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Yenamadala inscription of Ganapamba

A Sanskrit and Telugu inscription on a pillar at Yenamadala in the Guntur taluk. It was set up by Ganapamba, daughter of the Kakatiya Ganapatideva and widow of the Kota chief Beta. It records her temples to Siva, named after her husband and her father, and her gifts at Amaravati, and it gives the Kakatiya and Kota family lines. The date, Saumya (Saka 1172, 1249–50), survives only in a 19th-century copy and has been questioned.

What it is

The inscription is cut on four faces of a stone pillar in the village of Yenamadala, in the Guntur taluk of the old Krishna (then Kistna) district.1 When E. Hultzsch edited it in 1895, the pillar lay in the Venugopala temple.1 Before it was moved there for safety, the villagers had used it for grinding lime.1

Gordon Mackenzie printed an abridged English translation from Colin Mackenzie’s copy in his Kistna District Manual (1883).12 He complained that “part is now worn away by the villagers grinding lime on the stone”.12 The record belongs to Ganapamba, daughter of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva, widow of the Kota chief Beta.1

Contents

The first two faces carry 25 Sanskrit verses in the Telugu alphabet.1 They open with prayers to Ganesa and to Vishnu as the Boar.1 They then give the Kakatiya line: Prola, his son Madhava (Mahadeva), who died in battle, and Ganapati.1

Then come the chiefs of the Konnatavadi district, who lived at Sri-Dhanyankapura (Amaravati):1

  • Keta, who gave seventy agraharas (Brahmin villages) south of the Krishna1
  • his son Rudra1
  • Rudra’s son Beta, who married Ganapambika1

After Beta’s death, the verses say, she placed golden pinnacles on the shrine of Amaresvara at Dhanyankapura.3 She built a temple of Siva called Betesvara after her husband.3 She endowed it with the village of Benadevi and supported twelve Brahmans.345 At Dhanyankapura she built a temple called Ganapesvara after her father, and endowed it with Chintapadu.345

The Telugu prose on the third and fourth faces is mostly worn away.3 It gave the queen’s titles in the masculine gender.3 Among them was “the lord of a district of six thousand (villages) on the southern (bank) of the river Krishnavenna, obtained through the favour of the glorious Trinayana-Pallava”.3

Three later Telugu records on the pillar give cows, sheep and buffaloes to the Betesvara temple.6 Two of them are dated Saka 1192 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years) and 1196.6 See Kota Beta.

Where was the Betesvara temple?

Hultzsch could not trace the Betesvara temple at Yenamadala.3 He considered whether the verse’s words “in this city” referred to Amaravati.6 But he thought it very unlikely that anyone had carried a heavy stone pillar from Amaravati to Yenamadala.6 He concluded that the temple had stood at Yenamadala.6 He identified Chintapadu with Chintapalle in the Sattenapalle taluk, about sixteen miles from Amaravati.6

The date

The date is lost from the stone.3 Hultzsch took Saka 1172, the Saumya year, from Mackenzie’s abridged translation, which gives the year as “Saumya s.a. 1172”.37 Hultzsch saw no reason to distrust it.37 He concluded that Ganapamba set up the pillar in her father’s lifetime.37

The Government Epigraphist noted in 1914 that an inscription at Yenamadala shows Beta still alive in Saka 1173, when he founded a temple there.8 He argued that the record of his widow could therefore not be earlier than Saka 1173.8

Interpretation

Mackenzie used the stone, with other inscriptions, to compile a list of “Jain Kings of Dharanikota”, though he hesitated to put it forward.9 Hultzsch’s edition made the stone the main source for the marriage of Ganapamba into the Kota family. It was also his source for the Kakatiya Mahadeva, whom the stone calls Madhava.13 Rangacharya’s Topographical List (1919) records the three later grants and a tax exemption for the sixty villages of Yenamadala.10

Footnotes

  1. E. Hultzsch, “Yenamadala Inscription of Ganapamba”, Epigraphia Indica III (1895), p. 94 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  2. Mackenzie, Kistna District Manual (1883), p. 12 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  3. Hultzsch, “Yenamadala Inscription of Ganapamba” (1895), p. 95 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  4. Hultzsch, “Yenamadala Inscription of Ganapamba” (1895), translation, p. 102 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  5. Hultzsch, “Yenamadala Inscription of Ganapamba” (1895), translation, p. 103 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  6. Hultzsch, “Yenamadala Inscription of Ganapamba” (1895), p. 96 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. Mackenzie, Kistna District Manual (1883), Appendix to chapter I, p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, for 1913–14 (G.O. No. 920, Public, 4 August 1914), Part II, para. 40, p. 104 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  9. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 7 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  10. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, Vol. II (1919), p. 768 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

References

Sources (4)
  1. E. Hultzsch (ed.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. III (1894–95) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1895, pp. 94–103. No. 16, edited and translated by E. Hultzsch. [Public domain]
  2. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 12–14. [Public domain]
  3. Madras Government (Assistant Archaeological Superintendent for Epigraphy), Annual Reports on Epigraphy, Southern Circle, for 1910-11 to 1914-15 (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1915, pp. 104 (report for 1913–14). [Public domain]
  4. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency (collected till 1915), with Notes and References, Vol. II (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1919, pp. 768. [Public domain]

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