Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman (Pallava)

Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman was a king of the Pallavas who ruled in the Guntur country.¹² He is known only from one copper-plate grant, the Chura grant.³⁴ It gave land near today’s Bapatla, in the old Guntur district.²

The grant

The Revenue Divisional Officer of Narasaraopet obtained the plates from a man of that town.³ He said they were the title deed of a jagir (land grant) given to an ancestor.³ C. R. Krishnamacharlu edited them in Epigraphia Indica.³

The grant was issued from Vijaya-Palotkata, which Krishnamacharlu read as “the prosperous capital Palotkata”.¹ It calls the king Dharma-maharaja Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman.¹ He gave one hundred and eight nivartanas (a land measure) of land, and a house site with a garden, in the village of Chura in Karmarashtra.¹ The gift went to Chasamisarman, a Brahman of the Kasyapa gotra (clan) who knew the four Vedas.¹ It was made at the winter solstice.¹

The language is Sanskrit, but the boundaries use Telugu words.¹ One is muyuru-kutuva, “the meeting place of three villages”.¹

The places

Krishnamacharlu identified the boundary villages with Daggupadu, Pavuluru and Nagulla, in the Bapatla taluk.² So he placed Chura at a deserted village between Nagulla and Daggupadu.² Karmarashtra was later called Kammanadu.² He noted that it was already named, as Kammaka, in the Jaggayyapeta inscriptions of the Ikshvaku king Virapurushadatta.²

His family

The grant gives his line for four generations: Kandavarman (Skandavarman), Maharaja Vishnugopavarman, Simhavarman, and the king himself.¹² Krishnamacharlu took him to be the son of the Simhavarman of the Pikira, Mangalur and Omgodu grants.⁴ See Simhavarman and Vishnugopa.

Where the sources disagree

• Is the grant reliable? Krishnamacharlu judged from the letters that the plates were a copy made early in the 7th century.⁴ He thought the Eastern Chalukya advance into Karmarashtra might explain why the originals were lost.⁴ H. Krishna Sastri first thought the king a later member of the line.⁴ Later he judged the plates, because of their late letters, of no use for working out the order of the Pallava kings.⁴
• His grandfather’s title. The Chura grant calls the grandfather maharaja (king), but the other grants call Vishnugopa only yuvamaharaja (crown prince).⁴ Krishnamacharlu saw no great difficulty in this.⁴

Footnotes

1. Krishnamacharlu, “Chura Grant” (1938), p. 138 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased except for the short phrases quoted. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Krishnamacharlu, “Chura Grant” (1938), p. 141 and text (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. C. R. Krishnamacharlu, “Chura Grant of Pallava Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman”, Epigraphia Indica XXIV (1937–38), p. 137 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Krishnamacharlu, “Chura Grant” (1938), p. 139 and editor’s note (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸