The name “Kakatiya”

The sources give two explanations for the name Kakatiya. The first explanation treats Kakati as a place. The Bayyaram tank inscription of Mailama, a sister of Ganapati Deva, states that Venna, the founder of the family, ruled from a town called Kakati. The inscription adds that his descendants were therefore called Kakatiyas. Ganapati Deva’s Garavapadu grant says that Karikala Chola, an ancestor of the family, camped at a town called Kakati. Later kings carried the title “lord of Kakatipura” in their inscriptions. M. Rama Rao takes Kakatipura to mean Anumakonda, while Telangana – Land and People applies the name to Orugallu.

The second explanation treats Kakati as a goddess. Kumarasvami Somapithin, a fifteenth-century commentator on the Prataparudriya, wrote that the family took its name from the goddess Kakati, a form of Durga. The Telugu poem Kridabhiramamu places Kakatamma beside the goddess Ekavira at Orugallu.

Later Telugu chronicles tell a legend of origin. In the Prataparudra Caritramu and the Siddhesvara Charitra, an ancestor named Madhavavarman wins the favour of the goddess Padmakshi of Anumakonda. Lakshmi Ranjanam notes that nobody knows whether Padmakshi was the Kakatamma of the Kridabhiramamu, or whether Kakatamma had her own temple at Orugallu.

The Siddhesvara Charitra also tells how King Padmasena worshipped Siddhesvara with pumpkins and so obtained a son, Vennama. Lakshmi Ranjanam links this tale with the Kaluvacheru grant of the Reddi queen Anitalli. That grant says that the Kakatiyas were born of a pumpkin creeper.

The town of Kakati has not yet been identified. Scholars have proposed Kandhara near Nanded, Gandhara near Mancherial, a village called Kakati near Belgaum and Kanker north of Bastar. Parabrahma Sastry calls the Kanker proposal mythical.

Parabrahma Sastry and other scholars suggest that the town and its goddess shared one name. S. Gopalakrishna Murthy identifies Kakati with the goddess Chamunda. M. Rama Rao suggests that the family adopted a Jain goddess and later worshipped her as Durga.

The Kandhara proposal rests on a tradition in the Siddhesvara Charitra that the family came from Kandarapura. Parabrahma Sastry finds no evidence for that tradition. He also suggests that Garuda Beta set up the Jain goddess on the Padmakshi hill and named her Kakati.

The records also disagree about the caste of the family. Some inscriptions of Ganapati Deva's reign trace the Kakatiyas to the solar line of kshatriyas. The Bothpur and Vaddamanu inscriptions of the general Malyala Gunda say that the Kakatiyas belonged to the fourth caste, and Parabrahma Sastry accepts these inscriptions.

K. Lakshmi Ranjanam, the editor of the Siddhesvara Charitra, places its Kandarapura at Chejerla in Guntur district. He links the town with the Ananda Gotra kings of the fourth century. M. Rama Rao proposed Kanteru, also in Guntur district. Lakshmi Ranjanam also proposes a village called Kakita, 48 miles south-west of Visakhapatnam, as the first home of the family.