Inugurti pillar inscription of Natavadi Rudra

What it is

This pillar inscription at Inugurti, in the former Mahbubabad taluk of Warangal district, records that Rudra, a chief of the Natavadi family, built three temples to Shiva. He named one after himself and the others after his father and his mother. He also gave the god many jewels and the village of Cintapalli.¹ Rudra was the husband of Mailama (Mailala-mahadevi), the sister of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva. The record ties together the two families whose marriages are described at length in Mailama’s own Bayyaram tank inscription.¹²

Script and date

The text is Sanskrit verse in Nagari script. Its editor, P. Sreenivasachar, pointed out that Nagari is very unusual among Kakatiya records.¹ The date is given as a Saka year that he read, with a query, as 1128, the cyclic year Kshaya, in the autumn season, in the month Arjuna. Saka 1128 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years) corresponds to about 1206.¹

Contents

The genealogy in the inscription traces the Natavadi line from the Sun through Beta and his son Durga to Buddha and his wife Muppamba, the parents of the donor Rudra.¹³ The surviving verses then describe Rudra’s wife, called Mailala-mahadevi and known by her title Dharmakirti. Her father was Mahadeva, son of Prola II and younger brother of King Rudradeva. Her mother was Bayyama and her brother Ganapati.⁴ Rudra and his queen are said to have made many gifts, completed the seven works that perpetuate a name (sapta-santana), and founded many Brahman villages.¹ The record ends with the usual imprecatory verses.⁵

Mailama’s other records at Inugurti

Two smaller inscriptions at the village name Mailama herself.⁵ One, in Telugu, is carved on a boulder near a cave on a hill. It records that “Kaketa” Mailala-mahadevi set up an image of Jalandhareshvara-Bhairava on the hill north-west of Yinumaguriti, an old form of the village’s name.⁵ The other is a badly damaged Sanskrit inscription on two sides of a stone. It records the consecration of a Shiva linga (stone emblem) called Bayyambikesha, evidently named after her mother Bayyambika, and mentions Mailala-mahadevi.⁵ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry also cites an Inugurti record in which Mailama built a temple to Gopalakrishna and endowed it.⁶

The Natavadi family and Inugurti

The Bayyaram inscription calls Inugurti (Inumguriki) Mailama’s own town.² The notes to its reprint in Epigraphia Telanganica add that she built Shiva temples at Srisailam, Kashi and Inugurti.⁷⁸ Parabrahma Sastry placed the Natavadi chiefs’ fief near Inugurti from the time of Natavadi Durga. He described the family as subordinates of the Western Chalukyas, with records at Narasampet (1101) and Nidigonda (1104), although the region called Natavadi lay far away, around Nandigama in Krishna district.⁹¹⁰ The notes in Epigraphia Telanganica likewise cite an Inugurti inscription that begins the Natavadi family with Beta and makes Durga a subordinate of Vikramaditya VI at Nidigonda.¹¹

The sources disagree about Mahadeva’s other daughter, Kundama. The notes in Epigraphia Telanganica hold that she was married to the same Natavadi Rudra as Mailama, although neither sister’s records say so.² Parabrahma Sastry left open whether the two sisters had different mothers, or whether their husbands were two sons of Buddha who were both named Rudra.¹²

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts of Andhra Pradesh, Part III (1956), p. 131, No. Wg. 5 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 326, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part III (1956), p. 132, first face lines 15–21 and second face (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

4. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part III (1956), p. 133, second face lines 20–21 and third face lines 1–6 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

5. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part III (1956), p. 134, Nos. Wg. 5 (end), 6 and 7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 279–280. ↩

7. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription of Kakati Mailama”, reprinted in Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 319, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩

8. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 327, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩

9. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 87. ↩

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 151. ↩

11. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 325–326, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩

12. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 152. ↩