Koduru grant of Anavota Reddi (1358)

Discovery and the plates

Villagers found the plates while ploughing a field at Koduru, in the Gudivada taluk of the Krishna (then Kistna) district.¹ H. K. Narasimhaswami got them in November 1936 from their owner, Vidvan Purnakutumba Rao of Gudlavalleru.¹ He noticed them in the epigraphy report for that year and published them in 1940.¹

The set has five plates on an oval ring without a seal, and together they weigh 287 tolas.¹ The plates are written on both sides, including the first and last.¹ The writing is in the Telugu script of the period and is in excellent condition.¹

Contents

The text is in Sanskrit verse and prose.¹ Only the boundaries of the granted village are in Telugu.¹ Its opening verses are the same as those of Anavema’s Pachchanitandiparru grant.¹

These verses describe:

• the boar incarnation¹
• the sun and moon¹
• the fourth caste, born from Vishnu’s feet¹
• Prolaya Vema, who built the steps to Srisailam and made all the gifts listed by Hemadri¹
• Prolaya Vema’s sons Ana-Vota and Ana-Vema, who were like the sun and the moon¹

Three verses praise the donor’s might.¹ In the Saka year 1280, in Pausha, on a new-moon Tuesday at a solar eclipse, Anavota gave the village of Koduru to sixty-one Brahmans.¹² The village, on the bank of the Malapaha, was renamed Annavotapuram.¹² The Brahmans were of various gotras (clans), and they are listed with their shares.¹²

Date and composer

Narasimhaswami worked out the date as Tuesday, 9 January 1358.³ He noted that the eclipse actually fell on the next day.³ The composer was Balasarasvati, who also wrote the Pachchanitandiparru grant and two records of Anavema.³ Balasarasvati seems to have been court poet until 1377, when Trilochanacharya took his place.³

Importance

It is the only copper-plate grant of Anavota found so far.⁴ Narasimhaswami used it to review what was known of the king.⁴

He went through this evidence:

• five stone inscriptions dated from Saka 1275 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years) to 1283⁴
• his father’s latest known date (Saka 1268, at Tripurantakam, where Anavota appears as crown prince)⁴
• the Velama chronicle’s claim of a victory over him in 1361⁴

He also discussed an incomplete grant of Anavota in the Elliot collection, in which Anavema is a joint donor.³² Its donees include a Vidyadhikarin named Mallu-bhatta.³² They also include an “Erraya-pregada”, whom Narasimhaswami took to be the poet Errapragada.³²

He identified several of the boundary villages near Koduru.² He took the Malapaha to be the present Pulleru canal.² See Errapragada.

Footnotes

1. H. K. Narasimhaswami, Koduru Grant of Ana-Vota-Reddi; Saka 1280, Epigraphia Indica XXV (1939–40), p. 137 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. Narasimhaswami, Koduru Grant of Ana-Vota-Reddi (1939–40), p. 140 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Narasimhaswami, Koduru Grant of Ana-Vota-Reddi (1939–40), p. 138 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Narasimhaswami, Koduru Grant of Ana-Vota-Reddi (1939–40), p. 139 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵