Gudur pillar inscriptions of the Viriyala family

The pillar

A stone pillar in a street of Gudur, near the house of the village headman (patel), carries several inscriptions.¹ In 1940 the village lay in the Jangaon taluk of the Nalgonda district.¹

P. Sreenivasachar edited two of them in his Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts.¹² One is a Telugu poem about the Viriyala chief Erra (No. 23).¹² The other is a Kannada record of the chief Malla (No. 24).¹² The Kannada record of Malla says that Malla built a Shiva temple called Malleshvara, a tank and a large well at Gumudur.³

A Kannada inscription at Gudur of the Western Chalukya prince Someshvara is dated in the 49th year of the Chalukya-Vikrama era.⁴ This corresponds to 24 December 1124.⁴ It records his gift of the village of Bammarige to the god Malleshvara of Gumudur.⁴ He made the gift at the request of his officer Savipayya, who governed the Kollipake (Kolanupaka) two-thousand district.⁴

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry treated the Telugu verses as the Telugu part of this record of 1124.⁵

The Telugu verses

Sreenivasachar thought the Telugu record unusual in both form and content.¹ It gives no date and does not say what was given.¹ It is mainly a eulogy (praise) of the deeds of Erra.¹

It traces his family from the line of Durjaya through Boranti Venna, Era and Viriyala Bhima to Erra himself.⁶¹ Three verses describe his deeds.⁶

• He took up the cause of the boy Bottu Beta and killed his enemy.⁶ He set the boy up in the Koravi country and ruled there in the boy’s name.⁶
• He took charge of the young Kakati lord Beta.⁶² For the sake of the lady Kamama-sani, he met the Pallava-raya, the emperor, on Beta’s behalf and re-established the house of Kakati.⁶²
• He killed Kadaya-nayaka, installed a king in Velupugonda and received villages from him.⁶

The sculptor who cut the letters signs as Kommojana Baraha.⁶

Who was Kamasani?

The verse about Kamasani can be read in more than one way. In Sreenivasachar’s 1940 translation, Erra himself took the boy under his care.⁶² He did so because Beta was the refuge of the maiden Kamama-sani.⁶²

Parabrahma Sastry read the lady as Erra’s wife, Kamavasani.⁷ In his account she took up the cause of the young Garuda Beta, approached the emperor and restored the Kakatiya line.⁷ Perhaps, he thought, she did so because she was related to the family, while her husband had earlier harmed it.⁷

He noted that the late family chronicle Siddheshvara-charitra gives a similar role to a lady regent.⁷ He thought this chronicle unreliable in several respects.⁷

Two Betas

The record names two young chiefs called Beta. Parabrahma Sastry’s book of 1978 distinguished them.⁵⁸⁹ He took Bottu Beta, set up at Koravi, to be a chief of the Mudigonda Chalukyas.⁵⁸⁹ He took the Kakati Beta to be Garuda Beta, that is Beta I, who had to take on his responsibilities while still young.⁵⁸⁹

He also pointed out that the verses tell of events four generations before Malla, the donor of 1124.⁵⁸ He placed Malla as Erra’s great-grandson.⁵⁸

In his edition of the Bayyaram tank inscription, reprinted in Epigraphia Telanganica, he read the Telugu verses differently.¹⁰ There he read them as naming a Garumdani Beta, whom he identified with Garuda Beta of Bayyaram.¹⁰ He took the word Bottu, young Beta, as a description of the same chief.¹⁰

Epigraphia Telanganica also uses the Gudur verses to argue that Beta I came to power young.¹¹ In its view, this helps to explain the long gap between his father Gunda IV, named in a grant of about 956, and Beta’s own record of 1051.¹¹

Editions

The Telugu verses and Malla’s Kannada record were edited, with translations, as Nos. 23 and 24 of Sreenivasachar’s Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 78–82.⁶³ Prince Someshvara’s record of 1124 is summarised as No. 44 in Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (1961).⁴

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 189, list of inscriptions, No. 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 190, list of inscriptions, Nos. 23–24 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 81, translation of No. 24, verses 2–7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

4. P. B. Desai, introduction to P. Sreenivasachar, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 3, 1961), p. 16, No. 44 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 54. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

6. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 79, translation of No. 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased; the names are those of the inscription. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 43. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 55. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 34. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 322, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription of Kakati Mailama”. ↩ ↩² ↩³

11. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 25, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Sanigaram Epigraphs of the Early Kakatiyas”, Epigraphia Andhrica IV (1975). ↩ ↩²