South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

NANDURU PLATES OF VELANANTI RAJENDRA-CHODA : SAKA 1091

B. V. KRISHNA RAO, RAJAHMUNDRY

These plates were found in the village of Naṇḍūru in Bapatla taluk, Guntur District, about fifty years ago and were forwarded by the Tahsildar of Bāpaṭla to the Assistant Superintendent for Epigraphy, Southern Circle, Madras, early in 1917. They were examined and numbered as C. P. No. 23 of 1916-17, and were reviewed in the Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy, 1917, pages 118-119. The following description of the plates appears in the Annual Report.^[1]

“ The plates are 5 in number and are hung on a big ring the ends of which are fixed into the bottom of a seal which bears the legend ‘ śrī-Tribhuvanāṁkuśa ’ between two lines with the symbols of the sun, the moon and star, two parasols, the Chōḷa Tiger, aṅkuśa, lotus and the svastika (?) above, and the Chālukyan boar, the disc (chakra), sandals, drum, double-conch, lamp stands and a few other unintelligible symbols below ”.

It is said that the ring was not cut when the plates reached the Epigraphist’s office. The Epigraphist, the late Rao Bahadur H. Krishna Sastri, observed, therefore, “ it is curious how despite this the set is incomplete commencing as it does with No. 3, marked on the second side of the existing plate and stopping abruptly with the mention of the donee, omitting the usual imprecations, etc.” He, therefore, assumed that the plates had been examined sometime before that and that the now missing plates were lost on that occasion. I am, however, of a different opinion. The two outer plates must have been completely worn out and corroded on account of their extremely bad preservation. They would have crumbled down to pieces and powder at the first touch when they were discovered. The worn out condition of the writing on the inner plates must be due to the bad preservation of the plates. Whatever that might be, it is true as Krishna Sastri observed, “ the information conveyed by the existing plates is very interesting, giving us, as they do, an account of the later Chāḷukya sovereigns who held sway over the Vēṅgi country down to the time of Rājarāja (II) and of their subordinates the Velanāṇḍu chiefs down to Rājēndra-Chōḍa ”. The importance of the plates is further enchanced by the fact that it is the only copper-plate grant of the kings of the Velanāṇṭi family who controlled and guided the destinies of the Chōḷa-Chāḷukya Empire and the fortunes of the country of Vēṅgi for nearly a century and half, from about 1070 to about 1210 A.C.

I undertook the editing of these plates several years ago but continued preoccupation with other matters from time to time had prevented me from carrying out the work entrusted to me in 1927 by the then Government Epigraphist for India, the late Dr. Hirananda Sastri. I now edit the inscription from the ink impressions supplied to me by him. As the ink-impressions are not clear in some places and as the original plates were not available to me for examination, the reading of the inscription in some portions had to be supplemented with the help of some lithic records2 of the family found at Drākshārāma and other places.

The inscription is engraved on both sides of the five plates which are roughly 9¾″ long and 5,″ wide, and rectangular in shape. The writing on the plates is very clumsy. Often the letters are found crammed into one another ; they are also irregular and much worn out on account of the bad preservation of the plates. The number of lines on each plate is not uniform : the number varies from twelve to fourteen and even to seventeen lines. The available text of the inscription runs into 137 lines ; out of them, however, the last two lines on plate V-b (lines 108-9) are wholly unintelligible.

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^[1] The Annual Report states that the original plates were returned to the owner through the Tahsildar. I have tried in vain to trace them.
^[2] SII, Vol. IV, No. 1182.