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Chipurupalle (Cheepurupalli)

Small town in the north of the old Vizagapatam district, once the headquarters of a taluk, with the remains of an old fort. Three sets of copper plates were found here in 1867. Among them is the grant of the Eastern Chalukya founder Vishnuvardhana I, dated 7 July 632. J. F. Fleet took Cherupura, the town where that grant was issued, to be an older form of its name.

Chipurupalle lies in the north of the old Visakhapatnam (then Vizagapatam) district. Robert Sewell’s list of 1882 places it thirty miles north of Bheemunipatnam (then Bimlipatam) and twenty-one miles west of Srikakulam (then Chicacole).1 The Vizagapatam gazetteer of 1907 describes it as a union of 2,916 people, the headquarters of the Chipurupalle taluk and a railway station.2 The taluk was the northernmost of the district’s coast taluks, divided from Ganjam by the Langulya river.2

The fort

Sewell recorded “a fort, said to be ancient, on the south side of the village”.1 The gazetteer thought the town, “though now unimportant”, had been of some note in the past.2 It contains the remains of what was once a considerable fort, and bricks “of ancient pattern” were often dug up round it.2

The copper plates of 1867

In 1867, the gazetteer says, three sets of copper plates were found in the village.2 One of them records a grant by Vishnuvardhana I, founder of the Eastern Chalukya dynasty.2 J. F. Fleet edited that grant in 1891.3 He says that a Mr. Master first brought the plates to notice in 1867 and sent them to the Madras Government.3 According to the papers published by T. Foulkes, they were found near the village.3 A. C. Burnell gave the findspot more broadly as the Vizianagaram zamindari (landholder’s estate).4

The grant is the Chipurupalle plates of Vishnuvardhana I.5 It is dated in the king’s eighteenth year, on a day Fleet calculated as 7 July 632.5 V. Rangacharya’s topographical list of 1919 enters it under Chipurupalle.6 By 1891 the plates had been lost.3

Cherupura

The grant was issued by the king while he was living at the town of Cherupura. Fleet thought this was “probably an older form of the name of Chipurupalle itself”.3 The grant names the district of the village granted as Dimila.5 Fleet identified Dimila with the village of Dimile in the Sarvasiddhi taluk, fourteen miles south-west of Chipurupalle.5 For Fleet this showed that Vishnuvardhana I’s rule reached well to the north-east of the Vengi country.5 Burnell, and later the gazetteer, drew the same conclusion from the findspot. Burnell thought the Chalukyas had probably seized the northern part of the Telugu coast first and conquered the south afterwards.47

Footnotes

  1. Robert Sewell, Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Presidency of Madras, Vol. I (1882), p. 12, s.v. Chipurupalle (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  2. Francis, Vizagapatam (1907), p. 243, s.v. Chipurupalle taluk (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. 193: Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 15 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (2nd ed., 1878), p. 23 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  5. Fleet, “Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I” (1891), p. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, Vol. III (1919), p. 1667 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: Vizagapatam (1907), p. 26 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Inscriptions

Chipurupalle plates of Vishnuvardhana I

c. 632 CE

Sanskrit copper-plate grant of the Eastern Chalukya founder Vishnuvardhana I, now styled Maharaja, found at Chipurupalle in Vizagapatam district in 1867. It gives a village in the Dimila district to two Brahmin brothers on a lunar eclipse in the 18th year of his reign. J. F. Fleet fixed the eclipse at 7 July 632, the fixed point of the whole Eastern Chalukya chronology. A. C. Burnell had preferred 622 and James Burgess 628. The plates have since been lost.

References

Sources (5)
  1. R. C. Temple (ed.); article by J. F. Fleet, Indian Antiquary, Vol. XX (1891), incl. J. F. Fleet, 'The Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings' (opens in a new tab), Education Society's Press, Bombay, 1891, pp. 15–16, 96. J. F. Fleet, Chipurupalle copper-plate grant of Vishnuvardhana I; Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings. [Public domain]
  2. W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: Vizagapatam, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1907, pp. 26, 243. [Public domain]
  3. Robert Sewell, Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Presidency of Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1882, pp. 12. [Public domain]
  4. 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. 23. [Public domain]
  5. V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency (collected till 1915), with Notes and References, Vol. III (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1919, pp. 1667. [Public domain]

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