Motupalli pillar inscription of Ganapatideva

What it is

The Motupalli inscription is a royal edict of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva.¹² It calls itself an abhaya-sasana, an “edict assuring safety”, addressed to merchants who traded by sea.¹² Ganapatideva promised that the cargo of ships wrecked on his coast would no longer be seized.² Only the usual duties would be taken.² It is one of the few surviving documents of Kakatiya sea trade.³

The pillar

The text is engraved on the four sides of a pillar in the mandapa (pillared hall) in front of the Virabhadrasvamin temple at Motupalli.¹ In 1914 the village lay in the Bapatla taluk of Guntur district.¹ E. Hultzsch edited it from inked impressions supplied by H. Krishna Sastri.¹ Krishna Sastri had noticed it in the Madras epigraphy report for 1909–10.¹

It is well preserved apart from a few syllables at the edges of the pillar.¹ The script is the Telugu of the period.¹ Lines 1–152 and 166–173 are in Sanskrit, mostly verse, and lines 152–166 are in Telugu.¹

Contents

The edict opens with an invocation of Svayambhudeva, the family god of the Kakatiyas.¹ Verses to Ganesha, Sarasvati, Shiva’s crescent moon and Vishnu’s boar incarnation follow.¹ Next comes a legendary family line that places the dynasty in the solar line of Ikshvaku and Rama, coming down to Durjaya.¹

Six historical kings are then named:²

• Prolaraja I, who built a tank called Kesari-tataka²
• Tribhuvanamalladeva²
• Prolaraja II²
• Rudradeva²
• Mahadevaraja²
• Ganapatideva²

Hultzsch noted that Prola I is named in no other Kakatiya inscription.² He also accepted Krishna Sastri’s view that the second king’s real name was Beta.² In that view Tribhuvanamalla was a title taken from his Chalukya overlord, Vikramaditya VI.²

The promise to traders

In Hultzsch’s translation, the grant states: “Formerly kings used to take away by force the whole cargo, viz. gold, elephants, horses, gems, etc.”⁴ This cargo was “carried by ships and vessels which, after they had started from one country for another, were attacked by storms, wrecked, and thrown on shore.”⁴ The king, “out of mercy, for the sake of glory and merit”, now let traders keep everything except the fixed duty.⁴

The customs duties

The Telugu section sets the general duty at one in thirty on all exports and imports.⁵ It then gives special rates for these goods:⁵

• sandal⁵
• country camphor, Chinese camphor and pearls⁵
• rose-water, ivory, civet, camphor-oil, copper, zinc, lead, silk thread, corals and perfumes⁵
• pepper⁵
• silks, charged by the bale⁵
• areca nuts, charged by the lakh⁵

Two closing Sanskrit verses say that Ganapatideva set up this edict-pillar at the great Desiyakkondapattana, also called Motupalli.⁵² He did so in Saka 1166 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the year Krodhin, which Hultzsch equates with 1244–45 CE.⁵²

Significance

Hultzsch linked the port to Marco Polo’s kingdom of “Mutfili”.⁶ He reasoned that Polo had named the whole kingdom after this town.⁶ He also pointed out that Ganapatideva chose it as the site of his edict to sailors.⁶ Hultzsch took both facts to mean that Motupalli was the kingdom’s chief port in the thirteenth century.⁶ Henry Yule had already identified Mutfili with Motupalli.⁷

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry read the duty list as evidence that horses, elephants, gems and metals passed through the port.⁸ He argued against the view, which he attributes to K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, that only foreigners carried on this trade.⁸ He saw the edict as a revival of sea trade after a period of neglect.⁸⁹ He noted that customs ports of this kind were called karapattanas.⁸⁹

Editions

The standard edition, with text, plates and a translation of the grant, is Hultzsch’s in Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), pp. 188–197.¹ Parabrahma Sastry reprinted Hultzsch’s translation of the main part with a commentary on the rates.¹⁰

Footnotes

1. E. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), p. 188 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

2. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 189 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

3. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 254. ↩

4. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 196 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 197 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

6. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 190 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II (1903), p. 362 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 255–256. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 257. ↩ ↩²

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 254–255. ↩