Vemalurpadu plates of Amma II

These plates record a gift of land by Amma II, the Eastern Chalukya king crowned in 945.¹ The gift was made at the request of a feudatory (subordinate ruler), Durgaraja, for one of his own officers.² Durgaraja and his great-grandfather Pandaranga, the general of Gunaga Vijayaditya III, are both known from other inscriptions.¹²

Discovery and description

According to E. Hultzsch, H. Krishna Sastri got the plates for the Madras Museum in 1910 from a Muslim resident of Vemalurpadu.³¹ Vemalurpadu is a village close to the Phirangipuram railway station in Guntur district.¹ Krishna Sastri supplied the ink impressions from which Hultzsch edited them in 1926.³ See Vemuluripadu.

Krishna Sastri’s description is quoted in the edition.¹ It gives five plates with raised rims, the first and last written on the inner side only.¹ A copper ring 5⅝ inches across holds them together.¹ The ring’s ends are fixed in the bottom of a round seal, 3⅝ inches across, whose base is a lotus of eight petals.¹

The seal shows a running boar facing left with a fly-whisk (chauri) in front of it.¹ Below the boar is the legend Sri-Tribhuvanankusa in old Telugu characters.¹ Below the legend is a spread lotus, with the sun and an elephant-goad to the right and the crescent moon to the left.¹ The ring had not been cut when the plates came from the Collector of Guntur.¹ Plates and seal together weighed 410 tolas.¹

Script and language

The writing is well preserved except for parts of the fourth plate.¹ The alphabet is Telugu, and the language is Sanskrit prose with 19½ Sanskrit verses.¹ The boundaries of the two fields granted are in a mixture of Sanskrit and Telugu.¹

Hultzsch thought the writer had only a “very superficial knowledge” of Sanskrit.¹ In his view the writer made “an inordinate number of mistakes and omissions” in copying the historical introduction from his office records.¹ Verses 9 to 15 were apparently composed by a Brahmin named Bhattagunda.¹ Hultzsch judged that they did “not reflect much credit on this panegyrist as a grammarian and poet”.¹

The king and his ancestors

The historical introduction is nearly the same as that of the Maliyapundi grant, which Hultzsch had discussed before.¹ He noted a corrupt verse that leaves it doubtful whether the reign of Vijayaditya II Narendramrigaraja was given as 48 or 40 years.¹ J. F. Fleet had discussed the same disagreement between the grants.¹⁴

A verse calls Amma II the son of Bhima II and the grandson of Bhima I.¹⁵ It calls him the great-grandson of Vikramanka (Vikramaditya I), who held the rank of heir-apparent but never reigned.¹⁵ Hultzsch pointed out that the poet had left out a generation, Vijayaditya IV.¹⁵ Amma II was really the great-grandson of Bhima I.¹⁵ The same verse refers to an attack on Bhima I by Vallabha, whom Hultzsch took for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna II.¹⁵

Verse 13 says that Amma II was anointed heir-apparent at the age of eight and crowned at twelve.¹⁶ Hultzsch noted that other grants give the exact date of the coronation, Friday, 5 December 945, in the twelfth year of the king’s age.¹ Fleet had worked out the same date in 1891.⁷ The grant does not say in which year of the reign it was made.¹

The grant

At the winter solstice (uttarayana), the king gave an agrahara (village granted to Brahmins) to a Brahmin named Musiya, or Musiyana-sarman.²⁶ Musiya was of the Bharadvaja gotra (clan) and the family of Krovi, and lived at Karamchedu.²⁶ His father bore the honorary title Maharaja, and his grandfather was named Gundamayya.²⁶

The gift was made at the request of Durgaraja, the great-grandson of Pandaranga.²⁶ In Hultzsch’s translation, the king, “pleased with this devoted servant”, replied: “I shall gladly grant an agrahara to your minister”.²⁶ Hultzsch concluded that Musiya was Durgaraja’s minister.²⁶

The order is addressed to “all the ryots, headed by the Rashtrakutas”, of the Karma-rashtra province.⁶ The gift was two fields, each needing ten kharis of kodrava millet as seed.⁶ One was cut off on the south side of the village of Anmananguru, and the other on the north side of the village of Andeki.⁶ Together they were given as two villages named Tumiyaveniyapundi.⁶ Hultzsch thought this might be the new name of the two fields.⁶

The agrahara had these boundaries:⁸

• Medalkonda on the east⁸
• Gattipundi on the south⁸
• Lemkonda on the west⁸
• Anmananguru on the north⁸

The field boundaries name trees, ponds, salt marshes and the river Gunteru.⁸ The executor (ajnapti) was “the famous chief of the camp”, whom Hultzsch took to be Durgaraja himself.²⁸ The composer, Bhattagunda of Vangiparru, received two shares of the grant.²⁸

Durgaraja

Hultzsch thought Durgaraja was the royal superintendent of the district (raja-vishay-adhyaksha), or the feudatory chief of Karma-rashtra.² He had already traced the family in the Maliyapundi grant.⁹¹⁰ There Durgaraja appears as the founder of a Jain temple and a descendant of Pandaranga.⁹¹⁰ In the same grant Hultzsch found the title “superintendent of the royal camp” (kataka-raja) held by three generations of Pandaranga’s descendants.⁹¹⁰

The places

Hultzsch placed Karma-rashtra in parts of the Ongole taluk of Nellore district.² He noted that other grants put Chendalur in this district, and also Dharmapuram and Kalvakuru in the Addanki division of Ongole taluk.² He suggested that Andeki might be an old form of the name of Addanki itself.² He could not trace the four boundary villages without local maps.²

On the Madras Survey map of 1892, Hultzsch found Karanchedu 10 miles west by south of Bapatla.² He suggested that Vangiparru might be Vangipuram in the Bapatla taluk.² Both villages appear, as Karanchedu and Vangiparru, in a grant of Vijayaditya II.²

Footnotes

1. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II” (1926), p. 227 (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 ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹

2. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II” (1926), p. 228 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

3. E. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II”, Epigraphia Indica XVIII (1925–26), p. 226 and note 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

4. J. F. Fleet, “The Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 100 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

5. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II” (1926), p. 233, translation and notes 14–17 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II” (1926), p. 234, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

7. Fleet, “The Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 271 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

8. Hultzsch, “Vemalurpadu Plates of Ammaraja II” (1926), p. 235, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

9. E. Hultzsch, “Maliyapundi Grant of Ammaraja II”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1907–08), p. 49 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Hultzsch, “Maliyapundi Grant of Ammaraja II” (1908), p. 50 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³