Kondavidu plates of Ganadeva (1455)

Ganadeva, called Rautaraya, ruled from Kondavidu, and by this copper-plate grant he gave the village of Chavali to a number of Brahmins.¹ The grant is dated in Saka 1377 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years).¹ It praises king Kapila, whose capital was Cuttack.¹ Hultzsch thought that Ganadeva “appears to have been a tributary” of Kapila, the Gajapati king of Orissa.¹

The plates

E. Hultzsch edited this grant in the Indian Antiquary of 1891, from the original plates.¹ The original “was kindly sent to me for examination by Mr. W. H. Michael, M.C.S., Assistant Collector of the Kistna District”.¹ It has three copper plates, numbered 1 to 3 in Telugu figures on their second sides.¹ In his words, “both the ring with the seal, and the fourth plate together with any other plate that may have followed it, are lost”.¹

The alphabet is Telugu and the language Sanskrit.¹ Lines 1 to 32 are in verse, and lines 32 to 58 are in prose.¹ Hultzsch found the plates “not very easily read, as they are somewhat worn”.¹ He thought the text had been copied from a draft written in a running hand.¹

Contents

The grant opens with two verses addressed to Vishnu.¹² It then praises king Kapila or Kumbhiraja of the race of the Sun, a worshipper of Jagannatha.¹² His capital was “the city called Kataka, on the bank of the Mahanadi”.¹²

Next it gives the donor’s family line: Chandradeva, his son Guhidevapatra, and Guhideva’s son Ganadeva.¹ Ganadeva beat two Turushka (Muslim) princes.¹ After this victory he took the surname Rautaraya or Rahuttaraya, “the king of horsemen”.¹

Ganadeva’s capital was Kondavidu.¹ From there he gave the village of Chavali, in the Repalle taluk (sub-district), to a number of Brahmins.¹ He made the gift on the day of a lunar eclipse in the month of Bhadrapada of Saka 1377, the cyclic year Yuvan.¹ The rest of the surviving text is a list of the donees.¹

Hultzsch noted that the date is irregular.¹ The eclipse should have fallen in August–September 1455, but no lunar eclipse fell then.¹ The nearest eclipse at the full moon of Bhadrapada was on 3 September 1457.¹

He suggested that the two Turushka princes may have been generals of the Bahmani king Ala-ud-din Ahmad Shah II.¹ R. D. Banerji thought that one of them was the sultan himself.³ The Archaeological Department of the Nizam’s Dominions found no evidence to identify them.⁴

Kapila and Ganadeva

The grant calls Kapila the ancestor of Ganadeva’s line.¹ But Hultzsch thought it “very probable that Kapila is identical with Kapilesvara-Gajapati”.¹ A chronicle of Kondavidu dated Kapilesvara to 1454 to 1461, and Hunter’s Orissa to 1452 to 1479.¹

Hultzsch pointed out that the grant names Cuttack as Kapila’s capital and Kondavidu as Ganadeva’s.¹ It also speaks of Kapila in the present tense.¹ He concluded: “I would accordingly consider Kapila, the Gajapati king of Orissa, as a contemporary of Ganadeva of Kondavidu, who appears to have been a tributary of his.”¹

Banerji added that in his day the title Rautaraya was given to the third son of the royal house of Orissa.³ He took Ganadeva to be a distant relative of the king.³ See Kapilendra.

An inscription of the same Ganadeva is on a pillar at Chintapallipadu in the Guntur district.⁵⁶ It is dated April 1454, and it names the forts of Addanki and Vinukonda in his province.⁵⁶

H. Luders edited the Mangalagiri pillar inscription of Krishnadeva Raya in 1901.⁷ He used this grant to show that after the Reddi kings “the country must have been occupied by the Gajapatis”.⁷ He also used it to show that Ganadeva’s family “was connected with that of the Gajapatis”.⁷

D. C. Sircar noted that Ganadeva held Kondavidu as another of Kapilendra’s viceroys, at the time when Raghudeva governed Rajahmundry.⁶ See the Gajapatis, Kondavidu and Addanki.

Place

V. Rangacharya lists the plates under Kondavidu.⁸ He calls them “the Kondavidu plates of Rauta Raya or Ganadeva, the son of Guhideva and the grandson of Chandradeva, a descendant of Kapila Gajapati of Cataka (Cuttack)”.⁸ He records that they give Chavali to Brahmins.⁸ Hultzsch’s paper reproduced the plates in a photo-lithograph.⁹

Footnotes

1. E. Hultzsch, “Copper-plate Grant of Ganadeva of Kondavidu, dated Saka-Samvat 1377”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 390 (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 ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³²

2. Hultzsch, “Copper-plate Grant of Ganadeva”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 392, translation, verses 4–7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Banerji, History of Orissa, Vol. I (1930), p. 298 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s Dominions, 1344 F. (1934-35) (1938), p. 31 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

5. R. D. Banerji, History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period, Vol. I (1930), p. 297 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. D. C. Sircar, “Two Grants of Raghudeva”, Epigraphia Indica XXXIII (1959–60), p. 5 and note 3 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. H. Luders, “Two Pillar Inscriptions of the time of Krishnaraya of Vijayanagara”, Epigraphia Indica VI (1900–01), p. 110 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, Vol. II (1919), p. 771, Guntur No. 215 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Hultzsch, “Copper-plate Grant of Ganadeva”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), plate “Plates of Ganadeva of Kondavidu.—Saka-Samvat 1377” (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩