Mailamba

Mailamba was a Kakatiya princess, a sister of King Ganapatideva.¹ She built the Bayyaram tank.² Its inscription, discovered in 1966, is the fullest account of the early Kakatiya line.³⁴

Family

Mailamba, also called Mailama, was a daughter of the Kakatiya king Mahadeva and his queen Bayyamamba, and a sister of Ganapatideva.¹ She married Rudra of the Natavadi family.¹⁵ The Natavadi chiefs had served the Western Chalukyas, and had married into the Kakatiya house for more than one generation.¹⁵

Her grandmother Muppamamba was a sister of the Natavadi chief Durga, and her husband was Durga’s grandson.¹⁵ Her sister Kundamamba married another Natavadi Rudra. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry suggested that the two sisters were born of different mothers, or that their husbands were two sons of the Natavadi chief Buddha who both bore the name Rudra.⁶

N. Venkataramanayya and M. Somasekhara Sarma wrote that both sisters married the same Rudra, son of Buddha.⁷ Robert Sewell recorded both daughters of Mahadeva.⁸

According to the Bayyaram inscription, Mahadeva’s ministers advised that Mailamba deserved the hand of Natavadi Rudra, because he was of the same caste as the bride.⁹¹⁰¹¹ Mahadeva arranged her marriage, as he arranged Ganapati’s, before his fatal campaign against Devagiri.⁹¹⁰¹¹ Her daughter Bayyalamahadevi married the Kota chief Keta, called Manma Keta, of Dharanikota.¹²

The Bayyaram tank and its inscription

Mailamba held a fief (land held from the king) in the Bayyaram region of the present Khammam district, including Inugurti, where her inscriptions are found.⁶ Other records of her and her sons are at Tripurantakam.⁶

She built the Bayyaram tank.² The Bayyaram tank, the Pakhal lake and the Laknavaram tank are fed by three streams flowing from the same plateau.² Parabrahma Sastry noted that the villages called Bayyaram were named after Bayyaladevi, the mother of Ganapatideva, that is, Mailamba’s own mother.¹³ At Inugurti she built a temple of Gopalakrishna and endowed it with gifts.¹⁴

The tank’s inscription is the fullest account of the early Kakatiya line. Parabrahma Sastry discovered it in 1966, and rewrote the origin and genealogy of the dynasty on its evidence.³ It names these rulers in order:⁴

• the legendary Durjaya⁴
• a king Venna who ruled from Kakati⁴
• the line of Gundas⁴
• Egga⁴
• Garudanka Beta, who killed Anuma and Konda and made Anumakonda his capital⁴
• Prola, called ari-gaja-kesari, who built the Kesari tank⁴
• Prola II and his sons Rudradeva and Mahadeva⁴

It also says that Prola’s successors put the boar on their coins in gratitude to him.¹⁵ Parabrahma Sastry thought its story of Beta’s founding of Anumakonda made up, since the town is named in an inscription of 872.¹⁶

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 104. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 205. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 6. ↩ ↩²

4. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 308–309. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 151–152. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 152. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. 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. ↩

8. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 131 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

9. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 29. ↩ ↩²

10. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 30. ↩ ↩²

11. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 107. ↩ ↩²

12. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 155. ↩

13. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 199. ↩

14. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 279. ↩

15. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 45. ↩

16. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 172. ↩