Kurkyal inscription of Jinavallabha

The Kurkyal inscription is a rock record of Pampa’s younger brother, Jinavallabha.¹² It is the only inscription that names the poet and his work.¹² It is also one of the earliest records with verse in Telugu.¹²

The rock

The inscription is cut on a huge rock on the top of the Bommala Gutta, a hillock near Gangadharam in the Karimnagar district.¹ The hillock is in the lands of Kurikyal.¹ The inscription has eleven lines: ten are about 14 feet 5 inches long and one about 4 feet.¹ The letters are about half an inch high and deeply cut, and except where the stone has peeled they are easy to read.¹

N. Venkataramanayya edited the inscription in Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974).¹ He found the Telugu-Kannada letters close to those of the Vemulavada inscription of Arikesari II.¹ Images of Jaina divinities are carved on the same rock.³ See the Bommala Gutta.

Three languages

The record opens with a Sanskrit formula of homage to the Siddhas.¹ A long prose passage in Kannada follows.¹ Then come three Sanskrit verses, six Kannada verses and three Telugu verses in the kanda metre.¹ A closing passage of Kannada prose ends the record.¹

Venkataramanayya thought the scribe was careful but unfamiliar with Telugu, since most of the mistakes are in the Telugu part.¹ He suggested that Jinavallabha, whom the record praises as a poet, may have composed it himself.²

Contents

Jinavallabha describes himself as a Kamme-Brahmana of the Srivatsa gotra (clan).⁴ He says he came from Vangiparru, one of the seven villages of Bengi-nadu.⁴ He names his parents as Bhimapayya and Vabbanabbe, and calls himself the younger brother of Pampa, author of the Vikramarjunavijaya.⁴ He was a disciple of the Jaina teacher Jayamgonda Siddhanta-bhatara.⁴

He had images of the first and last Jinas, of the goddess Chakresvari and of other Jaina divinities carved on the Siddha-sila.⁴ This was a rock to the south of the old holy place of Vrishabhagiri, which lay north of Dharmavura in the middle of Sabbi-nadu.⁴ He built a Jaina temple called Tribhuvanatilaka.⁴ He dug a tank called Kavitagunarnava, after Pampa’s title, and laid out a garden called Madanavilasa.⁴

The inscription then says that King Arikesari of the Chalukya family, called Hariga and Ariga, gave Pampa the village of Dharmavura as an agrahara (village granted to Brahmans).⁴ He gave it in appreciation of the Vikramarjunavijaya.⁴

Someone might doubt whether a charter had been written, whether Arikesari had really given the village or whether Pampa had accepted it.⁴ Such a person, the record says, should go to the Vrishabhadri and read the letters cut there.⁴ Erityamma engraved the record on the Siddha-sila.⁴

Its importance

Venkataramanayya used the inscription to correct Pampa’s own family tree.⁵⁶ The printed text of the Vikramarjunavijaya calls Pampa’s father Abhimanadevaraya.⁵⁶ But manuscripts at Poona and Agra read Bhima, which agrees with the inscription.⁵⁶

He identified the Siddha-sila with the Bommala Gutta, about 13 miles west of Karimnagar on the Karimnagar–Kamareddy road.⁷³ He identified the tank at the northern foot of the hill with Jinavallabha’s tank.⁷³ He found no trace of the temple or the garden.⁷³

He thought the temple and garden may have stood in Gangadharam, where Jaina images lie scattered in the fields.⁷³ He could not identify Vrishabhagiri and Dharmavura, though several villages named Dharmapuri or Dharmaram lie in the Karimnagar district.⁷³

He called the three Telugu kanda verses “the earliest of their kind in the language”.² He took them to show that Telugu poetry was written in the north-western marches (border lands) of the Telugu country at least a century before Nannaya.²

The inscription is undated.² It mentions the Vikramarjunavijaya, which was written after 941.² From its letters, and because of this mention, Venkataramanayya suggested 945 as “a very good date for it”.²

Epigraphia Telanganica (2023) also summarises the inscription from Inscriptions of Karimnagar District (reprint, 2016).⁸⁹ There it is listed as a record of the reign of Arikesari II.⁸⁹

Footnotes

1. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 394, reprinting N. Venkataramanayya, “The Kurkiyala Inscription of Jinavallabha”, Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974), pp. 21–28. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

2. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 401, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased except for two short phrases. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 399, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 395, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

5. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 396, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 397, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 398, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

8. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica I: Pre-Kakatiya Telangana (2023), p. 89, No. 4. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

9. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 90. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²