Prola I

Family and sources

Prola I was the son of Beta I and the father of Beta II, who was also called Tribhuvanamalla.¹ Ganapatideva’s sister Mailamba set up the Bayyaram tank inscription.² It says that Garuda Beta’s son Prola was popularly known as ari-gaja-kesari, “a lion to the elephants that are his enemies”.²

E. Hultzsch edited the Motupalli pillar inscription of 1244–45.³ He noted that it was the only Kakatiya record then known to name this Prola.³ It calls him Prolaraja of the family of Durjaya and says that he built a tank called Kesari-tataka.³ Robert Sewell’s genealogy of 1932 also lists him, without dates.⁴

He is now known from three more records:²⁵

• the Bayyaram inscription
• the Kazipet Darga inscription, set up by his grandson
• an inscription of his own at Sanigaram²⁵

Career

His own record at Sanigaram, near Karimnagar, is dated Saka 975 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), on a solar eclipse that corresponds to 13 November 1053. In it the mahasamanta (feudatory) Kakatiya Polalarasa gives house sites, land and a water-lift to the god Madhipeshvara. It says he achieved greatness by the favour of the Chalukya king Trailokyamalla.⁶ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry suggested that the king had rewarded the young chief with extra territory.⁷⁶ This was perhaps part of Sabbi-nadu, the district around Sanigaram.⁷⁶

The Kazipet Darga inscription of 1098 lists Prola’s victories:

• he set the Chakrakuta country in order
• he put a chief named Bhadranga to flight
• he conquered the Konkana country
• he drove the son of Durga of Kadparti into the forest
• he killed Gonna, the lord of Purakuta⁸

He then received from King Trailokyamalla the district (vishaya) of Anumakonda, with its neighbouring lands, as a permanent grant.⁸⁹ Parabrahma Sastry argued that a chief with a fief hardly larger than a modern taluk (sub-district) could not have fought distant campaigns on his own. In his view Prola served in the Chalukya prince Vikramaditya’s campaigns against Konkana and Chakrakuta. He suggested that Bhadranga may have been a descendant of the Chalukyas of Vemulavada, the old rulers of Sabbi-nadu.¹⁰

The Bayyaram inscription says that Prola raised the family’s status.⁹ Parabrahma Sastry took the grant of Anumakonda to be the meaning of these words.⁹

Whether Prola took part in Someshvara I’s capture of Kanchi in the early 1050s is uncertain. L. D. Barnett thought that the Kakatiya king served by the Recherla general Brahma at Kanchi was probably Prola I.¹¹ In his 1975 edition of the Sanigaram inscriptions, Parabrahma Sastry concluded that Prola’s general Brahma took part in the campaign, but not Prola himself.¹² In his 1978 book he assigned Brahma’s service to the time of Beta I.¹³

Trailokyamalla died in 1068.¹⁴ After his death his son Vikramaditya VI disputed the succession of his brother Someshvara II. According to Parabrahma Sastry, Prola I and his son Beta II gave their full support to Vikramaditya, who in the end took the throne.¹⁴

Title and emblem

The Bayyaram inscription says that Prola’s successors put the boar (varaha) on their coins and cattle. They did so out of gratitude to him for raising their status. Parabrahma Sastry concluded that the boar became the family emblem in Prola’s time, as a mark of loyalty to their Chalukya overlords. The older Garuda (eagle) emblem stayed on the Kakatiya banner.⁹ He identified Prola’s Kesari-tataka with the large tank near Kesamudram, about fifty kilometres from Warangal.⁹

Both Prola I and Prola II used the title ari-gaja-kesari, issued coins with it and named tanks after it.¹⁵ Hultzsch noted that another inscription credits Prola II with building the Kesari tank.³ The Sanigaram inscriptions describe Prola I, like Beta II and Prola II after him, as a devotee of Shiva (parama-maheshvara).¹⁶

Dates

Parabrahma Sastry dates Prola’s rule to about 1052–1076.¹⁷ The first year comes from the Sanigaram records, which show that Beta I was alive in December 1051 and Prola in power in November 1053. The last year is an estimate, based on the earliest record of his son Beta II, dated 1079.¹⁸⁶

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 31, 36. ↩

2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 30. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. E. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), p. 189 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 355 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

5. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part II (1940), p. 29 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 25–26, reprinting P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Sanigaram Epigraphs of the Early Kakatiyas”, Epigraphia Andhrica IV (1975). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 46. ↩ ↩²

8. Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part II (1940), p. 29 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 45. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 46–47. ↩

11. L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

12. Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 26. ↩

13. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 143. ↩

14. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 47. ↩ ↩²

15. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 142. ↩

16. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 275. ↩

17. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 36. ↩

18. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 34–35. ↩