Nagati (Chalukya of Mudigonda)

Nagati was a chief of the Chalukyas of Mudigonda, the last generation named in the family’s own records.¹ He lived when the Kakatiyas of Warangal were making themselves masters of Telangana, and their rise may have cost his family its lands.²³ Scholars disagree about how many of the records that name a Nagati belong to him.⁴⁵

Family

According to the Kukkunur plates, Nagati and Kusumaditya were the two sons of Bottu-Beta and his queen Mahadevi.¹ Kusumaditya, the elder, became king.¹ The plates tell how Kusumaditya’s ministers took him into exile for twelve years and then helped him back to Visuru-nadu. They do not say what part Nagati played.¹ See the Kukkunur plates.

Flight before Recherla Rudra

The Kakatiya general Recherla Rudra set up the Palampet inscription in 1213. In L. D. Barnett’s translation it says: “Threatened by the pennons on the top of his army’s flag-staffs, king Nagati speedily took to flight.”⁶

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry identified this king with Nagatiraja of the Mudigonda Chalukyas.⁴⁷ In one passage he linked the attack with the Kukkunur plates. He wrote that the Kakatiya king Rudradeva attacked Kusumaditya and Nagati and drove them out of Visuru-nadu. They came back only after Rudradeva’s reign.⁷ In another passage he placed Nagati’s defeat in the short reign of Mahadeva, or soon after his death.⁸

In the Vengi country

An inscription of 1218 at Nattaramesvaram, in the West Godavari district, names two brothers, Kusumaditya and Nagatiraja.⁴ They made gifts in the Vengi country at the request of the king of Kolanu.³ Parabrahma Sastry identified them with the two sons of Bottu-Beta.⁴ He saw Nagati there as a refugee in the Kolanu region, after his flight from Rudra.⁸ He thought that Ganapatideva later drove the family out of Visuru-nadu for good.³

Where the sources disagree

• The Nagati of Palampet. Parabrahma Sastry took him to be Bottu-Beta’s son.⁴⁷ Bh. Lakshminarayana, who edited the Kukkunur plates, thought the dates did not allow this. He suggested that the Nagati of Palampet was a later chief, perhaps Nagati’s own grandson, so that the family went on after him.⁵
• His dates. Lakshminarayana counted twenty-five years a reign and placed Nagati about 1165–1196.⁵ Parabrahma Sastry placed the two brothers about 1218, the date of the Nattaramesvaram inscription.⁹⁴

Footnotes

1. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica I: Pre-Kakatiya Telangana (2023), p. 353, reprinting Bh. Lakshminarayana, “Kukkunuru Plates of Kusumadya”, Epigraphia Andhrica II (1974), pp. 39–49. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 56. ↩

3. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 57. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 54. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Epigraphia Telanganica I (2023), p. 355, reprinting Lakshminarayana (1974). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), translation, p. 9, verse 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 98–99. ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 106. ↩ ↩²

9. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 53, genealogical table. ↩