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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Kotagiri

Town in Nizamabad district. The Viryala chief Sura lived at a Kotagiri when he made his copper-plate grant of 1273 in Rudramadevi's reign. A Delhi army besieged a fort of that name in the 1320s.

The Viryala grant

The copper plates of 1273 say that Sura of the Viryala family, a subordinate of Rudramadevi, was living at “the well-known town of Kotagiri”.1 From there he gave the new village of Vejjalapuri to Brahmans.1 A share also went to the god Purushottama of Kotagiri.1 The editors of 1925 thought this Kotagiri was probably Kodgir in the Nizam’s dominions.2

A fisherman found the plates themselves in a tank at Birkor (Birkur), in the Bodhan taluk of the same district.3 See the Kotagiri plates.

The siege of the 1320s

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry follows the Muslim historians in describing a fort called Kotagiri during the first Tughluq expedition against Warangal. While Ulugh Khan was besieging Warangal, a part of the Delhi army under Majir Abu Riza was besieging Kotagiri. Ulugh Khan had to raise his siege and retreat, and he fell back on Kotagiri.45 There Abu Riza’s force saved his army.45 Parabrahma Sastry does not say whether this fort is the Kotagiri of the plates.4

Footnotes

  1. Hanumant Rao, The Kotagiri Plates (1925), p. 9 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Hanumant Rao, The Kotagiri Plates (1925), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  3. S. Hanumant Rao (ed.), The Kotagiri Plates of the Reign of the Kakatiya Queen Rudramamba, A.D. 1273 (Hyderabad Archaeological Series No. 6, 1925), p. v (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  4. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 136. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 138. ↩ ↩2

Photos

Inscriptions

Kotagiri plates of Viryala Sura

1273 CE

Three Sanskrit copper plates of 31 December 1273, found in a tank at Birkur in the Bodhan taluk. They record the gift of a new village, Vejjalapuri or Vainayakapuri, to Brahmans and a Vishnu temple by Sura of the Viryala family. Sura was a feudatory (subordinate ruler) in the reign of Rudramadevi, whom the plates call Ganapati's daughter.

References

Sources (2)
  1. Archaeological Department, H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions, The Kotagiri Plates of the Reign of the Kakatiya Queen Rudramamba, A.D. 1273 (Hyderabad Archaeological Series No. 6) (opens in a new tab), H.E.H. the Nizam's Government, 1925, v, 1, 9. [Public domain]
  2. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1978, pp. 136, 138. Paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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