Arumbaka

Arumbaka is the village granted in the Arumbaka plates of Badapa, a prince of the junior line of the Eastern Chalukyas. The grant places it in the Velanandu district (vishaya).¹ Badapa gave it, free of all taxes, to Gandanarayana, who passed it on to his cousin Chandena.² The plates themselves were found not here but at Polamuru in the Tanuku taluk.¹²

Identification

The epigraphy report for 1920–21 identified the village with “the modern village Arumbaka in the Repalle taluk of the Guntur district”.³ K. V. Lakshmana Rao, who edited the grant in 1928, agreed.¹ He found the boundary villages of the grant all round it, within a radius of four miles:¹

• Sripundi, the southern boundary, as Sripudi¹
• Cherakumballi, the eastern, as Cherukumilli¹
• Kavuru, the western, under its old name¹

He was told that Gomaduvu, the northern boundary, was Govada, three miles to the north in the Tenali taluk.¹

Sripundi

Sripundi, on Arumbaka’s southern side, is the village of the Sripundi plates of Tala II, Badapa’s younger brother.¹ A copy of those plates is kept in Colin Mackenzie’s collection.¹² According to it, the village accountants had found the plates buried in the village some fifteen years before about 1800.¹²

Lakshmana Rao noted that Sripundi still lay south of Arumbaka in the Repalle taluk.⁴ From the boundaries in the two grants, he argued that Tala’s gift was a new hamlet carved out of Sripundi or its neighbour Aduru, not the whole village.⁴

Footnotes

1. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Inscriptions of Eastern Chalukya Princes”, Epigraphia Indica XIX (1927–28), p. 140 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Inscriptions” (1928), p. 148 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, for 1920–21 (1921), Part II, para. 14, p. 91 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

4. Lakshmana Rao, “Two Copper-plate Inscriptions” (1928), p. 151 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²