Gunda IV

Gunda IV was an early chief of the Kakatiyas, the family that later ruled the Telugu country from Warangal.¹² He lived in the tenth century, when the Kakatiyas were still minor chiefs under the Rashtrakuta kings.³⁴ Almost everything known about him comes from two grants and from the reasoning of the historian P. V. Parabrahma Sastry.²⁵ His son was Beta I.¹

Pindi-Gunda of the Bayyaram inscription

The tank inscription of Ganapatideva’s sister Mailama at Bayyaram gives the early line of the family.¹ It names Venna, then three kings called Gunda, then Erra, the ruler of Kurravadi, and then Pindi-Gunda.¹ Pindi-Gunda’s son was Garudanka Beta.¹ In Parabrahma Sastry’s numbering, Pindi-Gunda is Gunda IV.⁶ See the Bayyaram inscription.

Kakatya Gundyana of the Mangallu grant

The Mangallu grant is an Eastern Chalukya copper-plate grant issued in the name of Amma II, while his half-brother Danarnava ruled.⁷ It gives the village of Mangallu to a Brahmin named Dommana, at the request of a feudatory chief called Kakatya Gundyana.⁷ Dommana had kept the karpati vow, a set of strict religious rules, for Gundyana’s merit and favour.⁷

The grant gives Gundyana’s family. It says that he belonged to the family of Samanta Voddi.⁷⁸ His grandfather Gundiya-rashtrakuta had done great service to a Chalukya king, and his father Erija-rashtrakuta was a skilled horseman.⁷⁸ His mother was Vandyanamba.⁷⁸

Parabrahma Sastry took Kakatya Gundyana to be the earliest member of the Kakatiya family in the records.⁹ He dated the grant to about 956.⁹ He identified Gundyana with Pindi-Gunda, that is Gunda IV.²

A Rashtrakuta general

Parabrahma Sastry placed the grant in a civil war in the Eastern Chalukya kingdom of Vengi.¹⁰³ In his account, Danarnava asked the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III for help against his half-brother Amma II.³ Krishna sent his general Gunda IV, who was already posted in the Koravi region of Telangana.³ With Gunda’s help Danarnava drove out Amma II for a short time.³ Parabrahma Sastry thought that Dommana’s vow was perhaps meant to win Gunda success in this war.³

Gunda then served the Rashtrakutas loyally until their sudden fall in 973.⁴ After that, Parabrahma Sastry argues, he refused to submit to the new Chalukya king Tailapa II.⁴ Instead he tried to keep a small kingdom of his own in Koravi.⁴ He drove out the Mudigonda Chalukya chief, whose capital Koravi then was.⁴

His death

The Gudur inscription of 1124 says that the chief Viriyala Erra killed the enemy of Bottu Beta in battle and restored Bottu Beta at Koravi.⁴ The inscription does not name that enemy. Parabrahma Sastry identified him with Gunda IV.⁴⁵

In his reconstruction, the Mudigonda chiefs backed Tailapa II, and with Tailapa’s support Viriyala Erra killed Gunda in battle.⁵ Parabrahma Sastry could not fix the date exactly, but he placed it in the last decade of the tenth century.⁵ The earliest record of Tailapa II in the region, at Jammikunta near Anumakonda, is dated 995.⁵

Gunda’s son Beta was then too young to fight, and he lost all that his father had won.⁵¹¹ The Gudur inscription says that Erra’s own wife, Kamavasani, took up the young Beta’s cause and restored the family.¹¹ Much later, the family chronicle Siddhesvara-charitra told a similar story of a lady Kuntaladevi acting as regent for Gunda’s young son.¹¹ Parabrahma Sastry thought that chronicle unreliable in several respects.¹¹

Dates

No record gives Gunda’s years. Parabrahma Sastry reasoned from two dates: the Mangallu grant of about 956, and his son Beta’s last record of 1051.² He supposed that Gunda was a young man of about twenty-five in 956 and lived until about 1000.² On that basis he gave Gunda IV, tentatively, the years 955 to 995.² In an article of 1975 he also argued that Beta came to power young, which helps to explain the long gap.¹²

Where the sources disagree

• His father. In the reading of the 1917 epigraphy report and of V. Rangacharya, who edited the grant in 1960, the Mangallu grant makes Gundyana the son of Erija-rashtrakuta.⁷⁸ Parabrahma Sastry read it as naming his father Betiya, his grandfather Eriya and his great-grandfather Gundiya.¹³ He thought Betiya died young, so the Bayyaram inscription left him out.¹⁴²
• Who issued the grant. Parabrahma Sastry held that Danarnava issued it on his own, using Amma II’s title because he was never crowned.³ Rangacharya thought that Danarnava governed as regent for his brother and made the grant in his brother’s name.¹⁵
• His death. No inscription names Gunda’s killer. The story of his death in battle with Viriyala Erra is Parabrahma Sastry’s reconstruction from the Gudur inscription.⁴⁵

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription of Kakati Mailama”, Epigraphia Andhrica I (1974), pp. 71–94, reprinted in Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 316–317, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 34. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 40. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 41. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

5. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 42. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

6. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription”, in Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 320. Paraphrased. ↩

7. V. Rangacharya, “Mangallu Grant of Amma II”, Epigraphia Indica XXXI (1955–56, publ. 1960), p. 38 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

8. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, for 1916–17 (1917), Part II, para. 24, p. 118 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 14. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 39. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

11. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 43. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

12. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 25, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Sanigaram Epigraphs of the Early Kakatiyas”, Epigraphia Andhrica IV (1975). ↩

13. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 17. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

14. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 18. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

15. Rangacharya, “Mangallu Grant of Amma II” (1960), p. 40 and notes 2–4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩