Chandupatla inscription

What it is

The Chandupatla inscription is a brief Telugu record of a land gift to a temple. It owes its fame to one phrase.¹² It states that Rudramadevi, the Kakatiya queen, had already attained Shivaloka, the world of Shiva, that is, had died.¹² Before it was found, historians believed that she reigned until about 1291 or even 1295. Since its publication, her death has generally been placed in November 1289.¹²

The stone

The record is cut on a stone set up beside a small Shiva shrine outside the village of Chandupatla, on the road from Nakrekal (Nekarikallu) to Nalgonda.¹ Two separate records are carved on the stone, one on each side.¹ The other belongs to the reign of the Western Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI.¹ The Kakatiya record has 24 lines, of which three, dealing with the land given, cannot be read because of careless engraving. Script and language are Telugu.¹ Unusually, it has no opening prayer and no closing curse.¹

Contents

The record is dated Saka 1211 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Virodhi, on the twelfth day of the bright half of Margasira, a Friday.¹ It names mahamandaleshvara (great provincial lord) Kakatiya Rudrama-mahadevi and Mallikarjuna-nayaka, who had attained Shivaloka.¹² Because of this, Puvvula Mummadi, a servant of Mallikarjuna-nayaka, made a gift to the god Somanathadeva of Chandupatla.¹² He gave wet land and one putti of dry land behind the Rasamudra tank.¹² The gift paid for offerings and a lamp that was never to go out.¹²

Date and debate

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry published the record in the epigraphical series Studies in Indian Epigraphy (1974).¹ There he calculated the date as Friday, 25 November 1289.¹ The 1992 Nalgonda volume of Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh gives the same date.³ His book The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978) gives 27 November 1289.² Either way, the queen was already dead by late November 1289.¹²

Parabrahma Sastry identified Mallikarjuna-nayaka with Nissanka Mallikarjuna.¹² This general’s son raised an inscription at Panugallu in May 1290 for the merit of Kumara Rudradeva, that is, Prataparudra.¹²

Because the record treats the queen and her general together, Parabrahma Sastry argued in 1974 that they died at the same time.¹ In his view they probably died in battle, around 13 November 1289.¹ In 1978 he was more cautious. He suggested that they might have been killed in their camp rather than on the battlefield, since the queen would then have been about eighty.² He named the rebel Kayastha chief Ambadeva as the likely enemy.²

The Nalgonda volume repeats the battlefield explanation.³ No source consulted here states directly how she died, so the battle remains an inference.

Older chronologies show what the record changed. Robert Sewell’s list of inscriptions covers material collected up to 1923.⁴⁵ It still showed Rudramma reigning in Guntur district in 1289 under the title Rudradeva, and suggested that she died in 1291.⁴⁵ Henry Yule’s notes on Marco Polo dated her handing over of power to her grandson to 1292 or 1295.⁶

Parabrahma Sastry argued that records of 1290–95 naming Rudradeva or Kumara Rudra refer to Prataparudra.¹⁷ In his view Prataparudra began to rule in his own right in 1289.¹⁷

Editions

The record was edited by Parabrahma Sastry in Studies in Indian Epigraphy I (1974), pp. 40–49. This edition is not in the library used for this page, which relies on the summary reprinted in Epigraphia Telanganica (2023).¹

Footnotes

1. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 3 (2023), pp. 81–82, No. 94, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Did Kakati Rudramadevi die on the battlefield?”, Studies in Indian Epigraphy I (1974), pp. 40–49. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³

2. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 125–126. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry (ed.), Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh: Nalgonda District, vol. I (1992), p. xi and Preface. ↩ ↩²

4. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 166 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

5. Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 169 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II (1903), p. 362 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 129. ↩ ↩²