Korapolu inscription of Taila II

A Kannada inscription at Korapolu in the Medak district, dated in the reign of the Western Chalukya king Ahavamalla Taila II. P. B. Desai equated its date with 10 April 973. It records land grants by the king's feudatory Soma Permadi, who ruled from Korapolu, to a Shiva temple built by his father. It is one of the earliest records of the new dynasty.

The record

The inscription is at Korapolu in the Medak district.¹ It is numbered Md. 5 in P. Sreenivasachar’s collection of the Kannada inscriptions of the Telangana districts.¹ It refers itself to the reign of the Western Chalukya king Ahavamalla Taila II.¹ It is dated Saka 895 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Srimukha, on the fifth day of the bright half of Vaisakha, a Thursday.¹

P. B. Desai wrote the English summaries for the volume, which was published in 1961.¹ He found that the date works out correctly to 10 April 973, and he described the record as one of the early records of the reign.¹

The king’s feudatory, the mahamandalesvara (great provincial lord) Soma Permadi, was then ruling with his wife Lakshmibarasi.¹ His capital was Korapola, in the Kasavul seventy district.¹ The record lists a series of grants of land made for the temple of Bibbesvara, which Soma’s father Bibbarasa had built.¹ The grants were made on the occasion of the installation of its god.¹

Why it matters

The Western Chalukya dynasty of Kalyani began when Taila II overthrew the last Rashtrakuta king, Kakka II. J. F. Fleet wrote in 1896, before this record was known.²³ He placed Taila’s success “soon after the end of June, A.D. 973”.²³ He did so because one of the recorded dates of Kakka II seemed to fall in that month.²³

If Desai’s equation is right, the Korapolu record already counts the Medak country as Taila’s in April 973.¹ Another record from the same village records gifts for the upkeep of tanks by a mahamandalesvara Pampa Perumanadi.¹ It belongs to the reign of a king Trailokyamalla, whom Desai thought might be Taila III.¹ See the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani.

P. B. Desai, introduction to P. Sreenivasachar, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 3, 1961), p. 15, Nos. 41–42 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased except for the short phrases quoted. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³
J. F. Fleet, “Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts”, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency I, pt. II (1896), p. 424 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Fleet, “Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts” (1896), p. 426 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

The record

Why it matters

Footnotes

References