Padmakshi temple inscription of Prola II

The pillar

The small Padmakshi temple stands on a small hill to the south of Hanamkonda.¹² H. Krishna Sastri edited this inscription in Epigraphia Indica in 1908.¹² He found the temple “devoid of any architectural pretensions”, unlike the later Kakatiya buildings.¹² The rock beside it is carved with a row of seated Jaina images.¹² In front of the temple stands an inscribed square pillar of black granite.¹²

At the top of each face, in a sunk panel, is a seated Jaina ascetic.¹² On the east face he has a cow and calf on one side, and a dagger and shield on the other.¹² On the north face he has the sun and moon beside him.¹²

From the carvings and the text, Krishna Sastri concluded that the temple was first dedicated to the Jaina goddess Kadalalaya.² He thought that the Brahmans who later took it over worshipped her as Padmakshi, a form of Durga.²

The text runs over all four faces in 112 lines, in “bold and clear Kanarese characters of the twelfth century”.³ The opening prayer and the verses that curse anyone who breaks the gift are in Sanskrit.³ The rest is Kannada prose and verse.³

Contents

The record begins with a prayer to the Jina.³⁴ It places itself in the reign of the Western Chalukya king Tribhuvanamalladeva, Vikramaditya VI.³⁴ It names his feudatory, the mahamandalesvara (great lord) Kakati Beta, “the lord of Anmakunda, the best of towns”.³⁴ It says that Beta’s hereditary minister, the general Vaija, brought his master to the feet of the Chalukya emperor.³⁴ Vaija made him ruler of the district of Sabbi-sayira, the “Sabbi thousand”.³⁴

Vaija’s son, the pergade (officer) Beta, became minister of Kakati Prola.⁴ Beta’s wife Mailama built the Kadalalaya-basadi, a Jaina temple, on the top of the hill.⁴

The record then gives the gift and its date.⁴ In Chalukya-Vikrama year 42, the cyclic year Hemalambi, at the winter solstice, Mailama gave six mattar of land.⁴ This was while the king Kakatiya Polalarasa, son of the mandalika Tribhuvanamalla, was ruling at Ammakunde.⁴ The land lay below a tank that her husband Betana had built and named after her, and she set up the pillar.⁴

A second gift was ten mattar of land below the Kuchikere tank, belonging to Orumgallu (Warangal).⁴ It was made by the mahamandalesvara Melarasa of Ugravadi, a member of the family of Madhavavarman.⁴ F. Kielhorn worked out the date as Monday, 24 December 1117.⁴ P. B. Desai’s summary of 1961 gives 25 December.⁵

Significance

Krishna Sastri called this “the earliest Kakatiya record and the only one of Prola found so far”.⁶ He took Beta to be the first historical member of the family.⁶ He thought that Beta’s title Tribhuvanamalla was borrowed from Vikramaditya VI.⁶ He took Prola to have continued as a feudatory of the same king.⁶

Robert Sewell, citing this inscription, wrote that Beta’s son Prola II “had only lately succeeded his father”.⁷ Later discoveries pushed the family’s records back to 1051 and 1053.⁸ These were the dates that P. V. Parabrahma Sastry gave for the last record of Beta I and the first of Prola I.⁸ See Beta I, Prola I and Beta II.

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry read the donor of the second gift as Medaraja, of the Polavasa family of chiefs, whose capital was Polasa.⁹¹⁰ He listed this gift among the six known records of that family.⁹¹⁰

Footnotes

1. H. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola; the Chalukya-Vikrama Year Forty-Two”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1908), p. 256 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 257 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

3. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 258 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 259, with F. Kielhorn’s note on the date (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

5. P. B. Desai, introduction to P. Sreenivasachar, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 3, 1961), p. 24, No. 68 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

6. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 260 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 96 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased except for the short phrase quoted. ↩

8. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 45. ↩ ↩²

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 58. ↩ ↩²

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 59. ↩ ↩²