Sarngapuram plates of Sarngadhara

What it is

The grant is engraved on five copper plates, about 10 by 5½ inches.¹ They are strung on a ring that carries a seal too corroded to read.¹ All the plates are inscribed on both sides, and their edges are not raised as in most grants.¹

On the first side of the first plate are the discus (chakra), the conch (sankha) and the boar, one below another.¹ Between the conch and the boar is the letter Sri in large type.¹ Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty obtained the plates from the priest (archaka) of the temple at Mannepalli in the Darsi division of the Nellore district.² They were told that a hamlet called Sarnapuram existed in the Ongole taluk (sub-district).²

Language and date

The script is Telugu.¹³ The language is Sanskrit verse, except for the boundaries of the granted village, which are in Telugu.¹³

The grant was made on a Monday, the tenth tithi (lunar day) of the bright fortnight of Phalguna (Tapasya), in the cyclic year Ananda.³⁴ The Saka year is given as 1176, both in Telugu figures and in a word-numeral phrase (words that stand for numbers).³⁴ The editors put the date in A.D. 1254–55.¹

Contents

The first verse invokes the Boar incarnation of Vishnu.² The second names “King Prolaya, who is the ornament of the glorious Kakati race”.²

The next verses make Prolaya’s son a ruler of the world like Mahadeva (Shiva) himself.² They add “how indeed can Ganapatideva himself have been his son” if he were not.² In this way they introduce Mahadeva and his son Ganapatideva.²

Verse 8 names Ganapati’s vassal Madhava, son of Sauri Suravara.³⁴ Verse 9 makes Madhava ruler of the city of Addanki and father of Sarngadhara, of the Salankayana gotra (clan).³⁴ Sarngadhara also bore the title Chakra-Narayana.³⁴

Saying “May there be religious merit to my Lord”, Sarngadhara gave the village of Sarngapuram, with a gift of money, to Brahmans learned in the Vedas.⁴

Forty-seven shareholders are listed with their gotras.³⁵ The first forty-two hold equal shares.³⁵ The last three are called nischala bhaginas, a term the editors could not explain with certainty, perhaps meaning “invariable shareholders”.³⁵

Each share was one gocharma.³ Verse 28 defines a gocharma as 10 nivartanas (land measures).³ It defines a nivartana as 30 rods of 10 cubits each.³

Notable points

The genealogy (family line) omits Rudradeva and passes straight from Prolaya to Mahadeva and Ganapati.² In 1926 C. R. Krishnamacharlu described this grant as the first Kakatiya copper-plate record to be found.⁶ He noted that, being dated Saka 1176 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), Ananda, it was six years older than the Garavapadu plates of 1260, the second.⁶

The boar on the plates and on the seal of the Garavapadu grant is the Kakatiya emblem.⁷ Krishnamacharlu cited this Nellore grant among the records that bear it.⁷

Footnotes

1. Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates and Stones in the Nellore District, Part I (1905), p. 137, copper-plate No. 17 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Butterworth and Venugopaul Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, Part I (1905), p. 139, with translation of verses 1–4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Butterworth and Venugopaul Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, Part I (1905), p. 138 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

4. Butterworth and Venugopaul Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, Part I (1905), p. 140, translation of verses 7–15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Butterworth and Venugopaul Chetty, Nellore Inscriptions, Part I (1905), pp. 141–142, list of donees (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva” (1926), p. 347 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

7. C. R. Krishnamacharlu, “The Garavapadu Grant of Ganapatideva; Saka 1182”, Epigraphia Indica XVIII (1926), p. 346, note 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²