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Pithapuram inscription of Prithvisvara

A Sanskrit and Telugu inscription of Saka 1108 (1186) on the pillar at the entrance of the Kunti-Madhava temple at Pithapuram. It records a village given to the temple by Jayambika, mother of the Velanati chief Prithvisvara. Its long family history in verse is the main source for the history of the Velanati Chodas.

What it is

The temple of Kunti-Madhava at Pithapuram has a square stone pillar at its eastern entrance, in front of the shrine.1 The pillar bears four inscriptions of different dates, and this is the earliest of them.1 It is cut on the whole of the west face and the upper part of the south face.1 It uses the Telugu alphabet and mixes Sanskrit verse with Telugu and Sanskrit prose.1

E. Hultzsch edited it in Epigraphia Indica in 1897 from inked copies (estampages) made by H. Krishna Sastri.2 Robert Sewell had noticed the pillar’s first three inscriptions in his Lists of Antiquities (1882).1 The second inscription on the same pillar is the Pithapuram inscription of Mallideva, of 1195.13

The grant

The inscription records a grant made at the vernal equinox of Saka 1108 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years).4 Jayambika, queen of Gonka III and mother of Prithvisvara, gave the village of Navakhandavada, in the Prolunadu district, to the temple.4 The grant was “communicated to the inhabitants of the district by her son Prithvisvara, who accordingly appears to have been the ruling prince at the time of the inscription”.4

Hultzsch could not verify the date.4 He gave it as 1185–86 if the Saka year is current, or 1186–87 if expired.4 Krishna Sastri was told at Pithapuram that Navakhandavada lay close to the town and still belonged to the temple.4 The record ends with the names of its composer, Ayyapacharya, and of its engraver, Kantachari of Sripithapuram.4

The family line

Before the grant comes a long account in Sanskrit verse of the family from which Prithvisvara came.4 Hultzsch called them “the chiefs of Velanandu”, after the Telugu genitive Velananti put before the name of Prithvisvara’s grandfather.4 The early part of the family line begins with a first ancestor said to have been adopted by Yudhishthira.4 Hultzsch called this part “perfectly fictitious”.4

From Kudyavarman II, a vassal of the Eastern Chalukya Vimaladitya, the verses name eighteen chiefs.5678 Among them are these:5678

  • Gonka I, who ruled the Andhra country under Kulottunga I5678
  • Rajendra Choda I, adopted by Kulottunga5678
  • Gonka II, who gilded the top of the Bhimesvara temple at Draksharama5678
  • the Rajendra Choda who killed a Bhima on an island in a lake5678

The verses also praise Jayambika.8 She rebuilt the Kunti-Madhava temple and covered with gold the image of Vishnu at Simhachalam.8 See the Velanati Chodas.

Interpretation

Hultzsch dated the chiefs by their other inscriptions, copied in 1892 and 1893. He identified Prithvisvara with a Rajendra-Chodaraja, son of Kulottunga-Choda-Gonkaraja, whose records run from Saka 1085 to 1102.92 He made him a tributary of a king Rajaraja.92

In 1917 Krishna Sastri compared the family line of a set of copper plates with this one.1011 The Tahsildar (revenue officer) of Bapatla had lent these plates to him for examination.10 He found that the two agree from Nanniraja onward, but differ on the earlier generations.11 He suggested that most of the dates Hultzsch gave to Gonka III and Prithvisvara belonged instead to Gonka II and his son Rajendra Choda.11

M. Rama Rao noted that the Telugu poem Keyurabahucharitramu makes Prithvisvara a son of Choda.12 This inscription, he noted, puts a Gonka between them.12 V. Rangacharya’s Topographical List (1919) calls Prithvisvara “the twelfth of the line and the present donor”.13

Footnotes

  1. E. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Pillar Inscription of Prithvisvara; Saka-Samvat 1108”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 32 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 39 and note 2 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. E. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Mallideva and Manma-Satya II”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 86 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  4. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 33 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  5. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 34 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 35 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 36 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  8. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  9. Hultzsch, “Pithapuram Inscription of Prithvisvara” (1897), p. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  10. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, for 1916–17 (1917), Part II, para. 26, p. 118 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  11. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, for 1916–17 (G.O. No. 1035, Home (Education), 10 August 1917), Part II, para. 27, p. 120 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  12. M. Rama Rao, “History of the Velnadu Chiefs”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society V, pt. 2 (October 1930), p. 71 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  13. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, Vol. II (1919), p. 719, No. 63 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

References

Sources (4)
  1. F. Kielhorn (articles); E. Hultzsch (ed.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IV (1896–97) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1897, pp. 32–39. No. 4, edited by E. Hultzsch. [Public domain]
  2. Madras Government (Assistant Archaeological Superintendent for Epigraphy), Annual Reports on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1915-16 to 1919-20 (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1920, pp. 120 (report for 1916–17). [Public domain]
  3. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency (collected till 1915), with Notes and References, Vol. II (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1919, pp. 719. [Public domain]
  4. M. Rama Rao, History of the Velnadu Chiefs, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. V, pt. 2 (October 1930) (opens in a new tab), Andhra Historical Research Society, 1930, pp. 66, 71–72. [Public domain]

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