Durgaraja

Durgaraja (Dugga in Kannada) was a son of the Kakatiya chief Beta II. He is known from a single record, an inscribed pillar now in the Dargah at Kazipet, near Hanamkonda.¹

The Kazipet Darga inscription

The poet Devanabhatta of Odikonda composed the pillar’s Sanskrit verses.²³ They trace the family from Beta I through Prola I to Beta II.²³ They say that a king called Chalamartiganda set up the pillar as a monument to his family’s fame.²³

The Kannada part records the grant of the village of Shivapura to the Kalamukha teacher Rameshvara Pandita. The grant was made on a solar eclipse in Saka 1012 (1090; Saka is an Indian way of counting years).²³ The Kannada part then praises the maha-mandaleshvara (great provincial lord) Dugga-Tribhuvanamalla.²³ It dates the setting up of the pillar to the year Bahudhanya, which corresponds to 1098.²³

In P. Sreenivasachar’s 1940 translation, Beta’s son makes the grant of 1090. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry attributed the grant of 1090 to Beta himself.³⁴⁵ In his 1975 article he left the question open.³⁴⁵

Parabrahma Sastry read the pillar as Durgaraja’s copy of his father’s grant. In his reading, Durgaraja added gifts of his own in 1098, while Beta was still alive. He concluded that Durgaraja already shared in the government. He suggested that Durgaraja was formally installed as heir in 1098.⁴

On that occasion, he suggested, Durgaraja took the title Tribhuvanamalla, and probably also Chalamartiganda.⁴ This happened, in his view, in the presence of his father and of Rameshvara Pandita.⁴ Parabrahma Sastry noted that titles of this kind, borrowed from the Chalukya overlord, went to heirs or eldest sons. He took Durgaraja to be the elder brother of Prola II.⁶⁷ Like his father and brother, Durgaraja was a disciple of Rameshvara Pandita in the Kalamukha school of Shaivism.⁸

A short rule

Durgaraja appears nowhere else in Kakatiya records, either inscriptions or literature. His father lived until 1107, and his younger brother Prola II was in power by 1117. Parabrahma Sastry concluded that if Durgaraja ruled at all, it was within that decade.⁹¹⁰ His genealogical table gives Durgaraja the years 1108–1116.⁹¹⁰

Parabrahma Sastry thought that Durgaraja’s rule ended suddenly. An unpublished inscription from Kottapalli in the Nalgonda district dates from Ganapatideva’s time. It praises Prola II as so generous that he protected even his brother’s son when the boy sought asylum with him. The same record calls Prola kula-vardhana, the one who increased the family. From this Parabrahma Sastry inferred that Prola had seized power by putting an end to Durgaraja.⁹

In his view, Durgaraja’s son then had to seek refuge with his uncle.⁹ He thought that the Chalukya king, and the family teacher Rameshvara Pandita, accepted the change.⁹ He also pointed to an inscription of 1120 at Matedu. It says that Reva, the father of one of Prola’s vassals, served Beta II and defeated the dayadas (agnates, members of the same family) of the Kakatiya kings. Parabrahma Sastry suggested that Reva had helped Prola to depose his brother.¹¹ In his 1975 article he first allowed that Durgaraja might simply have died with little chance to succeed, before reading the Kottapalli record as evidence of usurpation. He added that most later Kakatiya genealogies begin with Prola II.⁷

Several events fell in the same decade:

• the deaths of Beta II, Durgaraja and two chiefs of the neighbouring Polavasa family
• the departure of the Paramara prince Jagaddeva from Telangana

Parabrahma Sastry suspected some political upheaval among the chiefs of the Anumakonda and Sabbi-nadu regions at this time.¹² Before Prola came to power, he drove back an attack by Jagaddeva on Anumakonda.¹³¹⁴ Parabrahma Sastry wondered whether Durgaraja had supported that attack.¹³¹⁴

Durgaraja should not be confused with Repolla Durga, a son of Prola II named in an inscription of 1163 at Draksharama.¹⁵

Footnotes

1. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), pp. 25–26 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

2. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), pp. 29–30 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 30 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 47–49. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 27, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Sanigaram Epigraphs of the Early Kakatiyas”, Epigraphia Andhrica IV (1975). ↩ ↩²

6. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 32, 75. ↩

7. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 27–28. ↩ ↩²

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 274. ↩

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 49–50. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 35–36. ↩ ↩²

11. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 75–76. ↩

12. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 50. ↩

13. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 75, 86. ↩ ↩²

14. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 30. ↩ ↩²

15. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 32. ↩