Dharmasagar inscription of the minister Malla

The pillar

The inscription is cut on the four sides of a stone pillar at Dharmasagar in the Warangal taluk.¹ When Sreenivasachar recorded it, the pillar stood very near the boys’ school.¹ P. Sreenivasachar placed it first in Part II of his Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts (1940).¹ The opening verses are in Sanskrit, and the details of the gift are in Telugu prose. Parts of the pillar are damaged.²³⁴

The king and the minister

After an opening prayer, the verses say that Brahma created the Kakatiya family of kings.⁴ In this family there was a king named Ganapa (Ganapatideva), whose courage and fame they praise.⁴ Under him served the minister Bhaskara.⁴ The family line then runs from father to son:⁴⁵

• Bhaskara’s son was Chenna Ganna.⁴⁵
• Chenna Ganna’s son was Ganadhipa.⁴⁵
• Ganadhipa’s son was the minister Malla, a devotee of Shiva who carried the burden of the state.⁴⁵

Sreenivasachar’s list gives the minister’s full name as Galanta Mallaya.¹ No date survives.¹

The gift

The verses on the third side give the boundaries of the land given, and say that it was divided into three parts.⁵ Two parts went to the god, and Mallaya kept the third for his own use.⁵

The god’s share was divided again among the temple’s people.⁵ Land went to ten dancing women.⁵ Set shares went to players of the mridanga drum, to pipers, to players of the kahala horn and of the jalaja-karanda, and to the cowherds.⁵

The Telugu summary at the end calls the estate the Vishveshvara-samudra with its outlying land, and the god Prasanna-Vishveshvara of Elakurki.³⁵ It gives land to eighteen dancing women, and half a share each for a cattle trough and a water-shed.⁵ It gives a share to the two sons of a Panditaradhya.⁴⁵

The rest went to the temple itself, at Goraga-kunta, Renu-kunta and Kesama-reddi-kunta.⁴⁵ The damaged last lines mention the traders in connection with the gift.⁴⁵

Significance

The record is one of the few Kakatiya inscriptions that set out in detail how a temple endowment supported musicians and dancers. In his introduction Sreenivasachar cited it, with records at Pillalamarri and Panugallu.⁶ He took them as evidence that the temple was the main support of the fine arts in this period.⁶ For the king, see Ganapatideva.

Editions

The text and translation are in Sreenivasachar’s Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 1–4, with the list entry on p. 183.²¹

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 183, list of inscriptions, No. 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 1, text, sides I–II (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

3. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 2, text, sides III–IV (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). The names are quoted from the text. ↩ ↩²

4. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 3, text lines 69–76 and translation, verses 1–7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

5. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 4, translation, verses 8–19 and lines 63–76 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

6. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I: Introduction (1942), p. 33 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²