A new site, built from published sources. Spotted a mistake? Please tell us
Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Nandivarman II (Salankayana)

Salankayana king of Vengi, eldest son of Chandavarman, and the best-documented king of the dynasty. The Kolleru plates of his 7th year, the Peddavegi plates of his 10th and probably one of the Kanteru grants are his. He called himself a parama-bhagavata (devout worshipper of the Lord) and gave land to a temple of Vishnu. Most scholars date him to the first half or middle of the 5th century.

Name and family

Nandivarman II was the eldest son of Chandavarman.12 In J. F. Fleet’s translation of 1876, the Kolleru plates call him “the eldest son of the great king Chandavarma”.1

R. Subba Rao translated the Peddavegi plates into English in 1926, after their publication in 1924. These plates use the same words and trace his descent back three generations. They name him as the great-grandson of Hastivarman, the grandson of Nandivarman I and the son of Chandavarman.2

D. C. Sircar identified the kings of the two grants as one, because both grants describe their donor in this way.34 K. R. Subramanian added that both grants name the same executor, the Bhojaka of Mulakura.5 Subba Rao had already noticed this shared official.6

Older works call the king Vijaya-Nandivarman. Sircar argued that vijaya, “victorious”, was a prefix of glory, like the vijaya in “victorious Vengipura”, and that the king’s name was simply Nandivarman. In the Peddavegi plates he is called Nandivarman alone.7

Chandavarman’s brother was Hastivarman II, and through him the Kanukollu plates make Skandavarman Nandivarman’s first cousin.8 Before those plates were found, several scholars took Skandavarman for his younger brother (see below).910

His grants

Three grants are attributed to Nandivarman II, and all were issued from Vengipura.

  • The Kolleru plates, year 7. These are four Sanskrit plates, made known by Sir Walter Elliot and edited by A. C. Burnell and by Fleet. They grant the village of Videnurapallika in the country of Kuduhara to 157 Brahmins of various gotras (clans). The Brahmins lived in the agrahara (Brahmin village) of Kuravaka. The grant is dated on the eighth day of the dark fortnight of Pausha in the seventh year of the reign.11112 See the Kolleru plates.
  • The Peddavegi plates, year 10. These five plates were found near Pedavegi, eight miles north of Eluru (then Ellore). They give 32 nivartanas (a land measure) of land in four villages as cultivable temple land (devahala). The land was for the cowherds of Arutore, belonging to Vishnugrihasvamin, “the Lord of the three worlds”. The grant is dated on the first day of the bright fortnight of Sravana in the tenth year.1314215 See the Peddavegi plates.
  • One of the Kanteru grants. This grant gave twelve nivartanas in the village of Kuruvada in the Kudrahara district to a Brahmin of the Maudgalya gotra. K. V. Lakshmana Rao’s edition names him Svamichandra, and Sircar’s summary Svamidatta. The grant is dated on a new-moon day, and its seal shows a crouching bull.161718 Sircar identified its king with Nandivarman II, because it uses the same epithets as the Kolleru and Peddavegi plates.4 One of them is parama-bhagavata, which no other Salankayana king is known to have used.4 Subramanian thought the grant might instead belong to Nandivarman I.5 See the Kanteru plates.

Religion

In all three grants the king calls himself parama-bhagavata (a devout worshipper of the Lord), as well as a devotee of the family god Chitrarathasvamin.4 The earlier king Devavarman had called himself a devotee of Mahesvara (Shiva).19 Sircar concluded that Nandivarman II was a Vaishnava who gave up the Shaivism of his family. He pointed to the Peddavegi grant of land for the god Vishnugrihasvamin. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, editor of the Kanteru plates, had argued that bhagavata could also describe a worshipper of Shiva. Sircar disagreed.1520

Subba Rao thought that the later Salankayanas were probably converts to the cult of Vishnu.21

Date

None of the grants is dated in an era, so Nandivarman’s date rests on the style of the letters and on counting generations from Hastivarman.2214

SourceDate proposed
Burnell (1878), quoted by Fleet23Kolleru plates about the 4th century, on grounds of script
Sewell (1884)24Reports Burnell as putting the Kolleru grant in the 5th century
Bühler (1904)25The Salankayana plates “used to be assigned to the 4th century”; date “uncertain”
Dubreuil (1920)26Salankayana kings between about 350 and 450
Lakshmana Rao (1930)27Nandivarman, son of Chandavarman, about 475
Subba Rao (1926)14Reign ending about 440, allowing 25 years to each king from Hastivarman
Subramanian (1932)28Reign ending about 440
Sircar (1939)429Grants about the middle of the 5th century; reign about 420–445

Fleet and Sewell report Burnell differently.23243031 Fleet has him dating the Kolleru plates to about the 4th century, and Sewell to the 5th.23243031 Burnell’s own table of the South Indian alphabets starts the Vengi alphabet at about A.D. 350, and he wrote that only two grants of the dynasty were then known.23243031

Footnotes

  1. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. XVIII” (1876), p. 177, translation (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates” (1926), p. 105, translation (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 68 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  4. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 69 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. K. R. Subramanian, Buddhist Remains in Andhra and the History of Andhra between 225 and 610 A.D. (1932), p. 90 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  6. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates” (1926), p. 104, note 11 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. D. C. Sircar, The Successors of the Satavahanas in Lower Deccan (1939), p. 64 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  8. B. V. Krishna Rao, “Two Salankayana Charters from Kanukollu”, Epigraphia Indica XXXI (1955–56, publ. 1960), p. 8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  9. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 70, note 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  10. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates” (1926), p. 93 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  11. J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. XVIII”, Indian Antiquary V (1876), p. 175 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  12. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (1878), p. 135, Appendix C and note 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  13. R. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates of Nandivarman II”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society I, pt. 2 (1926), p. 92 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  14. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates” (1926), p. 95 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  16. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Grants of the Salankayanas of Vengi”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society V, pt. 1 (1930), p. 23 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  17. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Grants of the Salankayanas of Vengi”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society V, pt. 1 (1930), p. 32 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  18. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 92 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  19. E. Hultzsch, “Plates of Vijaya-Devavarman”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1907–08), p. 58 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  20. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 85 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  21. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates” (1926), p. 97 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  22. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 72 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  23. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. XVIII” (1876), p. 176 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  24. Robert Sewell, Lists of Inscriptions, and Sketch of the Dynasties of Southern India (1884), p. 240 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  25. Georg Bühler, Indian Paleography (1904), p. 65 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  26. G. Jouveau-Dubreuil, Ancient History of the Deccan (1920), p. 89 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  27. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Grants of the Salankayanas of Vengi”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society V, pt. 1 (1930), pp. 26–27 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  28. Subramanian, Buddhist Remains in Andhra (1932), p. 91 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  29. Sircar, Successors of the Satavahanas (1939), p. 73, chronological chart (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  30. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (2nd ed., 1878), p. 14, table (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  31. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (1878), p. 15 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

Photos

Dynasties

Salankayanas of Vengi

c. 300–470 CE

Dynasty of the country between the Krishna and the Godavari in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, ruling from Vengipura, the modern Pedavegi near Eluru. Seven copper-plate grants name seven kings in two lines descended from Hastivarman. Most scholars identify him with the 'Hastivarman of Vengi' of Samudragupta's Allahabad inscription. Their earlier grants are in Prakrit and their later ones in Sanskrit. Their seals bear a bull, and their family god was Chitrarathasvamin.

References

Sources (11)
  1. James Burgess (ed.), The Indian Antiquary, Vol. V (1876) (opens in a new tab), Education Society's Press, Bombay, 1876, pp. 175–177. J. F. Fleet, Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions No. XVIII. [Public domain]
  2. Not Available, The Andhra Historical Research Society, Rajahmundry, Vol.1,pt.2 (opens in a new tab), 1926, pp. 92–105. R. Subba Rao, Pedavegi Copper-plates of Nandivarman II. [Public domain]
  3. D. C. Sircar, The Successors of the Satavahanas in Lower Deccan (opens in a new tab), University of Calcutta, 1939, pp. 64, 68–73, 84–85, 92–95. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  4. N. Lakshminarayan Rao and D. C. Sircar (eds.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXI (1955–56) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1960, pp. 8. B. V. Krishna Rao, Two Salankayana Charters from Kanukollu; paraphrased. [Public domain in India]
  5. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D., being an Introduction to the Study of South-Indian Inscriptions and MSS. (2nd ed.) (opens in a new tab), Trübner & Co., London, 1878, pp. 14–16, 135. [Public domain]
  6. Johann Georg Bühler (ed. J. F. Fleet), Indian Paleography (edited as an Appendix to the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXXIII, 1904) (opens in a new tab), Bombay Education Society's Press, Byculla, 1904, pp. 65. [Public domain]
  7. G. Jouveau-Dubreuil, Ancient History of the Deccan (opens in a new tab), The author, Pondicherry (translated by V. S. Swaminadha Dikshitar), 1920, pp. 89. [Public domain]
  8. Robert Sewell, Archaeological Survey of Southern India, Vol. II: Lists of Inscriptions, and Sketch of the Dynasties of Southern India (Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Presidency of Madras, Vol. II) (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1884, pp. 240. [Public domain]
  9. K. R. Subramanian, Buddhist Remains in Andhra and the History of Andhra between 225 and 610 A.D. (opens in a new tab), Madras (with a foreword by G. Jouveau-Dubreuil), 1932, pp. 90–91. K. R. Subramanian. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  10. K. V. Lakshmana Rao (article); Andhra Historical Research Society, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. V, pt. 1 (July 1930), incl. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, 'Two Copper-plate Grants of the Salankayanas of Vengi' (opens in a new tab), Andhra Historical Research Society, Rajahmundry, 1930, pp. 23, 27, 32. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, Two Copper-plate Grants of the Salankayanas of Vengi, JAHRS V, pt. 1 (1930). [Public domain]
  11. E. Hultzsch and Sten Konow (eds.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IX (1907–08) (opens in a new tab), Government of India, Calcutta, 1908. [Public domain]

Spotted an error on this page? Tell us

Last updated: