A team, comprising an epigraphist and a historian, has deciphered the 13th century pillar inscription at the Jagannath temple here, highlighting the Dharanikota connection with the port town of Machilipatnam.
The inscription, which dated back to 1240 A.D., speaks about donating a piece of land by king Kota Bheemaraju of Kota dynasty of Dharanikota near Amaravati in Guntur district for performing puja at the Bheemeswara temple.
The land was given to two groups of priests for performing the annual rituals in the temple. While one group comprised 12 priests, the other had seven of them.
Which Bheemeswara temple?
“The last few paras of the inscription are not visible due to damage done to it, leaving no evidence to confirm the actual place of the Bheemeswara temple. The language is a mix of Sanskrit and Telugu,” Repalle-based epigraphist B. Ramesh Chandra told The Hindu .
It is learnt that there are two Bheemeswara temples near Machilipatnam —one in Draksharamam in East Godavari district and the other in Movva village in Krishna district.
Mr. Ramesh Chandra said that the inscription read as follows:
“A certain extent of land was donated for procuring necessary provisions to perform rituals at the Bheemeswara temple.”
Beginning with the images of the sun and a crescent, the inscription was written on four sides of the pillar. One side of the inscription was completely damaged. A portion of the pillar was buried, damaging the last paras of the inscription.
The Dharanikota kings maintained good relations with the Chalukyas, Velanati Cholas and the Kakatiyas.
The expert team was of the opinion that the pillar did not belong to the Jagannath temple of Machilipatnam and might have been brought from somewhere during the period of its renovation in the 1990s.
Glorious history
Mr. Ramesh Chandra and V.V. Krishna Rao, a research scholar in Acharya Nagarjuna University, are documenting the details of several inscriptions found across Krishna district in a bid to bring the glorious history to limelight.
“Our effort is to document the history and stress the need for conservation of important pillars and inscriptions in Krishna district, which have not been deciphered so far,” Mohammed Silar, a historian, said.
