Upparapalli pillar inscription of Kataya

What it is

This inscription is on a square pillar in front of the main temple at Upparapalli (Uparpalli).¹ It records gifts of land to the temple by a Brahman officer named Kataya.¹ He made them with the approval of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva.¹ It was published in 1919 together with the Palampet pillar inscription, from ink impressions that G. Yazdani took in December 1916.² The Nizam’s government noted that it “gives the origin of Recherla Rudra”, the general who founded the Ramappa temple.²

The pillar and its language

The text covers all four sides of the pillar, in a regular and well-formed Telugu script of the period.¹ Unlike most Kakatiya records of its kind, the language is Telugu throughout, partly verse and partly prose.¹ Barnett thought its verse passages “well deserve the attention of specialists in Telugu literature”.¹ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry cites it as an example of ornate court poetry composed in Telugu prose and verse.³

Contents

The record opens with five verses asking Ganesha, Durga, Vishnu, Shiva and the Sun to bless Kataya.¹ Its prose then describes Ganapatideva, son of King Rudra, ruling from Anumakonda, “that ornament of the Andhra country”.⁴ Ganapati’s high minister was Recherla Rudra, son of the Kad-reddi (Kata-reddi) and of Bejjamamba.¹⁴ Rudra, in the record’s words, bore “the burden of the Kakate realm”.¹⁴

Rudra’s own minister was the Brahman Raje-nayaka.¹⁴ Raje-nayaka’s deeds were these:¹⁴

• he defeated warriors at Bhokkera¹⁴
• he broke the head of one Godhumarati¹⁴
• he took Udayagiri and routed ten kings¹⁴
• he set up lamps that were never to go out for the god Bhimeshvara at Daksharama¹⁴

Raje-nayaka’s son by his wife Ravvamamba was Kataya.¹⁵ Kataya rose high in Ganapatideva’s favour.¹⁵ He planted groves, and built tanks and Shiva temples.¹⁵

The grant itself sets out the lands Kataya gave, tax-free, for the god’s worship, offerings, lamps and ranga-bhoga (temple entertainment).⁵ They lay at Pincharapalli.⁵ They did not include the estates already held there by the temples of the Five Lingas and by Brahmans.⁵ The gift included plots measured in martus under several canals and tanks, among them tanks named after Raje-nayaka and Ravvasani.⁵⁶ It also included mango, tamarind and palmyra groves and the tax on shops.⁵⁶

The record ends: “All this is the gift bestowed by the Maharaja Ganapatideva.”⁵ Among the landmarks it names is a hillock called Eruvaka-gubbali.⁷ Parabrahma Sastry took this to be the hill where villagers held the Eruvaka ploughing festival at the start of the sowing season.⁷

Date

The date is given as Saka 1157 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Manmatha, the fifteenth day of the bright half of Magha, a Thursday.⁸ Barnett, helped by Robert Sewell, calculated it as Thursday, 24 January 1236.⁸ The 1956 Corpus gives the same Christian date, but its English note prints the Saka year as 1187.⁹ Its own text of line 76 has 1157, so 1187 is a misprint.⁹¹⁰

Recherla Rudra’s parents

The Upparapalli and Palampet records disagree about the family of Recherla Rudra.¹¹¹ The Palampet inscription of 1213 makes him the son of the general Kataya II and his wife Kamamba.¹¹ The Upparapalli record calls his father the Kad-reddi and his mother Bejjamamba.¹⁴ Barnett, who edited both, simply says that here “we learn his origin”.¹ The 1956 Corpus follows him, without discussing the difference.¹⁹

Parabrahma Sastry cites two of Rudra’s titles, Kakati-rajya-samartha and Kakatiya-rajya-bharadhaureya.¹² They appear in this record and in Raje-nayaka’s Daksharama inscription.¹² He takes them as evidence that Rudra held the kingdom together when Ganapatideva came to the throne.¹²

Raje-nayaka’s campaigns

Barnett identified Godhumarati with the “Vairigodhuma-gharatta” of the Ganapesvaram inscription.¹ He took Bhokkera to be perhaps Bokkara in the Aska taluk of Ganjam district.¹ A battle might have been fought there during Ganapatideva’s wars with Kalinga.¹ He read Udagiri as a mistake for Udayagiri, the fortress in Nellore district.¹ The 1956 Corpus accepts both identifications and calls the record important for the Kakatiya expansion.¹³

Parabrahma Sastry identified this Udayagiri instead with the place of that name in the Pedakimidi agency, in Kalinga.¹⁴ He dated Raje-nayaka’s lamp at Daksharama to Saka 1134 (1212).¹⁵¹⁴ He placed the campaign in Ganapati’s attempt to take the Kalinga region, led by Indulur Soma-mantri and Raje-nayaka.¹⁵¹⁴ He judged that Ganapati’s Kalinga wars, mentioned at Ganapesvaram, Upparapalli and Motupalli, brought him no lasting gain.¹⁶

Ganapati as “son of Rudra”

Ganapatideva was the son of Rudradeva’s brother Mahadeva, yet this record calls him the son of King Rudra.¹⁷⁴ Parabrahma Sastry suggested that Ganapati may have been Rudradeva’s son by adoption.¹⁸ The Yadava writer Hemadri calls the Kakatiya killed by the Yadavas Raudra, “son of Rudra”.¹⁸ Parabrahma Sastry thought Hemadri meant Mahadeva.¹⁸ In his view Hemadri confused Mahadeva with Ganapati, who had gone with Mahadeva on that campaign.¹⁸

Footnotes

1. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 14 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶

2. L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. v (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

3. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 296. ↩

4. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 18, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

5. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 19, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

6. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), pp. 16–17, text lines 72–103 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 210. ↩ ↩²

8. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

9. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts of Andhra Pradesh, Part III (1956), pp. 166–167, No. Wg. 19 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part III (1956), p. 169, text line 76 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

11. Barnett, Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

12. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 144. ↩ ↩² ↩³

13. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part III (1956), p. 167 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

14. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 110. ↩ ↩² ↩³

15. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 109. ↩ ↩²

16. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 112. ↩

17. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 36. ↩

18. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 100. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴