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Motupalli

Coastal village, formerly in Guntur district, that was the main Kakatiya sea port. Ganapatideva set up his 1244 edict protecting sea traders here. Henry Yule identified it with a place Marco Polo called Mutfili.

A Kakatiya port

Motupalli is a village on the Andhra coast near Chinna Ganjam.12 Its formal name in the thirteenth century was Desiyakkondapattana. In the early twentieth century it was in the Bapatla taluk of Guntur district.12 P. V. Parabrahma Sastry places it in Prakasam district.3

Here in Saka 1166 (1244–45 CE; Saka is an Indian way of counting years) the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva set up a pillar bearing an edict that promised sea traders protection.4 The edict ended the old practice of seizing the whole cargo of wrecked ships, and it fixed a customs duty of one in thirty on exports and imports.5 E. Hultzsch, who edited it, reasoned that Motupalli must have been the chief port of the Kakatiya kingdom.6

Mutfili

The Venetian traveller Marco Polo described a kingdom he called “Mutfili”, without naming its rulers.7 His editor Henry Yule identified this kingdom as the Kakatiya kingdom of Telingana.8 Yule thought that Polo seemed to name the kingdom after the place that he or his informants visited.8 He identified that place, Mutfili, with Motupalli, noting that Arabic usage turned p into f.8

Polo said that the kingdom was ruled by a queen.79 He described its diamonds and its fine cloth, buckrams (cotton cloth) that “look like tissue of spider’s web”.79 Parabrahma Sastry dates Polo’s visit to the closing years of Rudramadevi’s reign. He also counts Motupalli as one of several Kakatiya-period ports on the coast.1011 In his account it was linked by road to the interior through Tripurantakam.1011

Later centuries

By the nineteenth century Motupalli had declined. Gordon Mackenzie’s Kistna District Manual (1883) called it “an insignificant fishing village”.2 The manual noted its identification as Polo’s landing place.2 It recorded that French troops at Guntur had landed stores there about a hundred years earlier.2 The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 likewise described it as “now an obscure fishing-village in the Bapatla taluk”.1

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, vol. I (1908), p. 302 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 206 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 257. ↩

  4. E. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), p. 189 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 197 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. Hultzsch, Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva (1914), p. 190 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. Yule and Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II (1903), pp. 359–360 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II (1903), p. 362 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Yule and Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II (1903), p. 361 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  10. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 256. ↩ ↩2

  11. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 250. ↩ ↩2

Photos

People

Ganapatideva

c. 1199–1262 CE

Kakatiya king (r. 1199–c. 1262) whose sixty-year reign carried Kakatiya power from Telangana to the coast and the far south. He moved the capital to Orugallu (Warangal). His reign produced the Motupalli sea-trade edict and the Ramappa and Ganapesvaram temples.

Rudramadevi

c. 1262–1289 CE

Daughter and successor of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva. She ruled from Orugallu (Warangal) under the masculine title Rudradeva Maharaja from about 1260. She faced rebels, the Yadavas, the Eastern Gangas and the revolt of the Kayastha Ambadeva, and died in 1289 according to the Chandupatla inscription (1294–95 in older accounts). Henry Yule and E. Hultzsch identified her with the just and beloved queen praised, without a name, by Marco Polo.

Anavota Reddi

c. 1353–1364 CE

Second Reddi king of Addanki (c. 1353–1364), elder son of Prolaya Vema. His only known copper-plate grant, from Koduru (1358), and his renewal of the Kakatiya charter for sea merchants at Motupalli (1358) survive. A Velama chronicle claims a victory over him at Dharanikota in 1361. His son Kumaragiri and his son-in-law Kataya Vema later ruled at Kondavidu and Rajahmundry.

Inscriptions

Motupalli pillar inscription of Ganapatideva

1244 CE

Edict of Saka 1166 (1244–45 CE) set up at the port of Motupalli. In it the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva promised sea traders safety for wrecked cargoes and fixed the customs duty on their goods.

References

Sources (5)
  1. Sten Konow (ed.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XII (1913–14) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1914, pp. 188–190, 197. [Public domain]
  2. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier (eds.), The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, Vol. II (3rd ed.) (opens in a new tab), John Murray, London, 1903, pp. 359–362. [Public domain]
  3. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 206. [Public domain]
  4. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 302. [Public domain]
  5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1978, pp. 250, 256–257. Paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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