A new site, built from published sources. Spotted a mistake? Please tell us
Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Bayyaram Tank

A large tank at Bayyaram in the old Khammam district, called Dharmakirti-samudra. It was built by Mailama (Mailamba), sister of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva and wife of Natavadi Rudra. The inscribed granite pillar that records it, found in 1965, gives the fullest genealogy (family history) of the Kakatiya family.

The Bayyaram tank lies at Bayyaram in the old Khammam district. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, writing in 1978, records that it was built by Mailamba, a sister of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva and wife of Natavadi Rudra. He notes that it is fed by one of three large streams that drain a single plateau.1 The other two feed the Pakhal lake and the Laknavaram tank.1

The inscription

The tank’s inscription, the Bayyaram tank inscription of Mailama, was found in 1965. It is cut on the four sides of a huge black granite pillar.2 Mailama, or Mailamba, set it up in the reign of her brother Ganapatideva (1199–1262 in Sastry’s dates).2 It records the building of the tank, which she named Dharmakirti-samudra after her own title.2

Parabrahma Sastry calls it the only record that gives the Kakatiya ancestry for eleven generations before Ganapatideva.32 The list begins with a king Venna, born in the line of Durjaya.32 Sastry says that its discovery cleared up long-standing doubts about the family’s origins.32

The inscription also explains the Kakatiya boar emblem.4 As Sastry reads it, Prola I dug a great tank called Kesari-samudra, named after his title arigaja-kesari.4 By this, figuratively, he raised up the earth, that is, he set the kingdom on a firm footing.4 In Sastry’s reading, his descendants in gratitude adopted the boar (varaha) as their symbol on their coins and their cattle.4 The record is thus both a monument of royal tank-building and one of the main sources for the dynasty’s early history.3

Footnotes

  1. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 205 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 30 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 25 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

References

Sources (1)
  1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1978, pp. 17, 25, 30, 205. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

Spotted an error on this page? Tell us

Last updated: