Raichur fort inscription of Gona Vithala

What it is

The inscription is carved on a large slab set up in the rampart wall of the fort of Raichur.¹ It records that Vithala built the stone fort of Raichur.¹ Vithala was an officer of Gona Gannaya-reddi, a subordinate of the Kakatiya king Prataparudra of Warangal.¹ P. Sreenivasachar edited it for the Hyderabad Archaeological Department.¹ He valued it for what it shows of the politics and geography of the Kakatiya kingdom at the end of the 13th century.¹

Date

The record is dated Saka 1216 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Jaya, the seventh day of the bright fortnight of Margasira.¹ Sreenivasachar gave the equivalent only roughly, as November 1294.¹ The 1961 Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh adds that the day was a Thursday.² It converts the date to 25 November 1294.²

H. Krishna Sastri noted the inscription on the fort wall at Raichur in 1908.³ He noted that it names a chief of Vardhamananagari as a feudatory of Prataparudra.³ He called its date of 1294 “the earliest date for Prataparudra derived from inscriptions”.³

Contents

Most of the text is a long string of titles of Gona Gannaya-reddi, and Sreenivasachar translated them in full.⁴ Gannaya-reddi is styled lord of the city of Kudupuluru and the sun of the Manuma family.⁴ He is also the man who equipped the Kakatiya army and the right arm of Rudradeva, that is, of Prataparudra.⁴

The titles boast that he cut off the heads of these enemies:⁴

• Maili of Kosagi⁴
• Soma of Uppula⁴
• king Pandi⁴
• Akki-nayaka⁴
• Kacheya-nayaka of Medipali⁴
• Kesi-naya of Kanduru⁴

He is said to have been a fire to Bhima of Rapaka and to have looted the stables of Beda Cheluki-naya.⁴ He took the horse and coronation thread of Choda Odaya.⁴ The 1961 summary adds the defeat of the Lata and Chola princes.² Gannaya-reddi was ruling from the town of Vardhamana when the inscription was cut.⁴

Then comes Vithala-natha, the guardian of Gannaya-reddi’s kingdom and a worshipper of Narayana.⁴² He took the forts of Adavani, Tumbulamu, Manuva and Haluva and entered the town of Racuru.⁴² On the date given, he built a stone fort there for the protection of the people of all the provinces.⁴²

Places

Sreenivasachar identified the places named:⁵

• Adavani with Adoni⁵
• Manuva with Dodda Manvi, about 20 miles west of Raichur⁵
• Haluva with a village on the south bank of the Tungabhadra⁵

He placed Tumbulamu in the Adoni taluk and Kosagi 24 miles south of Raichur.⁵ He identified Vardhamanapuram, Gannaya-reddi’s seat, with Vaddaman, 15 miles east of Wanaparthy, where there are many ruins.⁵ He noted that the town is also named in the Anmakonda inscription of Rudradeva.⁵

In 1908 Krishna Sastri had considered two places for Vardhamananagari.³ One was Vardhannapet, about 20 miles south-west of Anmakonda.³ The other was Waddamarri, about 50 miles south-west of it in the direction of Kalyana.³

The Gona family

Sreenivasachar linked the record with the Gona family known from Telugu literature.¹ The colophon (closing note) of the Ranganatha Ramayanamu makes Gona Buddhaya the son of Gona Gannaya.¹ It says that Buddhaya’s sons Vitthala and Kachaya finished the poem.¹ In another passage, though, Buddhaya calls his own father Vithala.¹

Among Gannaya-reddi’s titles is one that makes him an ornament to his brother’s deeds.¹ The inscription also gives Vithala an unusually high place as protector of Gannaya’s kingdom.¹ Sreenivasachar therefore suggested that Vithala and Gannaya may have been brothers.¹ He thought this would explain why the two literary sources name Buddhaya’s father differently.¹

He treated as certain that this Gannaya was the warrior Gona Gannaya of the Ranganatha Ramayanamu.¹⁵ But he left the full history of the family open until more of its inscriptions were published.¹⁵ He also noted that the Bothpur inscriptions of the Malyala family mention the Gona family.¹

Script and language

Sreenivasachar described both the language and the script as Telugu.⁵⁶ He thought the scribe knew no Kannada, since the Kannada titles in the text are written with many mistakes.⁵⁶ He also pointed to the early form raddi for the later reddi.⁵⁶ The 1961 volume nevertheless included the record in its collection of Kannada inscriptions and printed the text in Kannada characters.⁷ The sources consulted here do not settle which script the slab actually uses.

Editions

Sreenivasachar’s note appeared as an appendix to the Hyderabad Archaeological Department’s report for 1935-36.¹ It gives the text, a translation and a table of the places named.¹ The 1961 Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh gives an English summary and the text again.²⁷

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar, “Note on the Raichur Inscription of Vithala-natha, dated Saka 1216 (c. 1294 A.D.)”, Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, 1935-36 (1939), Appendix E, p. 32 (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 ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰

2. P. Sreenivasachar, N. Ramesan and P. B. Desai (eds.), Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (1961), p. 31, No. 78 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. H. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola; the Chalukya-Vikrama Year Forty-Two”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1908), p. 261, note (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Sreenivasachar, “Note on the Raichur Inscription” (1939), p. 35, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

5. Sreenivasachar, “Note on the Raichur Inscription” (1939), p. 33 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

6. Sreenivasachar, “Note on the Raichur Inscription” (1939), p. 34 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Sreenivasachar, Ramesan and Desai, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (1961), p. 101, text (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²