Malkapuram pillar inscription of Rudramadevi

What it is

The Malkapuram inscription is cut on a huge pillar crowned by a Nandi.¹ The pillar lies near a ruined temple at Malkapuram in the Guntur taluk.¹ It belongs to the reign of Rudramadevi.² J. Ramayya Pantulu brought it to the notice of the Archaeological Superintendent in 1915.²

In 1917 the Madras epigraphy office reported that people there called the temple Pichchigullu.² The report added that the inscription showed the temple had once been a large and busy shrine of Visvesvara (Shiva).² It had a monastery (matha) and a feeding-house.² The report called the inscription “of very great interest both for the historical information it supplies regarding the Kakatiya kings and for the detailed account which it gives of the famous Pasupata teachers”.²

Date

The grant is dated Saka 1183 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Durmati.³ The day was Friday, the eighth of the dark half of Chaitra, which was also the first day of Mesha.³ The 1917 report gave this as 25 March 1261.³

A solar eclipse followed, which the report dated to 1 April 1261.⁴ On that day Visvesvara bathed in the Krishna with many Brahmans and laid a curse on anyone who blocked his charities.⁴

The Kakatiya genealogy

The record opens with a prayer to Svayambhu, the Shiva of Warangal and family god of the Kakatiyas.² It places the Kakati kings in the family of the Durjaya Kshatriyas.² It names Rudra, his brother Mahadeva, Mahadeva’s son Ganapati and Ganapati’s daughter Rudradevi, in whose time it was dated.²³ The SII X abstract notes that the Kakatiyas are described as Kshatriyas of the Solar race.¹

One verse praises Rudradevi’s good fortune in having as her son “the glorious Rudradeva, a pearl of the Kakati dynasty”.³ It adds that the strength of his arm was blessed by the hand of the teacher Visvesvara.³

The 1917 report pointed out that this does not agree with the Prataparudriya.³ In that book, Prataparudra was Rudramadevi’s daughter’s son, and his grandmother adopted him as her heir.³ Read plainly, the inscription makes him her own son.³ It also shows that he had already been born by Saka 1183.³ The report recorded the disagreement without settling it.

Visvesvara Sambhu and the Golaki matha

Most of the inscription traces the line of Saiva teachers to which the donee belonged.³ It begins with Durvasas in the Dahala country, between the Ganges and the Narmada.³ Sadbhava-Sambhu received a province of three lakh villages from the Kalachuri king Yuvarajadeva and founded the Golaki matha.³

The later teachers named are these:³⁵

Soma-Sambhu, author of the Somasambhupaddhati³
then Vama-Sambhu, Sakti-Sambhu, Kirti-Sambhu, Vimala-Siva of Kerala and Dharma-Siva³
Dharma-Siva’s pupil Visvesvara-Sambhu, a Vedic scholar from Purvagrama in the Radha province of the Gauda country (Bengal)³⁵

Visvesvara gave Saiva initiation (diksha) to king Ganapati, who called himself the teacher’s son.³ He claimed the Chola, Malava and Kalachuri kings as pupils too.³ The report quoted the picture of him seated in the hall of teaching of Ganapati’s palace, “with hanging ear-ornaments and a high tuft of gold-coloured matted hair”.³

C. R. Krishnamacharlu later suggested that Sivadevayya was the same man as this Visvesvara, rajaguru (royal teacher) of three kings.⁶ Telugu literary tradition remembers Sivadevayya as Ganapati’s chief minister.⁶

The gift

Ganapati had promised the teacher the village of Mandara, with the river islands (lanka).³ Mandara lay in Kandravati, a district of Velanandu on the south bank of the Krishna.³ On the date given, Rudradevi made the gift formally, as her father had wished, and added the village of Velangapundi (Velagapudi).³ The report identified the boundary villages Penumbaka, Uppalapadu and Ravipundi with the modern Penumaka, Vupalapadu and Rayapudi.³ SII X summarises the same gift.¹

At Mandaram, the present Mandadam, the teacher built a temple of Visvesvara, a monastery and a feeding-house.⁴ He settled Brahmans there and named the village Visvesvara-Golaki.⁴ He gave sixty families of Dravida Brahmans two puttis of land each.⁴ He divided the remaining land into three parts:⁴

one for the temple⁴
one for the students and the matha of the Suddha-Saivas⁴
one for “a maternity, a hospital and a Brahmana feeding-house”⁴

The staff included three teachers of the Vedas and five of logic, literature and the agamas, a doctor and an accountant.⁴ There were also dancing women, drummers, singers including one from Kashmir, and cooks.⁴ Ten village guards called Virabhadras came from the Chola country.⁴ Twenty Viramushtis served as the village’s smiths, potters, carpenters and barbers.⁴⁷

The feeding-house was to feed everyone who asked, “from the Brahmana down to the Chandala”.⁴ Women held hereditary rights in these service grants.⁴ They could keep their shares if they had no sons, as long as the service was done.⁴

The head of the whole foundation had to be a teacher installed in the Golaki line.⁴ If he neglected his duties, the Saiva community could replace him.⁴⁷

The inscription ends with a list of Visvesvara’s other foundations.⁴ These included:⁴⁸

a monastery called the Upala-matha at Kallavara⁴
lingas (stone emblems of Siva) named after himself at Mandrakuta and Chandravalli, where he also extended the bund of a tank⁴
a town called Visvesvaranagara⁸
a matha at Elisvarapura north-east of Srisailam, for which Ganapati gave villages⁸

The other records on the pillar

Five more inscriptions on the same pillar record gifts to the Visvanatha temple at Malkapuram.⁵ They name Kasisvara-Sivacharya, a direct pupil and probably successor of Visvesvara.⁵ They also name Visvesvara’s officer in charge of the grain stores, Kottaruvu Mallaya-Preggada.⁵ They name the master builder Guddoju, the smith Proloju and three masons, evidently the builders of the temple.⁵ SII X prints one of them as an appendix to the main inscription.⁹ It lists land grants to people connected with the temple.⁹

Editions

The 1917 Annual Report on Epigraphy gave a long abstract of the record, No. 94 of 1917.² SII X gives the text as No. 395, with No. 396 as its appendix.¹⁹ It notes an earlier edition in the Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. IV, pp. 147–64, which was not consulted here.¹⁹ Krishnamacharlu noted in 1926 that the Malkapuram inscription calls the Kakatiyas Durjaya Kshatriyas, like the Garavapadu plates.¹⁰ See also the Garavapadu plates of Ganapatideva.

J. Ramayya Pantulu (ed.), South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. X (1948), p. 205, No. 395 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 122, para. 32 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 123, paras. 32–33 (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
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 124, para. 34 (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
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 127, para. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 348, note 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 126, para. 36 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Annual Report on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1916-17 (1917), Part II, p. 125, paras. 34–36 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Ramayya Pantulu (ed.), South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. X (1948), p. 209, No. 396 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
C. R. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva; Saka 1182”, Epigraphia Indica XVIII (1926), p. 347, note 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩