Bommala Gutta (Kurikyal)

The Bommala Gutta is a hillock in the lands of Kurikyal, near Gangadharam in the Karimnagar district.¹ On a huge rock at its top is cut the inscription of Jinavallabha.¹ Jinavallabha was the younger brother of the poet Pampa.¹

The carvings

The inscription says that Jinavallabha had images carved on the Siddha-sila, “the rock of the Siddhas”.² They were of his family gods, the first and the last Jinas, and of Chakresvari and other Jaina gods.² The rock lay south of the old holy place of Vrishabhagiri, north of Dharmavura, in the middle of Sabbi-nadu.²

N. Venkataramanayya edited the inscription.³ He identified the first and last Jinas as Vrishabha (Adinatha) and Vardhamana.³ He noted that Pampa too was a devotee of Adinatha and Chakresvari.³

Venkataramanayya identified the Siddha-sila with the Bommala Gutta.⁴ He did so from the inscription itself, and from the images of the Jinas, Chakresvari and other Jaina gods carved on the rock at the summit, as the inscription describes.⁴ He could not identify Vrishabhagiri, the hill to its north.⁴

The temple, tank and garden

Jinavallabha also built a Jaina temple called Tribhuvanatilaka.² He dug a tank called Kavitagunarnava and made a garden called Madanavilasa.² Venkataramanayya found no trace of the temple or the garden near the hill.⁴ He suggested that the irrigation tank at its northern foot represents Jinavallabha’s tank.⁴ In his view the temple and garden may have stood in the village of Gangadharam, where Jaina images lie scattered in the fields.⁴

Footnotes

1. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica I: Pre-Kakatiya Telangana (2023), p. 394, reprinting N. Venkataramanayya, “The Kurkiyala Inscription of Jinavallabha”, Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974), pp. 21–28. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 395, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 397, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 399, reprinting Venkataramanayya (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶