Chikkulla plates of Vikramendravarman II

The Chikkulla plates are a copper-plate charter of the Vishnukundin king Vikramendravarman II, recording the gift of a village to a temple of Shiva.¹ They give the fullest early family tree of the Vishnukundin kings.¹ When their editor F. Kielhorn published them, he knew of no other inscription that mentioned the Vishnukundins by name.¹

Discovery

J. Ramayya, Treasury Deputy Collector of Vizagapatam, wrote a note on the find.²¹ According to it, Pindi Nammayya had found the plates about ten years earlier, while digging earth at the Atikavani tank.²¹ The tank was in the Chikkulla agrahara (village granted to Brahmins) of the Tuni division of Godavari district.²¹ Nammayya lived at Upperagudem, a hamlet of Amalapuram in the Golgonda taluk of Visakhapatnam (then Vizagapatam) district.²¹

His wife offered the plates for sale early in 1895.²¹ The village accountant (karanam) secured them and sent them to the Collector, who passed them to E. Hultzsch.²¹ Kielhorn edited them in Epigraphia Indica IV.²¹

Physical description

There are five oblong copper plates, each a little over 7 inches wide.¹ The first and last are inscribed on one side only.¹ They hang on a copper ring about 3 inches across.¹ Its ends are soldered into a round seal bearing, in relief, a lion standing with its right fore-paw raised and its mouth open.¹ The letters are deeply cut and well preserved.¹

Language and script

The characters belong to the southern group of alphabets derived from Brahmi.¹³ They are close to those of the Godavari plates of Raja Prithivimula.¹³ The language is Sanskrit prose ending in three verses.¹³ But it is in places very incorrect, and mixed with Prakrit words such as gihma for grishma, “summer”.¹³

Kielhorn took the Telugu-style plural samvassarambul, “years”, in the date line as proof that the writer’s own language was Telugu.¹³ The date is written with numerical symbols for 5, 8 and 10.¹³

Content

The king issues his order from “victorious Lendulura”.⁴³⁵ He describes himself as one who meditates on the feet of the lord of Sriparvata.⁴³⁵ The family tree runs as follows:⁴³⁵

• Maharaja Madhavavarman, who performed eleven horse sacrifices (ashvamedha) and thousands of others, among them the purushamedha, vajapeya and rajasuya⁴³⁵
• his son Vikramendravarman I, “whose birth was embellished by the two families of the Vishnukundins and Vakatas”⁴³⁵
• his son Indrabhattarakavarman, praised for victories won with his elephants⁴³⁵
• the donor, Indrabhattarakavarman’s eldest son Vikramendravarman II, who “in childhood already embellished with all the virtues of a king, has duly taken upon himself the whole burden of government”⁴³⁵

The grant gives the village of Regonram to the temple of Somagirishvaranatha, a form of Tryambaka (Shiva).¹⁵ Regonram lay south-east of the village of Ravireva, on the bank of the Krishnabenna (Krishna) in the Natripati district.¹⁵ The grant is dated on the 5th day of the 8th fortnight of summer in the 10th year of the reign.¹⁵

Kielhorn identified Lendulura with Dendaluru, near the ruins of Vengi north-east of Eluru (then Ellore), following Ramayya.⁶ He identified Sriparvata with Srisailam in Kurnool district.⁶ He also suggested that the dynasty’s name survived in Vinukonda in the Krishna (then Kistna) district, and that Vinukonda had been the Vishnukundin capital.⁶

A second grant, the Ramatirtham plates of Indravarman, was published by Hultzsch in 1914.⁷ It gives a short family tree that identifies its donor with the Indrabhattarakavarman of the Chikkulla plates.⁷

Date

The plates carry no era date, only the regnal year,⁵ and opinions about their age have changed greatly:

• Kielhorn (1897) argued from the seasonal dating and the numerical symbols.⁶ He thought the grant not later than about the end of the 8th century, and probably not much earlier.⁶ He assumed the Vakataka family flourished in the late 7th and 8th centuries.⁶ The later authorities below place the dynasty two centuries or more earlier.
• Sewell and Aiyangar (1932) followed a tentative scheme of K. V. Lakshman Rao.⁸ They placed the Vishnukundins between the mid-4th century and about 610, with Vikramendravarman II reigning around the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries.⁸ They listed his grant of land on the Krishna near Ravireva (modern Ravirela) among the records of about the 6th century.⁹
• V. V. Mirashi (1947–48, published 1956) placed the great Madhavavarman, great-grandfather of Vikramendravarman II, at about 510–560.¹⁰ This scheme puts the grant correspondingly later.¹⁰

The scheme of dates followed on the Vishnukundins page sets out these positions. The plates themselves can only be dated relative to the dynasty’s pedigree.⁵

Edition

• F. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates of Vikramendravarman II”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1896–97), No. 25, pp. 193–198, with plates.²

Footnotes

1. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates” (1897), p. 194 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴

2. F. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates of Vikramendravarman II”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 193 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates” (1897), p. 197 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

4. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates” (1897), p. 196 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

5. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates” (1897), p. 198 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

6. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates” (1897), p. 195 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. E. Hultzsch, “Ramatirtham Plates of Indravarman”, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), pp. 133–134 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

8. Sewell and Aiyangar, Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 404 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

9. Robert Sewell and S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 21 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

10. V. V. Mirashi and Y. R. Gupte, “Khanapur Plates of Madhavavarman”, Epigraphia Indica XXVII (1956), pp. 314–315 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²