Amudalapadu plates of Vikramaditya I

The Amudalapadu plates are a grant of Vikramaditya I of Badami, found in the Alampur taluk (sub-district).¹ They are an early record of Chalukya rule in what is now Telangana, and of the king’s turn to the Shaiva faith.¹²

Discovery

Gadiyaram Ramakrishna Sarma first published the inscription in the Telugu journal Bharati in May 1957.¹ He had borrowed the plates from Narayana Reddi, a pleader (lawyer) of Vanaparti.¹ Narayana Reddi had obtained them about twenty years earlier from a resident of Amudalapadu in the Alampur taluk.¹

The taluk was then part of the Raichur district of Hyderabad State and later of the Mahbubnagar district.¹ D. C. Sircar edited the plates again in Epigraphia Indica XXXII.¹

There are four plates, each about seven inches long and three inches high.¹ They hang on a ring whose ends are fixed beneath a seal with the boar emblem of the Chalukyas.¹ The first and last plates are written on the inner side only, and there are 48 lines in all.¹

Sircar described the letters as the old Telugu-Kannada alphabet, close to those of Vikramaditya I’s other records.¹ He found the language Sanskrit, and the wording close to that of the king’s other charters.¹

Date

The grant is dated on the full-moon day of Vaisakha in the fifth year of the reign.¹ Taking the accession as 654–55, Sircar dated it to 30 April 660.¹

F. Kielhorn dated the Talamanchi plates to 13 July 660, in the king’s sixth year.¹ Sircar noted that, if this date is accepted, the accession fell between 30 April and 13 July 655.¹ See the Talamanchi plates.

The grant

The king gave the village of Iparumkal in the Vamguravadi district to Sudarsanacharya.² It was the fee due to a guru at the king’s initiation into the circle of Shiva (Siva-mandala-diksha).² The king was then staying at the village of Marrura.²

Sudarsanacharya divided the land among twenty-seven Brahmanas and kept a share for his own wife.² Sircar took the Brahmanas to be the assistants at the ceremony.³ He saw in the rite a resemblance to the later initiation of the Virashaivas (Lingayats).³

Following Sarma, Sircar thought that Marrura may be Chinna or Pedda Marruru on the Krishna in the Kollapuram taluk.⁴ He thought the name of the Vamguravadi district survives in the village of Vamguru in the Kalvaparti taluk.⁴ Sarma was inclined to identify Iparumkal with Vipanagandla, about ten miles from those villages.⁴

Sircar called the king’s initiation into the Shaiva faith “a very interesting fact”.² The earlier Chalukyas had been Vaishnavas, with leanings towards Shaivism and the Mother-goddesses.²

The genealogy (family history) in the grant repeats familiar claims.⁵ One is the passage on the three kings who had interrupted Pulakesin II’s fortune.⁵ Sircar argued that J. F. Fleet was wrong to read this as a reference to three Pallava kings.⁵⁶

“The earliest Telugu inscription”

The editors of Epigraphia Telanganica (2023) call this record “the earliest Telugu inscription” of Telangana. They describe it as the earliest use of Telugu letters there.⁷ They note, though, that its script is old Telugu-Kannada and its language Sanskrit.⁷ They also call Vikramaditya I the first Badami king to patronise Shaivism.⁸

A later grant from the same country

In a note, Sircar mentions the Pallepadu plates of Vinayaditya, also from the Alampur taluk.⁹ Sarma published them in 1956.⁹ They are dated 27 April 682, in Vinayaditya’s second year.⁹ The king issued them while he was at Pangal in the Nagarkurnool taluk.⁹

Footnotes

1. D. C. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates of Vikramaditya I, Year 5”, Epigraphia Indica XXXII (1959), p. 175 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

2. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 178 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased, except for the short phrase quoted. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 181 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

4. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 182 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 176 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 177 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

7. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica I: Pre-Kakatiya Telangana (2023), p. 8. Cite-only; paraphrased except for the short phrase quoted. ↩ ↩²

8. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 26. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

9. Sircar, “Amudalapadu Plates” (1959), p. 175, note 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴