South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

III. The details of the donation : For the maintenance of daily worship, celebration of festivals, etc., in the temples built in honour of the three deceased Chōḷa generals, three villages all situated in the Lower (Pallapu) Gudravāra vishaya, were granted by Rājarāja I. Though Kalidiṁḍi and Kaḍaparru are clubbed together and renamed Madhurāntakanallūr, their boundaries as well as those of the third village are separately described. The boundaries of Kalidiṁḍi are given at first in lines 103-6 ; then follow from Pallapu-Gudravārē in line 106 to sīmā at the beginning of line 110 the boundaries of the village of Kaḍaparru ; and finally with Pallapu-Gudravārē in line 110 commences the description of the boundaries of the third village Āvakū[ru], which is unfortunately lost with the broken fragment of the fifth plate. The three memorial temples were perhaps given one village each for their upkeep, maintenance of daily service, etc. Of the three, Kalidiṁḍi was situated in the east ; it is said to have been bounded by Pōtumbarru in the north and the north-east, Konneki in the east, …. lidorru in the south-east, Koṇṭhama in the south, Vēvāka in the south-west, Kaḍaparru in the west, and D(Tā)ḍināḍu in the north-west. The second village, Kaḍaparru, was situated to the west of Kalidiṁḍi. Its boundaries, as described in the inscription, are : Kalvasaṇḍa in the north, D(Tā)ḍināḍu in the north-east, Kalidiṁḍi in the east and south-east, Vēvāka in the south and the south-west, Āvakūru in the west, and the streamlet Tallikroyya (a branch of Tāmarakolani-Krovviṇḍlēru) in the north-west. The boundaries of the third village, Āvakūru, are not definitely known ; of the villages that surrounded it, the names of only two, viz., Kaḍaparru and Koṇḍika-Muñjalūru, are found in the extant fragment of the fifth plate. In addition to these, another village called [Du]ggiya[pū]ṇḍi is also mentioned with Kaḍaparru ; but the connection between these two villages is not quite clear.

Two of the three villages which form the object of the present grant, Kalidiṁḍi and Āvakūru, retain their names to the present day and are situated on the eastern fringe of the Colair Lake in the Kaikalur taluk of the Krishna District. The third village, Kaḍaparru, cannot be traced in the available maps and records, but must, however, be looked for in the same locality, as it is said to have been situated between Kalidiṁḍi and Āvakūru.

Among the villages mentioned as boundaries, Tāḍināḍu is identical with Tāḍināḍa which is situated, even as stated in the inscription, to the north-west of Kalidiṁḍi. Pōtumbarti is not, etrictly speaking, the correct name of the village. The suffix ‘ti’ with which the name of the village ends is the inflexion of the genitive case meaning ‘of’. Pōtumbarti therefore means ‘of Pōtumbarru’. This must be identical with the modern Pōtumarru in the same taluk. Similarly Vēvāka must be taken to represent the present Vaivāka. Neither the streamlet Tallikroyya nor the other villages mentioned among the boundaries cane be traces at present.

IV. The names of the executor, the composer and the scribe are unfortunately lost ; but the last line in the broken fragment of the 5th plate, which begins with śō Rāchiya-Peddēri-[Bhī]…is found to form part of the following verse that occurs in the Kōrumelli grant of Rārarāja.1

Ājñaptiḥ Kaṭakēśō Rāchiya-Peddēri-Bhīma-nāma-tanūjaḥ | karttā Bētana-bhaṭṭaḥ kāvyānāṁ lēkhakō=’sya Gaṇḍāchāryaḥ ||

It may reasonably be assumed that the present grant ended with this same verse and that the remaining part of it was lost with the missing portion of the plate. If so, it may be inferred that the ājñapti of the charter was Kaṭakēśa, the composer Bētana-bhaṭṭa, son of Rāchiya-Peddēri-Bhīma, and the scribe, Gaṇḍāchāya. Kaṭakēśa, who is spoken of as the ājñapti in several Eastern Chāḷukya copper-plate charters, is not the name of an individual but that of an office. The term kaṭaka denotes an army, a camp, a town, etc. Kaṭakēśa may therefore be taken to mean either the commander of an army or the governor of a cantonment. The verse cited above refers

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^[1] Ind. Ant., Vol. XIV, p. 55.