Garavapadu plates of Ganapatideva

What it is

The Garavapadu grant is cut on three copper plates held together by a ring.¹ The ring is riveted into a round seal that shows the crescent and the sun, a boar facing a dagger, and a cow.¹ The plates have no recorded findspot.¹ They reached the epigraphy office at Madras in 1916.¹ They were lent through the scholar M. Ramakrishnakavi by T. Achyuta Rao, a deputy inspector of schools, and were later acquired by the Madras Museum.¹

C. R. Krishnamacharlu, the editor, noted a report that they had been found near Eluru (then Ellore).² When he published them in 1926, this was only the second Kakatiya copper-plate charter known.³⁴ The first was a grant of 1255 from the Nellore district, also of Ganapati’s reign.³⁴

Language and date

The text is Sanskrit in the Telugu script of the period.¹ Lines 1 to 45 contain 21 verses of prayer and narrative.¹ A list of the Brahman shareholders with their gotras (clans) follows, then the boundaries of the village and the usual closing verse.¹

The grant was made in Saka 1182 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Raudra, in the month Chaitra.⁵ The day was that of a solar eclipse in the dark fortnight.⁵ Krishnamacharlu worked this out, using L. D. Swamikannu Pillai’s Ephemeris, as Monday, 12 April 1260.⁵ There was in fact a solar eclipse on that day.⁵

The Kakatiya family line

After praising Ganesha, the Boar, Sarasvati and Shiva, the poem derives the dynasty from the Sun through Manu.³ In Krishnamacharlu’s translation, Kalikala-Choladeva “reached Dakshinapatha” while hunting.⁶ He pitched his camp at “the well-known town called Kakati”.⁶

Next comes Durjaya, “whose foundation (people) say that the Kakati kings, born in his race, were”.³⁶ He is followed by Prola, his son Rudradeva, Rudradeva’s younger brother Mahadeva and Mahadeva’s son Ganapatideva.⁶ Mahadeva’s elephants are said to have breached the ramparts of the Sevuna (Yadava) king.⁶

Krishnamacharlu took the Prola of the grant to be Prola II.³ He identified the Sevuna king as Bhillama or Jaitugi I of Devagiri.³ He reasoned from this that Mahadeva’s last year was about 1197 or 1198.³

The grant

Ganapatideva’s minister Devaraja had four sons by his wife Lakshmi: Rama, Tikka, Manchaya and Betaya.⁵ Tikka, called “the wise and the illustrious general”, gave Garavapadu as an agrahara (Brahmin village) to fifty Brahmans learned in the Vedas.⁶⁵

In fact only forty-nine Brahmans received shares.⁵ The fiftieth share went to the god Vallabha of Srikakolanu (Srikakulam in the Divi taluk).⁵ The first eleven donees belonged to the rare Yaska gotra.⁵ The boundaries name no neighbouring village. Krishnamacharlu listed several villages called Garapadu in the Guntur and Krishna (then Kistna) districts.² He preferred the one in the Nuzvid taluk because of the report that the plates came from near Eluru.²

Notable points

The story that Karikala Chola fixed his camp at Kakati is not found in any other record of the dynasty, though Karikala appears as an ancestor in some.⁵ Krishnamacharlu used it to argue that “Kakati” was the name of a real town.⁵ He thought the family name came from that town, not from a family goddess as the commentator of the Prataparudriya had said.⁵ He also suggested that the town might be Kanker, north of Bastar, whose old names were Kakera and Kakaraya.⁵²

The volume’s editors disagreed in a bracketed note, doubting that the study of words allowed such a derivation.² They pointed out that tradition made the Kakatiyas descendants of Arjuna, of the Lunar race, while Karikala belonged to the Solar race.²

Krishnamacharlu also warned that the general Tikka of this grant should not be confused with two men of the same name at Nellore.⁵ One was the poet Tikkana, minister of Manumasiddhi.⁵ The other was Tikkana’s cousin, who commanded Manumasiddhi’s army.⁵

Editions

The plates were reviewed in the Madras Annual Report on Epigraphy for 1916-17. That report summarised the family line and the grant by Tikka, the second son of Devaraja.⁷ Krishnamacharlu edited the text and translation in Epigraphia Indica XVIII (1926) from ink impressions lent by the epigraphy office.²

Footnotes

1. C. R. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva; Saka 1182”, Epigraphia Indica XVIII (1926), p. 346 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 349, with the editors’ notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 347 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates and Stones in the Nellore District, Part I (1905), p. 137, copper-plate No. 17 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

5. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 348 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

6. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 354, translation of verses 11–20 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, pp. 121–122, para. 30 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩