Kukkunur plates of Kusumaditya

The Kukkunur plates are the only surviving copper-plate grant of the Chalukyas of Mudigonda.¹ They are also the record of the family’s last known generations.¹

Description

The plates come from Kukkunur in the old Khammam district, and the Director of Archaeology and Museums at Hyderabad acquired them.²³ The Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1971-72 noticed them from an impression and a photograph.²³ Bh. Lakshminarayana edited them in Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974).²³

There are five plates, each 20 by 10 centimetres, on a ring 12 centimetres across.³ The seal shows a boar, a makara arch (arch with sea-monster ends), a pair of fly-whisks, an empty throne, an umbrella, a crescent and a conch.³ The first side of the first plate and the last side of the last are blank.³ The 66 lines run seven to ten to a plate.³

Language

Except for Sanskrit verses at the beginning and the end, the record is in Telugu prose.³ It names the composer, Bayyana, and the engraver, Betachari, and Lakshminarayana blamed both for its many mistakes.³ He drew attention to Telugu words such as praghattambu and balli tongadlu.³ He also pointed to features of the spelling, such as the absence of the mark for aspirates.³

He called the record the earliest copper-plate grant written entirely in Telugu prose.¹ He dated the letters to about the beginning of the 13th century.³ The government epigraphist’s report had put them at about the 11th.²

Contents

A Sanskrit verse traces the family’s origin from Vishnu through Brahma, Atri and the Moon.¹ The Telugu passage then gives the family line:¹

• after fifty-nine kings, Kariya-Gonaga, lord of Koravipura, came to power¹
• his brother Nijjayaraja’s son was Kusumayudha¹
• then came Beta, a second Kusumayudha called Mutt-anegalla, and Bottu-Beta¹
• Bottu-Beta’s sons by his queen Mahadevi were Kusumaditya and Nagati¹

The exile

In the first year of Kusumaditya’s rule a disaster struck.¹ His ministers were Indaparaju, the head of the revenue office, and his younger brother Remaraju.¹ They took the treasure and the king into foreign lands, where they lived in forests for twelve years, and then helped him regain the Visuru-nadu.¹

Kusumaditya made them mahamandalesvaras (great feudal lords) and gave them the insignia of that rank.¹ He granted them, as an agrahara (gift village), the village of Krichchaka in Visuru-nadu, bounded on the east and north by the Godavari.¹ The brothers were sons of the Brahmana Aytana Perggada of the Kaundinya gotra (clan).¹ Lakshminarayana thought Krichchaka was probably Kukkunur itself.⁴

Interpretation

Lakshminarayana read the Visuru-nadu as the family’s home country, perhaps the same as the Koravi territory.⁵⁴ He linked it with the Visari-nadu conquered by the Eruva chief Bhima.⁵⁴ He placed it near the meeting of the Godavari and the Kinnerasani, in the Palvancha area.⁵⁴ He also saw the office of srikaranadhipa (head of the revenue office) as evidence that the family had taken over institutions of the Eastern Chalukyas, whose feudatories they had been.⁴

Where the sources disagree

The plates do not name the enemy who drove Kusumaditya out, or say where he fled.⁵ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry thought the exile followed a Kakatiya attack.⁶⁷ He dated the plates to the closing years of the 12th century.⁶⁷

Lakshminarayana joined their family line to that of the earlier Mogalcheruvula grant.⁸ He took the two Nijjayarajas and Kusumayudhas to be the same men.⁸ Parabrahma Sastry noted that the link rests only on the names.⁶

Footnotes

1. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 353, reprinting Lakshminarayana (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

2. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica I: Pre-Kakatiya Telangana (2023), p. 351, summarising Indian Archaeology 1971-72, p. 52, and the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1971-72, p. 20. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 352, reprinting Bh. Lakshminarayana, “Kukkunuru Plates of Kusumadya”, Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974), pp. 39–49. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

4. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 356, reprinting Lakshminarayana (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 355, reprinting Lakshminarayana (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 53. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 57. ↩ ↩²

8. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 354, reprinting Lakshminarayana (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²