Ganapavaram inscription of Devapala

The pillar

The inscription is cut on a broken stone pillar lying in the Venkatesha temple at Ganapavaram, then in the Huzurnagar taluk (sub-district) of the Nalgonda district.¹ P. Sreenivasachar edited it in 1940 as No. 22 of his Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts. He counted it among the Sanskrit records of the collection that are of most literary value.¹² The pillar is badly damaged, and Sreenivasachar could not make out the main purpose of the grant.¹

Contents

The first two verses are damaged.³ Sreenivasachar thought they gave the Kakatiya genealogy (family line) down to Ganapati, son of Mahadeva and nephew of Rudradeva.³

The next verses praise the victory marches of king Ganapati.³ The poem then turns to the donor’s father. The verses say that he won the name Bala-Sarasvati from a king called Hemmadi-deva.³¹ They add that king Jagaddeva took him from Hemmadi and made him his general and minister.³¹

The father enriched his master’s country with the wealth of its enemies.⁴ His son Devapala was brought up by Jagaddeva.⁴ After Jagaddeva, Prola, chief of the Kakati dynasty, saw that Devapala was devoted to his master and brought him up with care.⁴

Devapala then founded a town called Ganapatipura, full of learning, crops and gardens, beside a large tank.⁴ In Saka 1135 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the year Srimukha, on the eighth day of the bright half of Magha, he installed there the god Rudreshvara.⁴

A long verse describes the city and its people.⁴ It tells of soldiers at arms practice, poets reciting, women singing, Brahmins debating and merchants discussing the price of gems.⁴ The poem was composed by Nandi, son of Rechi and grandson of a scholar named Nandimitra.⁵¹

Date

The verse gives the day as a Sunday.⁶ Sreenivasachar worked the date out as probably 20 January 1214, which was a Monday.⁶ He suggested that the weekday was a mistake.⁶

Significance

The record links the Kakatiya court with Jagaddeva, the Paramara prince from Malwa.⁷ Jagaddeva governed the Kolanupaka (Kollipaka) province for the Western Chalukyas from 1104 to 1108.⁷ In the Thousand Pillar Temple inscription of 1163, Prola II is said to have made Jagaddeva raise his siege of Anumakonda.⁸ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry thought this the earliest of Prola II’s victories.⁹

The Ganapavaram verses show the other side of that rivalry.⁴ Prola took into his own service a man who had been brought up by Jagaddeva.⁴ For Prola II and Ganapatideva, see their pages.

Editions

The text and translation are in Sreenivasachar’s Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 73–78, with the date on p. 179 and the list entry on p. 189.¹⁶

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 189, list of inscriptions, No. 22 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I: Introduction (1942), p. 8 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

3. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 76, verses 1–7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 77, verses 8–17 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

5. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 78, verse 22 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

6. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 179, appendix of dates, No. 15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 69. ↩ ↩²

8. J. F. Fleet, Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII, Indian Antiquary XI (1882), p. 17 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 75. ↩