Bayyaram

The tank

Bayyaram is a village in the former Yellandu taluk, now in Mahabubabad district.¹ About three miles from it lies the great tank known as the Bayyaram tank.¹ The tank is actually within the revenue limits of the village of Kotagadda.¹ Near it are a ruined rampart and other remains, overgrown with jungle.¹

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry counted it among the largest tanks of Telangana.¹ Its builders joined hillocks with high bunds (embankments) of stone and earth where streams pass between them.¹ He also notes that three large streams flowing off one plateau feed the Bayyaram tank, the Laknavaram tank and the Pakhal lake.²

Mailama’s foundation

A Sanskrit inscription on a granite pillar on the eastern bank records who built the tank.¹³ It was Mailama (Dharmakirti), the sister of Ganapatideva and wife of the Natavadi chief Rudra.¹³ She named it Dharmakirti-Maila-samudra.¹³ The inscription says that she also founded villages named after her father Mahadeva, her mother Bayyamba and herself. Parabrahma Sastry identified Bayyaram and the nearby Dharmapuram with the last two.⁴ Elsewhere he writes more generally that the villages called Bayyaram in Khammam and other districts were named after Ganapatideva’s mother.⁵ See the Bayyaram tank inscription.

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription of Kakati Mailama”, Epigraphia Andhrica I (1974), reprinted in Gajjala Vasanta Lakshmi (ed.), Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), pp. 316–317, No. 310. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 205. ↩

3. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription”, in Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 318. Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Parabrahma Sastry, “Bayyaram Tank Inscription”, in Epigraphia Telanganica, vol. 2 (2023), p. 319. Paraphrased. ↩

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 199. ↩