Kalidindi grant of Rajaraja I

This grant of Rajaraja Narendra, the Eastern Chalukya king whom the editors call Rajaraja I, is the only record of his reign that describes a war.¹ It tells of a battle between Chola generals and the army of the king of Karnata, in which the commanders on both sides were killed.¹ In their memory the king built three Shiva temples at Kalidindi and endowed them with three villages.¹ It is also the third known copper-plate charter of the king, after the Korumelli and Nandamapundi grants.²

Discovery

A farmer found the plates in 1938 while digging for earth at Kalidindi, a village in the Kaikalur taluk of Krishna district.³ He gave them to G. Ramabrahmam Chaudary, editor of the newspaper Prajamitra.³ Chaudary passed them to N. Venkataramanayya of the University of Madras for decipherment and publication.³ The Government Epigraphist examined them, and they were registered as copper plate No. 5 in the report for 1937–38.³⁴ See Kalidindi.

Description

There are five plates, each about 5 inches by 10, of which the last is a broken fragment.³² They hang on a ring about 5 inches across, which had been cut before Venkataramanayya received them.³² Its ends are soldered into a round seal about 3 inches across with a raised rim.³² With the ring the set weighs 292 tolas, and the plates alone 200.³²

Venkataramanayya called the seal a very fine specimen of the seals of the dynasty.² Its base is moulded like a four-petalled flower.² Across the middle runs the legend Sri-Tribhuvanankusah, with the running boar of the family above it, facing left.²

Around the boar are an elephant-goad, a double drum, a conch, two fly-whisks and a royal parasol, with the crescent moon and the sun at the top.² Below the legend are a four-legged stool, a four-petalled flower and a lotus bud on its stalk.²

The first side of the first plate and the second side of the fifth are blank.² From line 75 to the end the plates are palimpsests (plates written over earlier writing).² Traces of the earlier writing, thoroughly beaten in, can be seen but not read.²

Venkataramanayya noted that all three known sets of copper plates of Rajaraja I were partly palimpsests.² This was a practice of the king’s secretariat whose reasons he could not explain.² He thought the first two plates might have been engraved by a different hand.²

Script and language

The alphabet is old Telugu, of the kind usual in inscriptions of the period.² The language is Sanskrit throughout, in 41 verses in various metres and eight prose passages.² A few Telugu words appear in the description of the village boundaries, such as the name of the lower Gudravara district.² Venkataramanayya judged its style and diction superior to those of the Korumelli plates, especially in the passages on the Chola emperor and on the battle.⁵

The genealogy

The text has four parts:⁶

• the genealogy of the Eastern Chalukyas down to Rajaraja⁶
• the circumstances of the gift⁶
• the boundaries of the villages⁶
• the closing curses, perhaps with the names of the author and the scribe⁶

The genealogy begins with a legendary descent from Narayana, Brahma, Atri and the Moon down to Udayana.⁶ Fifty-nine unnamed kings at Ayodhya follow.⁶ In this legend, a sixtieth king, Vijayaditya, went south and died fighting Trilochana-Pallava.⁶ His posthumous son Vishnuvardhana restored the family’s fortunes.⁶

Venkataramanayya pointed out that no trace of this legend appears in the dynasty’s records before Vimaladitya’s accession.⁶⁷ He thought it might reflect Chola influence after the main line was restored to power in 999–1000.⁶⁷ He rejected the ancestor Vijayaditya as a historical person, noting that he had earlier accepted the belief himself.⁶⁷

The historical part runs from Kubja-Vishnuvardhana to Rajaraja and agrees with other grants.⁷ Like the Korumelli plates, it has a slightly different wording for the seven-day reign of Indraraja.⁷

It adds two facts not known from Rajaraja’s other records.⁷ As a boy, he was invested with the necklace (kanthika) of the heir apparent.⁷ His maternal uncle was the Chola emperor Rajendra-Choda Madhurantaka.⁷ Hearing of Rajaraja’s qualities, Rajendra gave him his daughter Ammanga, who became his chief queen.⁷

A long passage praises the Chola emperor.⁷ Venkataramanayya took two of its verses to allude to Rajendra’s expedition to the Ganges and his conquests overseas.⁷ He thought the marriage was meant to bind Vengi permanently to the Chola kingdom.¹

The coronation date

Like the Korumelli and Nandamapundi grants, this one gives Rajaraja’s coronation in Saka 944 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years).⁷ The day was a Thursday, the second day of the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada, with the sun in the sign of the Lion.⁷ Venkataramanayya equated it with 16 August 1022.⁷

That was nearly four years after the latest known date of his father Vimaladitya, in August 1018.⁷⁸¹ Venkataramanayya argued that Rajaraja had begun to reign in 1019 or 1020, and that his coronation had been delayed by political troubles in Vengi.⁷⁸¹ He based this on inscriptions that give both a regnal year and a Saka year, and on the Pamulavaka plates of Vijayaditya VII.⁷⁸¹ He cited Chola inscriptions of about 1021 that refer to an expedition sent against Vengi by Rajendra I.⁷⁸¹ See Rajaraja Narendra.

The battle and the temples

The grant says that the general Rajaraja Brahma-Maharaja had risen to eminence by the favour of Rajendra-Chola Madhurantaka and guarded his kingdom.¹ On his sovereign’s orders, he marched into the Andhra country with a great army and two other generals.¹ These were Uttama-Choda Chodakon and Uttama-Chola Miladudaiyan.¹ The three Tamil commanders fought the commanders of the king of Karnata, and the commanders on both sides perished with their forces.¹

The epigraphical report of 1937–38 put the start of the campaign differently.⁴ In its account, the Chola king had sent the generals at Rajaraja’s request.⁴ Venkataramanayya thought the battle had ended indecisively, or at least not in a Chola victory.¹

Rajaraja then built at Kalidindi a temple of Shiva called Rajarajesvaram, in memory of Rajaraja Brahma-Maharaja.¹⁴ He built two other Shiva temples in memory of the other two generals.¹⁴ For worship in them, and for a feeding house for fifty students, he gave three villages.¹⁴ These were Kalidindi, renamed Madhurantakanallur, and the villages of Kadaparru and Avakuru.¹⁴ Venkataramanayya thought each temple probably received one village.⁹

Where and when was the battle fought?

The grant names neither the place nor the date of the battle.¹¹⁰ Venkataramanayya reasoned that memorial temples were sometimes built where the dead were buried or cremated.¹¹⁰ So he thought the battle had probably been fought near Kalidindi.¹¹⁰ The epigraphical report of 1937–38 had drawn the same conclusion.⁴

He dated the battle between 1022 and 1044, the last year of Rajendra-Chola.¹⁰ He suggested a link with a Western Chalukya record of 1037 from Hottur.¹⁰ That record gives a general of Jayasimha II, Chavanarasa, the title of destroyer of the pride of the fort of Bijavadi.¹⁰ If Bijavadi is Vijayawada (then Bezwada), less than fifty miles from Kalidindi, the battle may belong to the same campaign.¹⁰

He went on to suggest that the battle might be connected with Vijayaditya VII’s seizure of the throne from Rajaraja in 1031.¹⁰ He noted that Rajaraja had Chola support, and that his rival may have had Western Chalukya help.¹⁰ He identified the king of Karnata with the Western Chalukya Jayasimha II, as the report of 1937–38 had done.¹⁰⁴ The report itself thought the grant was issued shortly after Rajaraja’s accession in 1022.²⁴

The villages

All three villages lay in the lower (pallapu) Gudravara district.⁹⁴ The report of 1937–38 took the district’s name from Gudivada.⁹⁴

Kalidindi was bounded by Potumbarru on the north and north-east, Konneki on the east, Kadaparru on the west and Tadinadu on the north-west.⁹ Kadaparru lay west of Kalidindi, between it and Avakuru.⁹ The boundaries of Avakuru are mostly lost with the broken fifth plate.⁹

Venkataramanayya found that Kalidindi and Avakuru kept their names, on the eastern edge of the Kolleru lake in the Kaikalur taluk.⁹ He could not trace Kadaparru.⁹ Among the boundary villages, he identified Tadinadu with Tadinada, Potumbarru with Potumarru and Vevaka with Vaivaka.⁹

The officer, the poet and the engraver

The names of the executor, the composer and the scribe are lost.⁹ Venkataramanayya recognised the last surviving line as the beginning of a verse in the Korumelli plates.⁹ From it he concluded that the executor (ajnapti) was the Katakesa.⁹ He also concluded that the composer was Betana-bhatta, son of Rachiya-Pedderi-Bhima, and the scribe Gandacharya.⁹

He took Katakesa to be the title of an office, not a personal name.⁹⁵ He held that Bhima, or Bhimana-bhatta, had composed the new form of the dynasty’s eulogy in the Ranastipundi grant of Vimaladitya.⁹⁵ He held that Bhima’s son Betana-bhatta succeeded to his post.⁹⁵

J. F. Fleet, editing the Korumelli plates in 1885, read the composer’s name in the same verse as Chetanabhattaka, and the scribe’s as Gandacharya.¹¹ See the Korumelli plates.

Footnotes

1. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 62 and note 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰

2. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 58 and notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰

3. N. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant of Eastern Chalukya Rajaraja I”, Epigraphia Indica XXIX (1951–52), p. 57 and note 9 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy for the Year ending 31st March 1938 (1942), Part II, para. 14, p. 82 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

5. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 65 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 59 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

7. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 60 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

8. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 61 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 64 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

10. Venkataramanayya, “Kalidindi Grant” (1952), p. 63 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

11. J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CLIII: Korumelli plates of Rajaraja”, Indian Antiquary XIV (1885), p. 55, text (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩