Chiruvroli grant of Hambira (1461)

By this copper-plate grant, Hambira-kumara, son of the Gajapati king Kapilesvara, gave the village of Chiruvroli on the Krishna to a number of Brahmins.¹² The editors equated its date with 4 September 1461.¹ Its donees received 106 Brahmin shares, and two shares went to the local gods.²³

Discovery and the plates

Villagers of Nemalikallu dug up the five copper plates in 1941.⁴⁵ The village is near Ravela, in the Sattenapalli taluk (sub-district) of the Guntur district.⁴⁵ A ring with a seal bearing an elephant is said to have been found with them, but it was lost.⁴⁵

The grant was noticed in the Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy for 1941–42.⁴⁵ It was published, without its Oriya part, in the Telugu journal Bharati.⁴⁵ D. C. Sircar and K. H. V. Sarma edited it again in Epigraphia Indica XXXIV, with a photograph.⁴⁵

Three plates, about 10½ by 6 inches, carry writing in Telugu letters on both sides.⁴ The fourth has four lines in Oriya on one side, and the fifth is blank.⁴ The fourth and fifth plates are smaller, and seem to belong to another charter.⁴

On the back of the first plate is the drawing of a sword.⁴ It stood for the king’s signature on Suryavamsi Gajapati charters, and it is repeated on the fourth and fifth plates.⁴ The editors found the script very close to that of the grants of Raghudeva and the Veligalani grant of Kapilesvara.⁴

Contents

The record has four sections:¹

• Sanskrit verses on the donor and his ancestors¹
• the date and boundaries, in Sanskrit verse and Telugu prose¹
• the list of donees¹
• a short Oriya part¹

It opens with verses to Vishnu as the Boar and to Siva.¹ It then praises the Sun and the great king Kapilesvara of the Solar race.¹ It repeats a verse of the Veligalani grant on the terror that his drums caused at Hampi, Dhara, Gulbarga and Delhi.¹ It introduces the donor, Hambira-kumara, as his son.¹

The date is given twice by chronograms (dates hidden in words).¹ It is Saka 1383 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the year Vrisha, the new moon of Bhadrapada, a Friday.¹ The editors equated it with 4 September 1461.¹

Hambira gave the village of Chiruvroli, on the bank of the Krishna, to a number of Brahmins, with a hamlet attached to it, and named the village after himself.¹² The boundaries are given in Telugu, and Srikanta and Timmayarya drew up the charter at his order.¹²

The donees received 106 Brahmin shares, and two shares went to the local gods Kesavadeva and Sagaresvaradeva.²³ The list on the third plate seems to record a second set of donees, added a little later.²³ It is headed by the scholar Naishadhiya Aubhala, who is said to have lived at Chiruvroli with his brother Ganapati, a poet.²³ The Oriya plate concerns a different village and grant.³

Place

The editors identified Chiruvroli with the present Chiruvolu, in the Divi taluk of the Krishna district.⁶ They identified its hamlet with a hamlet of that village.⁶ Some of the villages named among the boundaries still bear the same names.⁶ The new name Hambirapura went out of use.⁶

Hambira

The editors explained the name Hambira or Hamvira as a form of Hammira, from the Arabic amir (commander).¹³ They gathered his other records:¹³

• undated stone inscriptions at Zakkampudi, Kondapalli and a third village of the Krishna district¹³
• the dated inscription of February 1460 in the Warangal fort¹³

They noted that one verse calls him the bhagya-putra, the fortunate son, of Kapilesvara, and they wondered whether he was an adopted son.³⁷⁶ They also discussed his southern campaigns, the governorship of his son Dakshina-Kapilesvara in 1464 and the disputed succession after Kapilendra’s death.³⁷⁶ See Hamvira, the Warangal inscriptions and the Gajapatis.

Footnotes

1. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 178 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰

2. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 179 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 180 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

4. D. C. Sircar and K. H. V. Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira, Saka 1383”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 177 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

5. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), plate between pp. 184 and 185 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

6. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 182 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Sircar and Sarma, “Chiruvroli Grant of Hambira”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV (1961–62), p. 181 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²