as Bangalore at the time of its foundation. The earliest reference to the name "Bengal?ru" was found in a ninth-century Western Ganga dynasty stone inscription on a v?ra gallu (Kannada: ????????; lit. 'hero stone', a rock edict extolling the virtues of a warrior). In this inscription found in Begur, "Bengal?r?" is referred to as a place in which a battle was fought in 890 CE. It states that the place was part of the Ganga Kingdom until 1004 and was known as "Bengaval-uru", the "City of Guards" in Halegannada (Old Kannada). An apocryphal story recounts that the twelfth century Hoysala king Veera Ballala II, whil e on a hunting expedition, lost his way in the forest. Tired and hungry, he came across a poor old woman who served him boiled beans. The grateful king named the place "benda-kaal-uru" (literally, "town of boiled beans"), which eventually evolved into "Bengal?ru". Suryanath Kamath has put forward an explanation of a possible floral origin of the name, being derived from benga, the Kannada term for Pterocarpus marsupium (also known as the Indian Kino Tree), a species of dry and moist decid