Pakhal lake inscription of Jagadala Mummadi

What it is

This is the foundation record of the Pakhal lake, one of the largest Kakatiya irrigation tanks.¹² It is a Sanskrit verse inscription on a stone pillar standing on the bund (dam) of the lake, east of Warangal.¹²

It records that Jagadala Mummadi, a son of Ganapatideva’s chief minister Bayyana-nayaka, built a great tank.³ The tank was at a sacred spot called the Maudgalya-tirtha, near a temple of Shiva-Ramanatha.³ Beside it he founded a town called Ganapapura.³ The record is not dated, but it belongs to the reign of Ganapatideva.³⁴

The pillar

L. D. Barnett described the stone as an upright rectangular block inscribed on all four faces.¹ At the top of the first face are two bands of roughly carved sculpture.¹ The first shows a seated Ganesha with the moon and the sun on either side.¹ The second shows a boar, the Kakatiya emblem, between two water jars.¹

The script is Telugu of the period.¹⁴ Apart from a few lines of Telugu prose at the end, the whole text is in Sanskrit verse, in many different metres.¹⁴ The modern reprint of the Warangal district inscriptions describes the pillar as standing on the western bund.² It puts the Telugu passage at lines 231–234.²

Discovery and editions

E. Hultzsch first noticed the inscription in his epigraphical report for 1902–03.¹ In the 1915–16 season G. Yazdani, the Nizam’s Superintendent of Archaeology, reported that he had “carefully copied” the Kakatiya inscriptions of Pakhal, Ramappa and Uparpalli.⁵ He had sent their impressions to Barnett in London.⁵ The report also lists his photographs of the lake and of each side of the inscribed pillar.⁶

H. Krishna Sastri (1908) and Hultzsch (1914) referred to it as “unpublished” before Barnett’s edition appeared.⁷⁸ Barnett’s edition was published in 1919 as No. 4 of the Hyderabad Archaeological Series.⁹¹ That monograph is not in the library used for this page. Barnett’s introduction and translation are cited here from their reprint in Epigraphia Telanganica (2023).¹ P. Sreenivasachar printed the text again in 1956, with a short English note.¹³

Contents

The text opens with invocations to Ganesha, to Vishnu as the Boar and to the moon.⁴ Barnett noted that the Boar was chosen because the boar was the Kakatiya emblem.⁴ The text then calls itself a decree (sasana) of King Ganapati.⁴

A mythical family line follows.⁴³ From Vishnu’s navel came the Sun, then Manu, and in Manu’s line Ikshvaku, Mandhatri, Sagara, Bhagiratha, Dasaratha and Rama.⁴³ After them came the Chola king Karikala, here called Kalikala.⁴³ In the same line came the Kakatiyas: Durjaya, Prola, Rudradeva, his brother Mahadeva, and Mahadeva’s son Ganapati.⁴³ Of the historical kings, only Prola II, Rudradeva and Mahadeva are named before Ganapati, the reigning king.³

Ganapati and his minister’s family

Verses praising Ganapati follow.⁴¹⁰ One verse lists the kings who paid him homage: the rulers of Kashi, Kalinga, the Shakas, the Malavas, Kerala, Tummana, the Hunas, the Kurus, Arimarda (Pagan), Magadha, Nepal and the Cholas.⁴¹⁰ Barnett regarded the list as greatly exaggerated.⁴¹⁰

Ganapati’s first minister was Bayyana-nayaka.⁴³ By his wife Bachamamba he had three sons, Ganapati, Nalla-Ganapa and Jagadala Mummadi, the youngest a soldier and statesman.⁴³

Mummadi built the tank at the Maudgalya-tirtha, with a shrine of Bhairava attached to the temple.⁴³ Beside the tank he founded Ganapapura, which Barnett thought was named after Mummadi’s elder brother Nalla-Ganapa.⁴³ Mummadi gave a house and five martus of land to the composer of the record.⁴³ The composer is known only by his title Kavichakravarti, “emperor of poets”.⁴³

Date and genealogy

Barnett placed the record in about 1245.⁴¹⁰ His reasons were that it belongs to Ganapati’s reign and that one verse speaks of him as having ruled for a long time.⁴¹⁰ The 1956 Corpus calls the record undated.³ The Warangal district reprint also gives no date.²

Verse 19 of the record repeats a stanza about the boar crest.⁴ The same stanza appears in Ganapati’s Kanchi inscription and in the Motupalli pillar of 1244–45.⁴ Hultzsch, editing the Motupalli record, said these verses refer to “the crest of the Kakatiyas, which … was the figure of a boar”.⁸

Krishna Sastri, writing in 1908, said that the Pakhal inscription, like Ganapati’s Chebrolu record, named a Durjaya in the Kakatiya ancestry.⁷¹¹ Here Durjaya appears as the father of Prola.⁷¹¹ He found its statement that Rudra was born in Prola’s family “quite against the testimony of other Kakatiya inscriptions”.⁷¹¹ Sreenivasachar instead noted that the record leaves out the earlier Kakatiya chiefs and starts its historical list with Prola II.³

Parabrahma Sastry’s use of the record

Parabrahma Sastry drew on the record for Ganapati’s title raja-gaja-kesari, a lion among royal elephants.¹²¹³ He also used it for the land measure marturu, which Barnett had already noted in it.¹²¹³¹⁴ Parabrahma Sastry thought the poet Kavichakravarti was probably Ganapati’s poet laureate (court poet).¹⁵ In his view he was the same man named as the officer in charge of the 1213 Chebrolu inscription of Jaya.¹⁵

The lake

The Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 called the Pakhal lake the largest artificial sheet of water in Hyderabad State.¹⁶¹⁷ It measured about 8,000 by 6,000 yards, with an area of nearly 13 square miles.¹⁶¹⁷ A dam more than 2,000 yards long across the Pakhal river held it up.¹⁶¹⁷ At the centre of the dam the gazetteer noted the ruins of a small pavilion known as the chabutra of Shitab Khan.¹⁸

Parabrahma Sastry describes the dam as built of laterite gravel and red earth, about a mile long, with 40 channels.¹⁹ He gives the area now irrigated as about 9,000 acres.¹⁹ See also Pakhal.

Footnotes

1. L. D. Barnett, introduction to the Pakhal inscription (Hyderabad Archaeological Series No. 4, 1919), reprinted in Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 234, No. 201. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

2. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 332, No. 323, summarising Inscriptions of Warangal District (reprint 2016), pp. 202–211. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts of Andhra Pradesh, Part III (1956), p. 150, No. Wg. 15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

4. Barnett (1919), reprinted in Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 235, No. 201. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³

5. Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Highness the Nizam’s Dominions, 1915-16 (1917), p. 10 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. Annual Report of the Archaeological Department … 1915-16 (1917), p. 26 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

7. H. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola; the Chalukya-Vikrama Year Forty-Two”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1908), p. 259 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. E. Hultzsch, “Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva”, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), p. 189 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

9. Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s Dominions, 1927-28 (1929), list of the Hyderabad Archaeological Series at the end of the volume (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

10. Barnett (1919), translation, reprinted in Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 236–237, No. 201, verses 18 and 22. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

11. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 260, note 4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 260. ↩ ↩²

13. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 269. ↩ ↩²

14. L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 17, note 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

15. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 293. ↩ ↩²

16. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 90 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

17. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

18. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 91 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

19. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 205. ↩ ↩²