Padmakshi Temple, Hanamkonda

The Padmakshi temple stands on a hillock south of Hanamkonda, the old Kakatiya capital Anumakonda.¹ H. Krishna Sastri published its inscription in Epigraphia Indica in 1908.¹² He described it as a small temple “devoid of any architectural pretensions” (without any show of architecture), unlike the other buildings of the Kakatiya period.¹² The rock beside it is carved with a row of seated Jaina figures.¹²

The pillar and the basadi

In front of the temple stands a four-sided pillar of black granite.² At the top of each face, in a sunk square, sits a Jaina ascetic with crossed arms.² On the east face he has a cow and calf on one side and a dagger and shield on the other.² On the north face he has the sun and moon.² Its Kannada inscription opens with an invocation to the Jina. It names the Western Chalukya emperor Vikramaditya VI as overlord and Kakati Beta as his feudatory, “the lord of Anmakunda”.³

The inscription goes on to say that Mailama built the Kadalalaya-basadi on top of the hill.³⁴ She was the wife of Beta, a minister of Kakati Prola and son of the minister Vaija.³⁴ The day of the gift was the winter solstice in the Chalukya-Vikrama year 42.⁴ F. Kielhorn calculated this as Monday, 24 December 1117, while Prola II ruled at Anmakonda.⁴ On that day she gave land below a tank that her husband had named after her, and set up the pillar.⁴ The record is described further on the page for the inscription.

From the sculptures and the inscription, Krishna Sastri concluded that the temple was first dedicated to a Jaina goddess called Kadalalaya.² He thought the lady who built the basadi (Jain temple) had set up the pillar.² He suggested that the goddess was a Jaina sasanadevi (guardian goddess) such as Ambika or Padmavati.²

In his time the Brahmans of Anmakonda held the temple.² They worshipped the goddess as Padmakshi, whom they took to be Durga.² He could not tell how or when the temple had passed from the Jainas to them.²

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, writing in 1978, likewise took the Hindu goddess Padmakshi to have been a Jaina goddess in Prola II’s time, perhaps Padmavati.⁵ He cited this inscription and the Jaina images in the shrine as evidence that the early Kakatiyas followed Jainism.⁵

The earliest Kakatiya building

Krishna Sastri called the Padmakshi temple “the earliest known structural monument of the Kakatiya period”.² He thought its age might explain why it lacks the rich carving of the dynasty’s later buildings.² Henry Cousens, in 1900, had listed the same inscription as standing “on a pillar in front of the temple of Padmakshi in the town”.⁶ He took it for an incomplete record of the Western Chalukya king Tribhuvanamalla.⁶

Parabrahma Sastry names the Padmakshi temple on the hill among the chief shrines of Anumakonda.⁷ He also states that Gangadhara, a minister of Rudradeva later in the twelfth century, built a Jaina basadi on the Padmakshi hill.⁸ He does not say whether this was the same building as Mailama’s.⁸

S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, writing in 1964, thought part of the shrine was older than Mailama.⁹ The sanctum is a recess between an upright and a leaning boulder.⁹ Life-size figures of a Tirthankara, probably Parsvanatha, and his attendant yaksha and yakshi are carved on the eastern rock.⁹ From their size and style, and from two small unfinished caves west of the temple, he judged that these went back to Rashtrakuta times.⁹

Mailama, he concluded, added the tower, the hall north of the sanctum and the reliefs on the western rock.⁹ He noted that some scholars identify a nobleman and a lady carved beside one Parsvanatha as Beta and Mailama.⁹

Footnotes

1. H. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola; the Chalukya-Vikrama Year Forty-Two”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1908), p. 256 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 257 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

3. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 258 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola” (1908), p. 259 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 24 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

6. Henry Cousens, Lists of Antiquarian Remains in His Highness the Nizam’s Territories (1900), p. 48 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 282 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 167 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

9. S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, The Sculpture of the Kakatiyas (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 34, n.d.; preface dated 1964), p. 9 and fig. 7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶