Polasa (Polavasa)

Polas is a village in the Jagtial taluk of the Karimnagar district.¹ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry identified it with Polavasa, the headquarters of a family of chiefs who were important in the time of the early Kakatiyas.¹ The family’s fief (land held from an overlord) ran from Polavasa to Narasampet.¹ It touched the Kakatiya district of Anumakonda.¹

An inscription of 1108 at Polavasa was set up by a guild of merchants.²³ It names Medaraja with titles that Parabrahma Sastry took to show a Rashtrakuta connection.²³ It also shows that Polavasa was his capital.²³

The family traced its descent from a Madhavavarman.⁴⁵ Parabrahma Sastry doubted that this Madhavavarman was a real person (his historicity).⁴⁵ The family’s records show that its members were followers of the Jain faith.⁴⁵

The Padmakshi temple inscription of 1117 records a gift to the Jaina temple at Anumakonda.⁶⁷ The giver was the mahamandalesvara (great provincial lord) of Ugravadi, of the family of Madhavavarman.⁶⁷ Parabrahma Sastry identified him as Medaraja of this family.⁶ H. Krishna Sastri, who edited the inscription, read the name as Melarasa.⁷

Parabrahma Sastry argued that Medaraja II and his brother Gundaraja stopped naming the Chalukya king in their records.⁸⁵ He also argued that the Kakatiya Prola II killed Gunda during Jagadekamalla II’s campaign in Telangana.⁸⁵ In his account, Prola’s son Rudradeva defeated Medaraja and burned Polavasa, probably in the 1150s.⁸⁵ The event is described in Rudradeva’s Thousand Pillar Temple inscription, and in a fragmentary (broken) inscription of his minister Gangadhara.⁸⁵

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 58. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 61. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 62. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 60. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 64. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

6. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 59. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. H. Krishna Sastri, “Anmakonda Inscription of Prola; the Chalukya-Vikrama Year Forty-Two”, Epigraphia Indica IX (1908), p. 259 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 63. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴