Bitragunta grant of Sangama II (1356)

By this copper-plate grant of Saka 1278 (1356; Saka is an Indian way of counting years), Sangama II, son of Kampa, gave the village of Bitragunta to Brahmans.¹ The grant names the five sons of Sangama I, and it says that the first two, Harihara and Kampa, “ruled one after the other”.¹ Krishna Sastri concluded from it that Sangama II held parts of the Nellore and Kadapa (then Cuddapah) districts while his uncle Bukka I reigned at Vijayanagara.²

The plates

H. Krishna Sastri edited the grant in the third volume of Epigraphia Indica.³ It had been noticed earlier by Robert Sewell.³ In Krishna Sastri’s words, “the original was lent by Dr. C. D. Macleane, Collector of Nellore, in whose office it is preserved, to Dr. Hultzsch”.³

The grant has five copper plates, each about 10 by 5½ inches.³ There is a hole at the top of each for a ring, but the ring is lost.³ Their order is marked by one to five notches in the left margin, and by Telugu numerals on the backs.³

The first side of the first plate has the sun at the top left corner and the moon at the top right.³ Below the moon is “the figure of a bull, tied by a rope to a tripod, which is surmounted by a trident”.³ Krishna Sastri noted that such symbols are “quite common in stone-inscriptions”, but “rather rare on copper-plates”.³ The language is Sanskrit verse, “written in faint, but boldly engraved Telugu characters”.³

The grant

The grant opens with a prayer to the Boar incarnation of Vishnu.¹ It then introduces Sangama I “without any reference to his mythical descent from the Moon, as is done in other Vijayanagara grants”.¹ It names his five sons: “Harihara, Kampa, Bukka, Marapa and Muddapa. Of these, the first two ruled one after the other.”¹ Kampa’s son Sangama II is the donor.¹

Sangama II gave the village of Bitragunta, or Bittarakunta, to twenty-eight Brahmans.¹ He also gave another village, Simkesari.¹ He did this at the suggestion of his preceptor (teacher), the Saiva philosopher Srikanthanatha.¹ Bitragunta was renamed Srikanthapura after this teacher.¹

The date is the new-moon day of the third month of Saka 1278 (1356), the cyclic year Durmukha.¹ The text was written by Bhoganatha, “the court-jester of Samgama II”.¹ At the end, the king wrote with his own hand the name Sri-Virupaksha, the god of the city of Vijayanagara.¹ Krishna Sastri pointed out that this “explains the origin of the colophons” (closing signatures) of later Vijayanagara grants.¹

The text says that the king made the grant at the demand of his preceptor.¹⁴ He also made it to win immortality for his father, on an anniversary.¹⁴ Krishna Sastri suggested that this may have been the first anniversary of Kampa’s death.¹⁴ If so, Kampa died and Sangama II succeeded in Saka 1277, “but this is only a conjecture which requires corroboration”.¹⁴

What it shows

Krishna Sastri valued the grant for two facts.⁴ The first was “the distinct mention of the five sons of Samgama I.”, since most family lists name only Harihara I and Bukka I.⁴ The second was the existence of a grandson, Sangama II.⁴

The second fact led him to an argument about the scholar Sayana.⁴ Sayana’s Madhaviya Dhatuvritti names him minister of “Samgamaraja, the son of Kamparaja”.⁴ Krishna Sastri argued that Sayana was the minister of Sangama II, not of Sangama I.⁴ Sangama I, in his words, “in the present state of our epigraphical knowledge, is nothing more than a name”.⁴ See Harihara I and Bukka I.

Following Sewell’s lists, he placed Bitragunta 7 miles south by west of Kavali in the Nellore district.² The grant puts it three yojanas (an old measure of distance) north of the town of Vikramasimhapura.² This town was in the district of Pakavishaya, on the shore of the eastern ocean.²

Simkesari lay in Mulikidesa, on the north bank of the Penner.² It was north of the Saiva temple at Pushpagiri near Kadapa.² Krishna Sastri was told of a village called Sunkesari close to Pushpagiri.²

His conclusion was this: “Samgama II. held portions of the present Nellore and Cuddapah districts, while his uncle Bukka I. was reigning at Vijayanagara.”² He added that Sangama II “can scarcely have been dependent on Bukka I., as he would have otherwise referred to the latter as his overlord in his inscription.”² See Kavali, Nellore and Udayagiri.

A second Nellore grant also names five sons of Sangama.⁵⁶ This is the Kapalur plates, kept in the same Collector’s office, dated Saka 1258 and given to Harihara I.⁵⁶ A. Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty judged it a fake in 1905.⁵⁶ Its Nandinagari letters were “quite modern and in certain letters it is very similar to Devanagari”.⁵⁶ It lists the sons as Harihara, Bukka, Kampa, Mara and Muddana.⁵⁶

Footnotes

1. Krishna Sastri, “Bitragunta Grant”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 22 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. Krishna Sastri, “Bitragunta Grant”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 24 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. H. Krishna Sastri, “Bitragunta Grant of Samgama II.; Saka-Samvat 1278”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 21 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

4. Krishna Sastri, “Bitragunta Grant”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

5. A. Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates and Stones in the Nellore District, Part I (1905), p. 109, Copper-plate No. 15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Butterworth and Venugopaul Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, Part I (1905), p. 110 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵