Konkuduru plates of Allaya Dodda (1431)

Discovery and the plates

The plates “were discovered in 1887, deposited in a small square receptacle in a brick mound”.¹ The mound was “in the village of Konkuduru, 5 miles north of Ramachandrapuram in the Godavari district”.¹ No one claimed them, and in 1893 the Collector, S. H. Wynne, sent them to E. Hultzsch for the Madras Museum.¹ G. V. Ramamurti edited them in 1899 from ink-impressions.¹

The seven plates have raised rims and hang on a ring whose ends are fixed in the base of a pedestal.¹² The pedestal carries a recumbent (lying) Nandi, with the sun and moon in front of it.¹² All but two of the plates are numbered in Telugu.¹²

The language is Sanskrit verse.² The boundaries of the granted village are the exception: they are in Telugu prose, with some archaic and colloquial words.²

Contents

The inscription gives the family tree of “the Reddi chief Allaya-Dodda of Rajamahendra”.²³

It runs as follows:

• Dodda I of the Panta family²³
• his sons Annavrola, Kotaya and Alla or Allada²³
• Allada’s marriage to Vemambika, daughter of Bhima of the Choda family²³
• their four sons Vema, Virabhadra, Dodda II and Anna²³

The eldest, Allaya Vema, had his capital at Rajamahendranagara.³ Virabhadra “was also anointed to the kingdom”.³ Ramamurti concluded that the two “were apparently joint rulers”.³ Dodda II bore the surnames (titles) Karpuravasantaraya, Samgramabhima and Jaganobbaganda.³

King Allaya-Dodda gave the village of Gumpini to Brahmans on the bank of the Kaunteya river.³⁴ He did so on the auspicious occasion called Ardhodaya in Pausha, Saka 1352 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Sadharana.³⁴ He renamed the village Alladareddidoddavaram, after himself.³⁴

A long list of donees follows.³⁴ Two further shares went to the Vishnu temple of Prasanna-Vallabha and the Siva temple of Brahmarangesvara.³⁴ F. Kielhorn worked out the date as Sunday, 14 January 1431.⁵

Place

The village could not be found on the map, but its boundaries name Devarapalli, Palivela and other villages of the Amalapuram taluk.⁵ Ramamurti took the Kaunteya river, its northern boundary, to be the Gautami or one of its branches.⁵ See the Reddis of Rajahmundry and Allada Reddi.

Srinatha’s account

Ramamurti compared the grant with two works of Srinatha.⁵ One is the Kasikhandam, dedicated to Virabhadra, and the other is the Bhimakhandam, dedicated to Virabhadra’s minister.⁵ These works “confirm and even add to the information recorded in this inscription”.⁵

Ramamurti drew three things from these works:

• the earlier generations of the family, from Perumadi Reddi of Duvvuru⁵⁶
• the conquests claimed for Vema, Virabhadra and Dodda⁵⁶
• the poet’s wish that his patron might rule from Rajamahendra the whole country “including Chikati, Kalinga, Chilkasamudra and Simhasaila”⁵⁶

He concluded that the family “exercised but an ephemeral sovereignty”, that is, it ruled only for a short time.⁷ He also judged that its support for Telugu poets was “one noteworthy fact of their short-lived government, which entitles them to the gratitude of posterity”.⁷ See Srinatha.

Footnotes

1. G. V. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda, Saka-Samvat 1352, Epigraphia Indica V (1898–99), p. 53 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 54 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

3. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 67 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

4. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 69 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 55 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

6. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 56 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Ramamurti, Konkuduru Plates of Allaya-Dodda (1898–99), p. 57 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²