Temples of Pillalamarri · Telugu History

A long, faded painted frieze of standing and moving figures. · Archaeological Department, H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions (G. Yazdani, Director) (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Pillalamarri is a village near Suryapet with three old temples.¹ A pillar inscription of 1195 says that Recherla Namireddi built three temples there in the reign of the Kakatiya king Rudradeva.² The Recherla family were generals of the Kakatiya kings.³⁴

The village and its temples

Pillalamarri is about 3 miles north-east of Suryapet, in the old Nalgonda district.¹ G. Yazdani, director of the Archaeological Department of Hyderabad State, surveyed its temples in 1926–27.¹ He found three old temples there.¹ One, the Somesvara Gudi, stands almost outside the village near its north-west corner, and two stand in the middle of the village.¹ He noted that all three bore inscriptions of their own time, carved on polished tablets of black basalt.¹

Who built them

The two temples in the village stand inside one enclosure.² A square pillar in its court carries an inscription dated Saka 1117 (1195 CE; Saka is an Indian way of counting years).² Yazdani reported that it “mentions the building of three temples by one Recherla Namireddi, during the reign of the Kakateya Rudradeva”.² A second inscription, on a tablet in the enclosure wall, records a grant by the same Namireddi to dancing girls employed in the temple.²

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, writing in 1978, also gives the Pillalamarri temples to Namireddi of the Recherla family, a family of Kakatiya generals.³⁴ He says that some of them were built in 1195 and perhaps finished in the time of Ganapatideva.³⁴ He says that Namireddi built and endowed a separate temple, the Namesvara (see the Pillalamarri inscription of 1202), with two tanks and lands in 1202.³⁴ He adds that the Pillalamarri chiefs of the family dug several tanks in their territory.³⁴ One of these was named Namasamudra after Namireddi.³⁴

S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, writing in 1964, also dates the Namesvara temple to 1202.⁵ He suggests that Namireddi’s tank was perhaps the first of the many tanks built at Ganapatideva’s order to bring forest land under cultivation.⁵ He describes the Namesvara’s dance hall, whose four pillars carry nearly a hundred small dancing figures.⁵ He also describes its tower, decorated with miniature temple towers.⁵

Where the sources disagree

P. Sreenivasachar edited the Pillalamarri inscriptions in 1940.⁶⁷⁸ He read the pillar of 1195 differently from Yazdani.⁶⁷⁸ In his text Nami-reddi set up three Shiva lingas (stone emblems), named Kamesvara, Kacesvara and Namesvara, in one triple-shrined temple (trikuta).⁶⁷⁸ He did this on a Sunday in the bright half of Vaisakha, Saka 1117.⁶⁷⁸ On that reading a Namesvara already existed in 1195.⁶⁷⁸ The record of 1202, described on its own page, then endowed it with tanks and land.⁶⁷⁸

The Somesvara temple

The Somesvara temple is built of light grey basalt on a platform 4 ft 6 in high.⁹ Flights of seven steps, with carved elephants on either side, lead up to it.⁹ Horizontal flutes are cut into its plinth.⁹ Yazdani thought they were copied from the channels that the Krishna river cuts in the sandstone of its banks.⁹

The temple is star-shaped in plan, with porches on the north, south and east and the shrine on the west.⁹ Its square hall, 29 feet each way, is divided by four pillars of polished black basalt.⁹ They mark off a central “music apartment” with a gallery round it.⁹ The ceiling of the hall is divided into nine panels.⁹

Yazdani wrote that “the delicacy and richness” of the carving on these four pillars “beggars all description”.⁹ He also described the fretwork screens and dancing figures on the door of the ante-chamber.⁹ The tower is of brick and lime.⁹ Weak foundations had made the platform sink, so that the tower had split away from the hall.⁹²

The pillar of 1208

Near the south-east corner of the temple stands a square pillar of polished black stone.² Yazdani read its Telugu inscription as recording a grant in Saka 1130 (1208 CE).² The donor was Yerraka Sanammagaru, wife of Recherla Pillalamarri Bete Reddi.²

Yazdani added a reading of another face of the pillar by Hanumant Rao of the Nizam College.² According to this reading, a vassal named Yerapauntu Lenkum reinstated the god Yerakesvara at Pillalamarri in Saka 1275 (1353 CE).² The god had been removed by “the Sultan”.² The plate of this record in Sreenivasachar’s Corpus is captioned as an inscription of the reign of Kapaya-Nayaka dated Saka 1279 (1357), not 1275.¹⁰

The temples in the enclosure

The enclosure wall is of large, finely jointed blocks laid without mortar, some 15 feet long.² Water seeping into the foundations had made many of them slip.²

The southern temple has a hall 29 ft 8 in square with four central pillars.¹¹ Its pillars, beams and ceiling slabs are of black stone.¹¹ They are carved with floral patterns, jewellery motifs, fabulous animals and Puranic gods.¹¹ Yazdani compared the work to the sculpture on the doorways of Gothic cathedrals.¹¹ But he found that here “decoration is all in all”, like “the display of a jewellery shop”.¹¹

On the beams between the central hall and the ante-chamber he found three paintings, covered with whitewash.¹¹ He took them to be as old as the building.¹¹ He cleaned the one on the southern beam, which shows the gods and demons churning the ocean.¹¹ He thought it showed a time when sculpture was still of a high order but the old skill in painting had been lost.¹¹

The second temple in the enclosure has three shrines opening off a hall 24 ft 6 in square.¹¹ It also has a polished Nandi of whitish grey basalt.¹¹

Pillalamarri among Kakatiya temples

Parabrahma Sastry counts the temples at Pillalamarri among the best-known temples built in the Kakatiya period.¹² In his list they stand with those at Palampet, Ghanpur, Nagunur and Nagulapadu.¹² He argued that most of the surviving buildings described as Kakatiya work were in fact built by the Recherla generals.³ The one exception he made was the Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda.³

G. Yazdani (Director), Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, 1336 F. (1926–27) (1929), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Yazdani, Annual Report … 1926–27 (1929), p. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 145 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 206 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, The Sculpture of the Kakatiyas (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 34, n.d.; preface dated 1964), p. 20 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 110, No. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 111, text lines 20–32 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 112–113, translation (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Yazdani, Annual Report … 1926–27 (1929), p. 2 and Plate V (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), Plate 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Yazdani, Annual Report … 1926–27 (1929), p. 4 and Plates VI–VII (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 282 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²