Anumakonda and Orugallu: the two capitals

Anumakonda, now Hanamakonda, was the first capital of the Kakatiyas. The town existed before it became a Kakatiya capital. An inscription of 872, set up by the Chalukya ruler Satyasraya Bhimarasa in the 58th regnal year of the Rashtrakuta king Amoghavarsha I, already names it. According to the Bayyaram inscription, Beta I made Anumakonda his capital after killing two enemies called Anuma and Konda. Parabrahma Sastry accepts that Beta I settled there, but he calls the story of Anuma and Konda fictitious.

Instead, M. Rama Rao credits the move to Prola I, who received the Anumakonda district as a fief from the Chalukya king Somesvara I. A later tradition explains the name of the town differently. In the Siddhesvara Charitra, Anuma and Konda are two sons of Yerukadeva Raju, a hunter king who ruled at Hanumakonda before the Kakatiyas.

Orugallu, the later capital, lies about 5 km from Anumakonda. Its name refers to a large boulder-like hill, and Sanskrit texts call the town Ekasilanagara. The town existed by about 1098, when the Kazipet Darga inscription named it. The surveys of 1900 and 1909 credit its founding to a Kakatiya king called Potraj or Proda Raja.

Tradition tells how the town was founded. In the Prataparudra Caritramu, a Telugu chronicle of the sixteenth century, Prola II finds a touchstone linga buried in the ground and builds a new town around it. Parabrahma Sastry links this tradition to the god Svayambhu, the family deity.

The Siddhesvara Charitra tells a different version of the legend. A cart overturned on a stone near Hanumakonda, and its iron turned to gold. Prola built a Siva temple over the stone and planned the city of Orugallu around it. The chronicles date the founding to Saka 909 (987 CE), but Lakshmi Ranjanam notes that this date does not fit Prola II.

Two Bekkallu inscriptions associate Rudra Deva with each capital. The inscription of 1176 still describes him ruling at Anumakonda, and the inscription of 1195 describes him ruling from Orugallu. Parabrahma Sastry states that Rudra Deva began a new fort at Orugallu and that Ganapati Deva completed the move.

Other scholars date the move differently. M. Rama Rao calls Orugallu a joint capital under Rudra Deva and the permanent capital under Ganapati Deva. H. Krishna Sastri placed the move near the end of the reign of Ganapati Deva.

The sources also disagree about who built the fort. Telangana – Land and People states that Rudra Deva completed the stone fort himself. Lakshmi Ranjanam writes that Ganapati Deva completed the fort that Rudra Deva had begun. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 says that Ganapati Deva began the stone wall, and that Rudrama Devi completed it and added the outer mud wall.

The Siddhesvara Charitra, a Telugu poem of about 1600, tells the same story as the Imperial Gazetteer. In the poem Ganapati Deva builds a stone fort at Orugallu, and Rudrama Devi completes the unfinished fort and adds an earth fort.