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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Manchikallu

Village in the old Palnad taluk of the Guntur district, near Rentachintala. A fragment of an octagonal pillar came from here, with a Prakrit inscription of the Pallava king Simhavarman. D. C. Sircar took the inscription for the earliest Pallava record.

Manchikallu is a village in what was the Palnad taluk of the Guntur district. P. Seshadri Sastri first reported its inscription in 1944, as found some distance from Rentachintala.1

D. C. Sircar went to see the inscription in 1957, and he was told that it had been found in Manchikallu.1 But the stone had been moved, first to the taluk office at Gurazala and then to the Collector’s old bungalow at Guntur, where Sircar traced it.1

The inscription

The stone is a fragment of an octagonal pillar.12 Its Prakrit inscription records gifts by the Pallava king Simhavarman to the priests of the god Jivasivasvamin.12 Sircar dated it about the end of the 3rd century.3 He suggested that this king’s presence so near the Ikshvaku capital at Nagarjunakonda showed that he had replaced the Ikshvakus.3 See the Manchikallu inscription.

Footnotes

  1. D. C. Sircar, “Two Inscriptions from Guntur District”, Epigraphia Indica XXXII (1957–58), p. 82 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Sircar, “Two Inscriptions from Guntur District” (EI XXXII), p. 88 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  3. Sircar, “Two Inscriptions from Guntur District” (EI XXXII), p. 89 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

Photos

People

Simhavarman (Pallava, Manchikallu inscription)

Pallava king of the Bharadvaja gotra, known only from a broken Prakrit pillar inscription found at Manchikallu in the Palnad taluk. D. C. Sircar took it for the earliest Pallava record. He suggested that this Simhavarman brought the Krishna–Guntur country under the Pallavas, pushing out the Ikshvakus, and was perhaps the father of Sivaskandavarman.

Inscriptions

Manchikallu inscription of Simhavarman

c. 300 CE

A broken Prakrit inscription on part of an eight-sided stone pillar from Manchikallu in the Palnad taluk. It records gifts by the Pallava king Simhavarman of the Bharadvaja gotra to the priests of the god Jivasivasvamin. D. C. Sircar, who edited it, took it for the earliest Pallava record. He dated it first to the end of the 3rd century and later to the middle of the 4th.

References

Sources (1)
  1. D. C. Sircar and B. Ch. Chhabra (eds.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXII (1957–58) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1959, pp. 82, 87–89. D. C. Sircar, Two Inscriptions from Guntur District. Paraphrased. [Public domain in India]

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