Vemavaram grant of Allaya Vema (1434)

Allaya Vema Reddi of Rajahmundry made this grant on the day of a total eclipse of the sun, 7 June 1434.¹² It founded the village of Allada-Reddi-Vemavaram.²³ It also describes the wars of his father Allada and his own conquests and gifts.¹

The plates

“This grant was presented by Sir Walter Elliot in 1887 to the Trustees of the British Museum”.⁴ There it was registered as “Indian Charters 26”, and a paper on the back says that “it was received from Rajahmundry”.⁴ L. D. Barnett edited it in 1916.⁴

It has eight copper plates, well preserved, except that the fifth and sixth are cracked.⁴ They were held together by a strong ring, now cut, and there is no seal.⁴

The language is Sanskrit verse in lines 1–167 and 228–237.¹ Lines 168–228 are a Telugu prose description of the boundaries, and there is a Telugu note at the end.¹ Barnett found the Telugu “quite interesting”, and he called it “a loose colloquial”, with many unusual spellings and words.¹

Contents

The record places itself in the reign of Allaya Vema Reddi, “Vema, the son of Allaya”, of Rajahmundry.¹ After the opening prayers, it praises the donor’s ancestors in the Panta family.¹ It names king Dodda and his sons Anna-Vrola, Kotaya and Allaya or Allada.¹

Allaya was the most important of them.¹ He “conquered Alpakhana, made an alliance with the Gajapati who was the lord of Karnata, defeated Komati Vema at Ramesvaram and established a powerful kingdom”.¹ His queen was Vemambika, daughter of the Choda king Bhima.¹ Their sons were Vema, Virabhadra, Dodda and Anna.¹

Vema and Vira set up their capital at Rajahmundry.¹ The grant lists these deeds of Vema:¹

• he remitted taxes on the estates of gods and Brahmans¹
• he performed many great gifts at Draksharama¹
• he “conquered the kings of the Sapta-madiya”¹
• he set up pillars of victory at Simhadri and Purushottama¹
• he gave a heavy bell to the god Markandeyesvara¹

Vema married Harihara-amba, whose mother was a daughter of Harihara, “the lord of the Four Oceans”, and Virabhadra married Anitalli.¹

Date and place

The date is the new-moon day of Jyaishtha in Saka 1356 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the cyclic year Ananda, a Monday with an eclipse of the sun.² Robert Sewell worked it out for Barnett as Monday, 7 June 1434, “when there was an important total eclipse of the sun”.²

The granted village, Allada-Reddi-Vemavaram, was made by joining two villages, Vedurupaka and Pinamahendrada.²³ It lay on the south bank of the Tulyabhaga channel, between the channel and the Sapta-Godavara tank at Draksharama.²³ Barnett placed it a few miles from Ramachandrapuram, where villages named Vedurupaka and Mahendravada still exist there.²³

Interpretation

Barnett identified several names in the grant:²

• “Alpakhana” with Alp Khan, better known as Hoshang Ghori, sultan of Malwa from 1405 to 1434²
• the “Komati Vema” defeated at Ramesvaram with Peda Komati Vema of Kondavidu²
• the Markandeyesvara temple with the one at Rajahmundry that the Reddis supported²
• Harihara with Harihara I of Vijayanagara²

Sewell instead connected the victory over Alp Khan with the war of the Bahmani sultan Firuz Shah of about 1417.⁵⁶ In his list of dates, Sewell took the grant as showing Allada, or Allaya Dodda, ruling at Rajahmundry in 1434.⁵⁶ See Allada Reddi and the Reddis of Rajahmundry.

Footnotes

1. Barnett, Vemavaram Grant of Allaya-Vema Reddi (1915–16), p. 238 (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

2. Barnett, Vemavaram Grant of Allaya-Vema Reddi (1915–16), p. 239 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

3. Barnett, Vemavaram Grant of Allaya-Vema Reddi (1915–16), p. 240 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. L. D. Barnett, Vemavaram Grant of Allaya-Vema Reddi: Saka 1356, Epigraphia Indica XIII (1915–16), p. 237 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 212 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. Sewell, Historical Inscriptions (1932), p. 218 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²