Panugallu inscription of Immadi Mallikarjuna-nayaka

The pillar

The inscription is cut on a stone pillar lying in the courtyard of the Chaya-Someshvara temple at Panugallu, in the Nalgonda taluk.¹ P. Sreenivasachar edited it in 1940 as No. 35 of his Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, with a plate.¹ It opens with eleven Sanskrit verses and ends with the details of the gift in Telugu prose.²³

The Sanskrit verses

After a prayer to the Boar, the poem names a king Ganapati of the Kakatiya dynasty.² It then names his son, king Rudradeva, praised for generosity and for protecting Brahmins.² It goes on to say that a king named Rudradeva now rules the world.² He is the daughter’s son of the previous Rudradeva and the leader of all rulers.² His minister was the general Bolla. Bolla’s son was king Mallinatha, and Mallinatha’s son was king Immadi.²

The date is given in the words for eyes, form, pair and moon, that is Saka 1212 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years).³ It was the year Vikriti, the sixth day of the bright half of Jyeshtha, a Tuesday.³ On that day Immadi gave the god Chaya-Somanatha five nivartanas (land measures) of land and the well-known tank Udayaditya-samudra, for the prosperity of his kingdom.³ The verses were composed by Ananta, son of the daughter of Govinda-bhatta.³

The Telugu record

The Telugu prose names the reigning king as the Kakatiya Kumara-Rudradeva, with the old family titles.³ He is mahamandaleshvara (great provincial lord), lord of the excellent city of Anumakonda, Chalamartiganda and ruler of three kings.³ The donor is Immadi Mallikarjuna-nayaka, son of Nissankavira Mallikarjuna-nayaka. He made the gift for the merit of king Kumara-Rudradeva.³ He gave the god Chaya-Somanatha of Panugallu five shares (marturus) of land behind the Udayaditya-samudra.³ Three of them were under the Uttama-ganda canal.³ Sreenivasachar worked out the date as Tuesday, 16 May 1290.⁴

Rudradeva and Kumara-Rudradeva

Sreenivasachar read the verses as calling Prataparudra both Rudradeva and Kumara-Rudradeva. In his reading, the earlier Rudradeva, whom the verses make Ganapati’s son, was in fact the queen Rudrama.¹ Prataparudra was her daughter’s son.¹ The record thus names Rudramadevi only as king Rudradeva, Ganapati’s son.²¹ It also gives the line of the donor as Bolla, Mallinatha (Nissankavira Mallikarjuna-nayaka) and Immadi Mallikarjuna-nayaka.¹

The general and the queen

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry used this record to show that Mallikarjuna-nayaka was Rudramadevi’s general. He identified him with the Mallikarjuna-nayaka named with the queen in the Chandupatla inscription of November 1289, which records a gift made after both had died. In May 1290 the general’s son made his gift for the merit of Kumara Rudradeva, the new king.⁵ On this evidence Parabrahma Sastry argued that the queen and her general died at the same time.⁵

Editions

The text and translation are in Sreenivasachar’s Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 102–105, with the date on p. 181 and the list entry on p. 192.¹⁴

P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 192, list of inscriptions, No. 35 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 104, verses 1–6 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 105, verses 7–11 and lines 38–52 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 181, appendix of dates, No. 26 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 125. ↩ ↩²