Ganapatideva · Telugu History

A difficult road to the throne

Ganapatideva was the son of Mahadeva, the younger brother and successor of Rudradeva, and his queen Bayyambika.¹ An inscription at Upparapalli calls him Rudradeva’s son, probably by adoption.² Mahadeva was killed while attacking Devagiri, the capital of the Yadava (Seuna) kings.³² According to P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, the young Ganapati had gone with him on the campaign and fell into Yadava hands.³²

A Yadava inscription states that the Yadava king Jaitrapala freed Ganapati and handed him the Andhra kingdom.⁴³ At home, according to Parabrahma Sastry, nobles rebelled and some land was lost.⁵⁶ The general Recherla Rudra held the kingdom together until the young king came back.⁵⁶ Rudra’s own inscription at Palampet says that he restored the Kakatiya fortune when it had “set her foot among many sharp thorns”.⁷

Ganapatideva’s earliest known record, at Manthena, is dated 26 December 1199.⁶ It gives him the title sakala-desa-pratishthapanacharya.⁶ Parabrahma Sastry reads this as a claim to have set up the whole kingdom again.⁶ Robert Sewell also placed his accession in 1199, noting a record of his 54th year of reign that fits that date.⁴⁸

Expansion to the coast and the south

Parabrahma Sastry works out Ganapatideva’s early campaigns from the inscriptions of his generals. Malyala Chaunda took the island fortress of Divi, at the mouth of the Krishna, by 1203.⁹ Ganapati kept its Ayya chiefs as subordinates and took the young Jaya into his service.⁹ He married Jaya’s two sisters, Narama and Perama, and made Jaya a general.¹⁰

The Velanati king Prithvishvara, the main power on the coast, was killed in battle some time after 1206.¹¹ By 1213 Jaya was governing the Velanadu country for Ganapati.¹¹ Ganapati put Tikka back on the throne of the Telugu Choda kingdom of Nellore.¹² An inscription of 1228 at Mattevada already credits him with plundering the Chola capital, probably Kanchi.¹²

Later he sent an army under Samanta Bhoja that took Kanchi in about 1250.¹²¹³ The poet Tikkana is said to have come to his court as the Nellore king’s envoy.¹²¹³ His campaigns into Kalinga, in the north-east, reached the Aska area of the Ganjam district.¹⁴ But the Ganga king Anangabhima III soon drove the Kakatiya forces out, and the wars brought no lasting gain.¹⁴ Jaya’s inscription of 1231 claims that Ganapati had defeated the kings of the Chola, Kalinga, Seuna (Yadava), Karnata and Lata countries.¹⁰

The end of the reign

His long reign ended in defeats. About 1263, by Parabrahma Sastry’s dating, the Pandya king Jatavarman Sundara Pandya defeated the Kakatiyas and their Nellore allies at Muttukur.¹⁵ He annexed Nellore and Kanchi.¹⁵ The victorious Pandya king issued coins bearing the Kakatiya boar beside the Pandya fish.¹⁵ The defeat came at the same time as Ganapati’s withdrawal from active rule.¹⁵

Sewell found records of Ganapati’s 62nd year of reign in 1260, and treated that as his last year.¹⁶ An inscription at Tripurantakam is dated Saka 1182 (1260; Saka is an Indian way of counting years), in his 62nd year.¹⁷ E. Hultzsch likewise gave him a reign of sixty-two years.¹⁸ N. Venkataramanayya and M. Somasekhara Sarma end his reign in 1261.¹⁹ His daughter Rudramadevi succeeded him. Parabrahma Sastry holds that she ruled jointly with him from about 1259–60 and alone from 1262.²⁰

Ganapati was still alive in 1269.²⁰ An inscription of that year at Durgi in the Palnadu still treats him as the ruling king, and calls Rudramadevi only the heir chosen for the throne.²⁰

Parabrahma Sastry notes that, apart from some early chiefs, Ganapati and Rudradeva were the only members of the family who did not die as warriors.²¹

Capital and administration

Rudradeva had begun the fort at Orugallu (Warangal).⁵ Ganapatideva completed it, with an inner wall of stone and an outer wall of earth, and moved the capital there from Anumakonda.⁵ The Imperial Gazetteer records that he began the stone wall, which his successor completed.²²

Parabrahma Sastry argues that Ganapati did not force imperial rule on the coastal chiefs.²³ He left them free to govern themselves so long as they gave military loyalty.²³ Many of their inscriptions do not mention him at all.²³

Late in the reign he took the Kayastha chief Gangaya Sahini into his service.²⁴ He made him bahattara-niyogadhipati, head of the seventy-two branches of government, and commander of cavalry.²⁴ He also gave him a great fief ruled from Valluru in the Kadapa (then Cuddapah) country.²⁴ His title raya-gaja-kesari appeared on his coins and standard measures.²¹

Trade, tanks and temples

In 1244–45 Ganapatideva set up a pillar at the port of Motupalli. Its edict promised sea traders that the cargo of wrecked ships would no longer be seized.²⁵²⁶ It fixed the duty on imports and exports at one in thirty.²⁵²⁶ His reign saw some of the largest Kakatiya irrigation works. Jagadalu Mummadi, son of one of his ministers, built the Pakhal lake, and the Ramappa lake is credited to Recherla Rudra.²⁷

His sisters Mailamba and Kundamamba built the Bayyaram tank and the Kundasamudram tank.²⁷³ Recherla Rudra founded the Rudreshvara (Ramappa) temple at Palampet in 1213, in Ganapati’s reign.²⁸ Jaya built the Ganapeshvara temple on Divi in 1231 and named it after him.¹⁰ Inscriptions of his general Malyala Gunda at Bothpur include a tank named after the king.²⁹

Religion and family

Ganapati’s religious teacher was Vishveshvara Shambhu of the Golaki monastery, a Pashupata Shaiva order.³⁰ After his initiation the king called himself the teacher’s spiritual son.³¹³² Parabrahma Sastry’s genealogy names his queen as Somaladevi, and the play in Vidyanatha’s Prataparudriya calls her Soma.³³³⁴

His sister Mailamba set up the Bayyaram tank inscription.³⁵ According to it, his father Mahadeva arranged the marriages of both Ganapati and Mailamba.³⁵ So Parabrahma Sastry doubted the Pratapa Charitra’s story that Ganapati married a Yadava princess.³⁵ Besides Rudramadevi he had a daughter Ganapamba, who married the Kota chief Beta.³⁶

E. Hultzsch, “Ganapesvaram Inscription of the Time of Ganapati”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 83 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 100. ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 103–104. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 128 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 116. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 106. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 9, verse 24 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 149 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 107–108. ↩ ↩²
E. Hultzsch, “Ganapesvaram Inscription of the Time of Ganapati”, Epigraphia Indica III (1894–95), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 108. ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 109. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 113. ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 110–112. ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 114–115. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 154 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 309–310. ↩
E. Hultzsch, “Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva”, Epigraphia Indica XII (1913–14), p. 190 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
N. Venkataramanayya and M. Somasekhara Sarma, “The Kakatiyas of Warangal”, in G. Yazdani (ed.), The Early History of the Deccan, Parts VII–XI (1960), p. 599. ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 118. ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 142. ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 173 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 175–177. ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 117. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Hultzsch, “Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva” (1913–14), translation, p. 196 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Hultzsch, “Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva” (1913–14), translation, p. 197 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 205. ↩ ↩²
L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), pp. 7–8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), No. 51, translation, p. 149 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 275. ↩
P. Sreenivasachar, A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I (1942), p. 20 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 276. ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 36. ↩
K. P. Trivedi (ed.), The Prataparudrayasobhushana of Vidyanatha (1909), Introduction, p. xvi (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 107. ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 28. ↩