Inavolu inscription of Recherla Anapota

What it is

This inscription stands near the flagstaff (dhvaja-stambha) of the Mailara temple at Inavolu (Ainavolu).¹ Inavolu is a village about 8 miles from Warangal, off the road to Khammam.¹ It belongs to the period after the fall of the Kakatiyas. It records that Anapota-nayaka of the Recherla family granted the village of Ayyanavolu to the god Mailaradeva.¹²

Anapota made the grant during a campaign of conquest (digvijaya).¹² It is included here because its account of the Recherla family is one of the sources for the family’s service under the last Kakatiya king, Prataparudra.¹

The stone

The 1956 Corpus describes the stone as a broken piece set up near the flagstaff of the Mailaru temple.¹ The Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1957–58 describes it as a pillar in the compound of the Malleshvara temple.¹²

The text is in Sanskrit verse and Telugu prose.¹ According to the summary in Epigraphia Telanganica, the Sanskrit portion has 27 verses and is called Nakshatramala, that is, a garland of stars.³

Date

The grant is dated Saka 1291 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Saumya, the fifteenth day of the bright half of Sravana, a Thursday.¹ The year is also given in word-numerals (words that stand for numbers), sasi-nanda-bhaskara. The modern editors convert the date to Thursday, 19 July 1369.²

Contents

The genealogy begins by saying that among many royal lines the Recherla family had been honoured by the Kakatiyas.¹² In it was born Vennayya-nayaka, and his son was Dacaya.¹² On Prataparudra’s orders Dacaya conquered the Pandyas.¹² He won the title Pandya-raya-gaja-kesari, a lion against the elephant that was the Pandya king.¹²

Dacaya’s son Singama-nayaka won many titles.¹² Singama’s sons, Anapota-nayaka and Madhava-nayaka, are said to have ruled together.¹² When he made the grant, Anapota was ruling Orugallu (Warangal), Tribhuvanagiri, Rajukonda, Singavaram and the rest of the Telugu country.¹ The record identifies the god Mailara with Mallara, and the goddess beside him, Madaci, with Parvati.¹

The poem was composed by Naganatha, son of Pasupati of the Kaushika gotra (clan).¹ The 1964 catalogue of the state’s inscriptions adds that Naganatha also wrote a Telugu Vishnupurana, which is now lost.³

The Pandya war

Parabrahma Sastry used this family’s chronicle, the Velugotivari-vamsavali, for the Recherla chiefs’ part in Prataparudra’s southern wars. It credits Era Dacha and his cousin Nala Dacha with defeating five Pandya princes.⁴ It also says that they received from Prataparudra titles such as Pandya-gaja-kesari.⁴ He warned that the chronicle gives the Velamas credit for a joint campaign. Other generals, such as the Indulur chiefs and Muppidi-nayaka, bore the same titles.⁴⁵

It was Muppidi-nayaka who took Kanchi.⁴⁵ In his account of the battle near Kanchi, Parabrahma Sastry lists Recherla Era Dacha among the generals who fought beside Prataparudra.⁶

He also notes that the Recherla Velamas held Rachakonda and Devarakonda after the Kakatiyas fell.⁵ He adds that several later Velama houses of Andhra traced their descent from them.⁵

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts of Andhra Pradesh, Part III (1956), p. 119, No. Wg. 1 (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

2. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 4 (2023), p. 18, No. 5. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

3. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 4 (2023), p. 19, No. 5. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

4. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 165. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 166. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 133. ↩