Religion, literature and the arts

Svayambhu, a name of Siva that means the self-born, was the family god of the Kakatiyas. The Motupalli pillar of Ganapati Deva, dated 1244, opens with an invocation of Svayambhudeva. The editors of Epigraphia Telanganica add that the Prataparudriya calls Svayambhudeva the family god of the dynasty. In 1245 Rudra of the Viriyala family gave thirty cows to a herdsman to keep a lamp burning before Svayambhudeva at Orugallu. A record of 1316 at Kandukur calls Prataparudra a devout worshipper of the feet of Svayambhudeva. M. Rama Rao describes a temple in Warangal fort that is said to be the shrine of Svayambhu.

Parabrahma Sastry notes that the Kakatiya records never credit the good fortune of the family to the goddess Kakati. In his view the family worshipped Svayambhudeva alone as its family god. A tradition holds that the family adopted Svayambhu when Prola II took Saiva initiation.

The family also honoured goddesses. Parabrahma Sastry lists temples of Panchalaraya, Kakati and Ekavira in the capital Orugallu. The Telugu poem Kridabhiramamu places the goddess Kakatamma beside the goddess Ekavira at Orugallu.

An inscription of Saka 1425 records that Shitab Khan, who had taken Warangal, set up the goddess Kakati again. Hirananda Sastri converts the date to 21 January 1504. Rama Rao reads the record as saying that the Turushkas, a name for the Turks, had removed the goddess. Sastry reads the record as saying that the Turushkas had destroyed her.

Sastry regards Ekavira as a village goddess. He suggests that Kakati was a goddess of the same kind, later treated as a form of Durga. Sastry also proposes that Kakati began as a Jain goddess, probably Padmavati, while the family was still Jain. M. Rama Rao also suggests a Jain origin, but he identifies the goddess with Amba, also called Kushmandini. Rama Rao notes that the present image of Padmakshi does not match the usual form of Padmavati. The History page sets out the debate on the name Kakati.

In 1163 Rudra Deva installed Vasudeva, a form of Vishnu, beside Rudresvara and the Sun god in his temple at Anumakonda. That temple is now called the Thousand Pillar Temple. Rudra Deva's minister Gangadhara built a large temple of Prasannakesava at Anumakonda. Gangadhara's Karimnagar inscription of 1171 says that he set up Prasannakesava beside the god Rudresvara.

In 1221 Mailama, the sister of Ganapati Deva, built a temple of Siva and a temple of Gopalakrishna at Inugurti. In 1268, in the reign of Rudrama Devi, the brother of a minister built a temple of Chenna-Gopinatha at Burugugadda. Prataparudra's general Devarinayaka, acting on the king's order, gave the village of Salakalavidu to the god Ranganatha of Srirangam on the Kaveri. Parabrahma Sastry writes that the Kakatiyas preferred Saivism but did not oppose the worship of Vishnu. Sastry concludes that all the Kakatiya kings also worshipped Vishnu.

Several Kakatiya inscriptions include an opening prayer to Vishnu in the form of the boar. Examples are the Thousand Pillar inscription of 1163, the Ganapesvaram inscription of 1231 and the Motupalli pillar of 1244. Sastry reads the boar on Kakatiya seals and coins as a further sign of Vishnu worship. Earlier in the same book Sastry traces the boar emblem to the Western Chalukyas. In that passage he holds that the Kakatiyas took the boar when they became subordinates of the Chalukyas of Kalyana.

The Bayyaram tank inscription gives a third explanation. The inscription says that Prola I raised up the earth by digging the Kesari tank. For this reason, according to the inscription, his descendants placed the boar on their coins and cattle. Sastry also suggests that the Garuda on the Kakatiya banner was probably first a Jain emblem and not a sign of devotion to Vishnu. The page on coins describes the boar emblem.

Saivism, the worship of Siva, had several schools in Andhra. The early Kakatiyas followed the Kalamukha school, whose ascetics bore names ending in Sakti, Rasi or Pandita. The Kazipet Darga inscription of 1090 records that Beta II washed the feet of the Kalamukha teacher Ramesvara Pandita. Beta II had built a new village called Sivapura, and he granted it to the teacher and his successors. Sastry adds, from a damaged record at Hanumakonda, that Sivapura was the old village of Vaijanapalli under a new name.

Ramesvara Pandita headed the Mallikarjuna Silamatha, a matha or monastery at Srisailam. The poet Devanabhatta of Orugallu composed the Kazipet record. Parabrahma Sastry holds that Beta II and his sons Durgaraja and Prola II took initiation from this teacher. Sastry names Alampur as another Kalamukha centre.

Under Ganapati Deva the Pasupata school, a related Saiva school, won royal favour. Parabrahma Sastry notes that the two schools differed mainly in rites and practice. Pasupata teachers bore names ending in Siva, Sambhu, Pandita or Rishi.

Sastry reads the Malkapuram inscription of 1261 as tracing the Golaki Matha of the Pasupatas to a line of teachers in Dahala. Dahala was the country between the Ganga and the Narmada. In his reading the Kalachuri king Yuvarajadeva gave a province to the teacher Sadbhava Sambhu, who founded the matha. Visvesvara Sambhu of this line was the teacher who initiated Ganapati Deva. Epigraphia Telanganica also calls him the teacher who initiated Ganapati Deva and the royal teacher. After the initiation the king called himself the spiritual son of Visvesvara Sambhu.

According to the Malkapuram inscription, Ganapati Deva had promised the village of Mandaram, on the Krishna, to Visvesvara Sambhu. Rudrama Devi made the formal gift in 1261. Visvesvara founded a new village there named Visvesvara-Golaki, and he built a Siva temple and a matha. He also founded a college, a hospital with a maternity ward, and a feeding house open to people of every caste and creed. The college taught the three Vedas, grammar, logic, literature, the Saiva Agamas or ritual texts, and medicine.

Sastry writes that Visvesvara settled many brahmins in the village. Epigraphia Telanganica says that he brought settlers of different castes from many parts of the country. Alekhya Punjala also describes the feeding house and the two hospitals.

Sastry lists branches of the Golaki Matha at Bhattiprolu, Pushpagiri, Srisailam, Tripurantakam, Alampur and Draksharama. Visvesvara also founded a stone monastery at Kalesvaram, which Dharma Siva headed. In 1252 Paripurnasiva, a son of the royal teacher Visvesvarasiva, gave land at Bhattiprolu to a woman named Potasani for service in the temple. In 1260 Jannigadeva, a general of Ganapati Deva, gave a village to his teacher of the Abhinava Golaki Matha at Srisailam. The gift maintained a college and a feeding house.

The records also name the teachers of other kings. A pillar in Warangal fort says that Mahadeva learnt the dharma, or religious duty, from the sage Dhruvesvara. Sastry found no record of the teacher of Rudra Deva. He suggests that one of two ascetics named in the Thousand Pillar inscription may have been that teacher. Sastry adds that Sivadevayya, the royal teacher of Prataparudra, wrote the Purusharthasara, a Telugu work on polity. After Prataparudra, Sastry finds few references to the Pasupata school in the inscriptions.

The Aradhya school grew in this period without royal support, in Parabrahma Sastry's view. The Aradhya teachers Sripati Pandita, Mallikarjuna Pandita and Manchana Pandita preached Saivism across Andhra. The followers of these teachers wore a linga, the emblem of Siva, on the body. A damaged record of Ganapati Deva's reign at Dharmasagar gives a share of temple land to two sons of an Aradhya of Paindipalli. A second Dharmasagar record of the minister Malla, which Epigraphia Telanganica lists separately, names two sons of Panditaradhya. The Virasaiva movement of Basava, a minister of the Kalachuri king Bijjala, was strongest in Karnataka. Sastry judges that the Virasaiva movement had little effect on the people of the Telugu country, apart from the poet Palkuriki Somanatha.

The Karimnagar inscription of 1171 states that Gangadhara, a minister of Rudra Deva, set up an image of the Buddha. The record treats the Buddha as a form that Vishnu took to mislead the demons. Sastry places the image at a place called Pattasala. Epigraphia Telanganica translates patta-sala as a hall, within the shrine of Hidimba. Epigraphia Telanganica also summarises a record of 1234 at Amaravati as a grant to the god Buddha. The donor was Kota Bayyalamahadevi, a daughter of the Natavadi chief Rudra. Parabrahma Sastry writes that Buddhism had slowly died out in Andhra by the tenth and eleventh centuries. He finds only stray references to Buddhism in the records of the Kakatiya period.

Palkuriki Somanatha's Telugu poem Panditaradhya Charitra tells of a debate between Buddhist teachers and the Saiva teacher Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya. In the poem the debate takes place at the court of the Velanati chief Rajendra Chola II of Chandavolu. Rajendra Chola II ruled from about 1162 to 1181. Sastry reports that in the poem the disciples of Panditaradhya kill the Buddhist teachers and destroy their monastery. In the poem the angry king then has Panditaradhya blinded, and Siva restores the sight of Panditaradhya. Parabrahma Sastry treats the story as probably the last recorded event that went against Buddhism in Andhra. Sastry places Somanatha in the reign of Prataparudra, more than a century after Rajendra Chola II. The story is therefore a tradition preserved in a later poem.

The early Kakatiyas rose in a region where Jainism had enjoyed royal support under the Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas of Vemulavada. Parabrahma Sastry concludes that the early members of the family were Jains. Sastry adds that Jainism still received support from the later Kakatiya court. Gangadhara, the minister of Rudra Deva, repaired the Jain temple on the Padmakshi hill. The Jain poet Appayarya states that he completed his Jinendrakalyanabhyudaya in the reign of Prataparudra. A Jain Tirthankara, or teacher, is carved on the Siddhesvara Gutta, facing a Sanskrit poem of the Kakatiya period. The History page describes the Jain monuments of Hanamakonda and the Jain gifts of Beta I, Beta II and Mailama.

Mallireddi, whose family was Jain, built twenty-one temples to Siva. Mallireddi bore a title that calls him the patron of the four faiths, namely Saiva, Vaishnava, Jain and Buddhist. In Sastry's reading, a Bekkallu inscription of Mallireddi says that the four faiths differ only on the surface and that god is one. Parabrahma Sastry concludes that people of this period followed the four faiths without prejudice against each other. His main evidence is this Bekkallu inscription.

Sastry also holds that sectarian disputes in Andhra did not grow into religious conflict as they did in Karnataka. Sastry gives the credit for this to the tolerance of the Kakatiya rulers. S. Gopalakrishna Murthy takes a different view. He presumes that Virasaiva followers destroyed Jain shrines around Hanumakonda in the years after the death of Mahadeva. Later Telugu chronicles tell stories of persecution, and the History page reports them as traditions.

The sources date the Bekkallu record of Mallireddi in different ways. Sastry's 1978 book places the record in the reign of Rudra Deva. His 1981 study dates it to Saka 1097. His 1975 thesis gives 1176 for a Bekkallu record of Mallireddi.

Epigraphia Telanganica lists the record of a Jain temple and twenty-one shrines in its first volume. That volume dates the record to the eleventh century, under the Western Chalukyas. Epigraphia Telanganica also lists a second Bekkallu record of Mallireddi, for a temple of Mallikarjuna, dated Saka 1097.

Parabrahma Sastry describes the temple as the centre of village and town life. He quotes the historian K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, who called the medieval temple a landholder, employer, consumer of goods, bank, school, museum, hospital and theatre.

Builders of new villages set aside a site for a temple. The Manthena inscription records that Manchibhattopadhyaya, the priest of Ganapati Deva, founded a village with a tank and two temples. One temple was for Siva and one was for Kesava. Epigraphia Telanganica dates the record to Sunday, 26 December 1199, in the first year of Ganapati Deva's reign. Sastry's 1975 thesis also places the record in the first regnal year of Ganapati Deva, although one passage of the thesis equates that year with 1299. Sastry's 1978 book gives the date as 1299, and Alekhya Punjala repeats 1299.

Building a temple was one of the seven meritorious works called sapta-santanas. The Ganapesvaram inscription of 1231 gives a list of seven that includes a treasure and a marriage. Sastry gives one list in which the other six works are a son, an adopted son, a literary work, an agrahara, a garden and a tank. An agrahara was a brahmin village. Sastry notes that the list varies between sources.

Kings and nobles gave temples whole villages, usually free of tax. An inscription of Prataparudra dated 1313 lists seventy villages held by two mathas at Srisailam. A temple could also hold land in another kingdom. The Srisailam temple, for example, held a village in the Hoysala country. Each temple had a governing body called the sthana, led by a sthanapati. Siva temples used grain measures marked with Nandi, the bull of Siva, and Vishnu temples used measures marked with Garuda. Temples also lent money. A twelfth-century record at Draksharama sets aside the interest on a gift for the yearly festival called Damanotsava.

Sastry divides temple staff into four groups. The sthanapatis formed the governing body. The manulu were officers such as the storekeeper, the treasurer and the accountant. The sanis were women who danced and sang before the god. The nibandhakaras were servants, cooks, watchmen and craftsmen. Sastry notes that some groups of temple servants formed corporate bodies of three hundred. In his view the number gives the strength of the governing body, not the number of staff. Sastry calls the temple the largest employer after the royal palace. Alekhya Punjala repeats this description of the temple staff. Some records that Sastry cites, such as the Satuluru record of 1135, are older than independent Kakatiya rule. Many of these records come from coastal temples, so they serve as regional comparisons.

According to Sastry, the word sani comes from the Sanskrit svamini, which means lady. Sastry notes that the wives of chiefs, brahmins and reddis also used sani as an honorific ending to their names.

Devotees gave sanis to temples to dance before the god during the ranga-bhoga, the daily service of music and dance. In 1235 the general Jaya built two rows of two-storeyed houses for sixteen women attendants in front of his temple at Chebrolu. In 1254 Ganapatideva of the Kota family gave a woman named Akkama to the Ramesvara temple at Velpuru as a sani. This Ganapatideva was a chief and not the king. This Ganapatideva also gave Akkama land and a house site.

In 1271 Mankisetti gave his two granddaughters to dance before the god at Elesvaram. Sastry calls the two women sanis, and Epigraphia Telanganica calls them nadukutalu, which its editors gloss as perhaps dancers. The summary in Epigraphia Telanganica says that the two women were branded with the trident, and that they and their descendants were to serve the god.

Parabrahma Sastry holds that the sanis were respectable married women who led a family life. He rejects the common view that they were courtesans. In his view a donor appointed a sani to dance and sing in the donor's name. Sastry explains that dance and music were among the sixteen services offered to a god.

Alekhya Punjala repeats Sastry's view in one passage. Elsewhere she calls the women of the Chebrolu record devadasis, a word that means female servants of the god. Punjala writes that the grants to these women show the honour that they enjoyed. Telangana – Land and People cites the study of temple women in Chola inscriptions by Leslie Orr. That study finds that the word devadasi seems to have come into common use only in the early twentieth century.

A number of donees of the Uttaresvara grant and the Khandavalli plates bear the title ghata-sasin. Parabrahma Sastry suggests that these donees were teachers in ghatikas, or colleges. In his view Sanskrit held first place in education. The Uttaresvara grant praises the scholar Viddanacharya, whose book Prameyacharchamrita is now lost. Vidyanatha, the court poet of Prataparudra, wrote the Prataparudriya, a work on poetics that scholars still study as a standard text. Sastry writes that almost every illustrative verse in the book praises Prataparudra. Telangana – Land and People says that all the illustrative verses praise him. Other Sanskrit authors of the period include the poet Sakalya Malla, the commentator Gandaya Bhatta and the general Kolani Rudradeva, who wrote on grammar.

Many inscriptions are poems in their own right. Sastry's Telugu study names poets with the titles Kavichakravarti, Tribhuvana Vidyachakravarti, Abhinava Mayura and Balabharati at the court of Ganapati Deva. Epigraphia Telanganica gives the title Tribhuvana Vidyachakravarti to Manchibhattopadhyaya, the priest of Ganapati Deva. Sastry calls the Thousand Pillar inscription of 1163, composed by the ascetic Achintendra, a small kavya, or literary poem.

A poet known only by the title Kavichakravarti, emperor of poets, composed the Pakala lake inscription. Sastry's 1978 book says that this poet was most likely also the author of the Chebrolu inscription of Jaya. His 1981 study states this as certain and adds the Chandavolu inscription of Jaya.

Sastry's 1978 book credits the Ganapesvaram inscription to a poet named Nandimitra. His 1981 study suggests that Kavichakravarti wrote the Ganapesvaram inscription too. The same study notes that only the Pakala and Chebrolu records name Kavichakravarti as their poet. Balabharati composed the Kundavaram inscription of Kundamamba, and a poet named Ramadeva composed one of the Bayyaram inscriptions of Mailama.

A family of scholars composed the records of the general Malyala Gunda and his wife Kuppamamba. Mayura, son of Isvara, wrote the Vaddamanu inscription of Gunda. Mayura's son Isvara Suri, an expert in the grammar of Panini, wrote the Bhutpur inscription of Gunda in 1259 and received land for it. Isvara also composed a Bothpur record of 1272, in which Gunda gave land to learned brahmins. In 1277 Isvara composed the Bothpur record of Kuppamamba, then the widow of Gunda. Sastry notes that Gunda and Kuppamamba were patrons of scholars.

Sastry's 1978 book joins the couple in a single Bothpur inscription of Gunda and his wife, which he dates to the last years of Ganapati Deva. Elsewhere in the same book he dates the record of Kuppamamba to 1277, after the death of Gunda. Epigraphia Telanganica and the site's list of inscriptions keep the records apart, each with its own date and donor. In those records Gunda is the donor in 1246, 1259 and 1272, and Kuppamamba is the donor in 1277.

Some verses are picture poems. In a chakrabandha, or wheel verse, letters on the circles spell out the name of the record, its hero and its poet. Sastry's 1978 book reads such a wheel verse in a Bothpur record that names Isvara. His 1981 study reads another in the Vaddamanu record that names Mayura and the engraver Nagaya.

Two long poems survive as rock inscriptions near Warangal. At Ursu, a poet named Narasimha composed a Sanskrit poem of sixty-two verses. The poem tells of the love and marriage of a Siddha couple, a pair of semi-divine beings. The inscription gives no title, and Sastry edited the poem as Siddhodvaha.

A second inscription at Ursu, in Nagari script, is incomplete. Sastry reads its colophon as calling Narasimha the son of the royal teacher Visvesvara. Sastry could not decide whether Narasimha was a son by birth or a pupil. One summary in Epigraphia Telanganica calls Narasimha the son of Visvesvara, and another calls him the son of Visvesvara's daughter. The second summary describes the Nagari work as a treatise on yoga.

Sastry's 1981 study places Narasimha in the reign of Prataparudra. Verses by Narasimha on the gateways of Warangal fort claim a commentary on the Rig Veda and a Kakatiya Charita in eight cantos, written in one day. None of these books survives.

On the Siddhesvara Gutta near Hanamakonda, an unfinished poem of thirty-seven verses describes the Andhra country and Orugallu. Its author avoided every labial sound. Sastry states that the name of the author is not known. Epigraphia Telanganica considers it possible that Narasimha also wrote this poem.

Parabrahma Sastry gives first place among the Telugu works of the period to the Andhra Mahabharata of Tikkana. Tikkana, called Kavibrahma, wrote his part of the Telugu Mahabharata, from the Virata Parva onwards, at the court of Manumasiddhi II of Nellore. Sastry's Telugu study says that Tikkana visited Ganapati Deva at Orugallu, but did not belong to the Kakatiya court.

The Ranganatha Ramayana is a Telugu poem in dvipada, a Telugu couplet metre. The colophons of the poem name the author as Buddharaja of the Gona family. A tradition names the author as a poet called Ranganatha. Telangana – Land and People calls the author Gona Buddha Reddy and dates the poem to 1250.

Sastry gives two different statements about Buddharaja's family. On one page he calls Kuppamamba, the wife of Malyala Gunda, a daughter of this Buddharaja. On another page he writes that very little is known of Buddharaja and his ancestors. The Bothpur record of 1277 calls Kuppamamba the daughter of a Buddhaya of the Gona family, but it does not call him a poet.

Palkuriki Somanatha of Palakurti near Warangal wrote lives of Basava and of Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya in plain Telugu. Sastry notes that these works criticise other faiths and describe the religious and social life of the time. Telangana – Land and People describes Somanatha as a poet who opposed the established order of the Vedas, the brahmins and caste. Sastry's 1981 study calls the Bekkallu inscription of Mallireddi the first Telugu inscription of the Kakatiya age written in a literary style.

Jaya, also called Jayapa, commanded the elephant corps of Ganapati Deva. Jaya wrote the Nritta Ratnavali, a Sanskrit treatise on dance in eight chapters, which V. Raghavan edited in 1965. Parabrahma Sastry, following Raghavan's introduction, notes that one chapter describes desi dance, the regional dances of Andhra in Ganapati Deva's time. The book also treats marga, the classical style, abhinaya or expression, and the karanas and angaharas, the units and sequences of movement. Jaya is also said to have written the Gita Ratnavali on music and the Vadya Ratnavali on instruments, but both books are lost. Telangana – Land and People also describes the Nritta Ratnavali as a source on the regional dances.

Alekhya Punjala lists the desi forms in the Nritta Ratnavali. Her list includes perini, kolata, a dance with sticks, and kanduka, a dance with a ball. In her view perini was the most popular of these forms, a vigorous dance of men, performed in temples and before battle. Punjala writes that the dance teacher Nataraja Ramakrishna revived perini in modern times, inspired by the sculptures of the Ramappa temple. Among the studies used for this page, only Punjala describes perini. Parabrahma Sastry does not mention perini in his book.

Scholars disagree on how closely the temple sculptures follow the treatise. Parabrahma Sastry reports that some authorities on dance see the regional styles of the Nritta Ratnavali in the dancers and kolata scenes carved on Kakatiya temples. Alekhya Punjala repeats this view.

S. Gopalakrishna Murthy holds that the twelve bracket sculptures at Ramappa do not illustrate the poses of any contemporary treatise. He notes that not all of them are dancers, since they include a drummer, a huntress and a woman with snakes. In his view the carvings show the popular dance that devotees watched in the temple hall, and he notes that Jaya also described popular dances. On the pillars of a smaller temple at Palampet he notes that dancers appear singly and drummers in pairs.

The inscriptions record music and dance as part of daily worship. The ranga-bhoga took place in the ranga-mandapa, the hall in front of the shrine. At Pillalamarri, Nami Reddi gave houses to the temple's priests, drummers called maddelas, singers called padis, dancers called patras and a flute player. A record of Ganapati Deva's reign at Dharmasagar shares temple land among singers, dancers, drummers and flute players. A record of 1268 at Burugugadda grants land to drummers, dancers and players of the avajam, a musical instrument. Parabrahma Sastry counts at least twenty kinds of staff for the ranga-bhoga in a Durgi inscription. Sastry places that inscription in the reign of Ganapati Deva and dates it to 1269.

Parabrahma Sastry names the kirtimukha, a lion-like face, as the main decorative motif of Kakatiya art. Other common motifs are the alasakanya, a graceful woman on a bracket, the hamsa or goose, and the Nandi, richly carved with bells. Sastry suggests that a workshop at Orugallu supplied carved pillars, door frames and Nandis to temples across the kingdom. He finds no clear portrait of a king except the gaja-kesari motifs, a lion over an elephant, that he links to Rudrama Devi and Prataparudra. Alekhya Punjala repeats these points. Gopalakrishna Murthy compares the large eyes and curving bodies of the Ramappa brackets with Jain miniature painting. The Architecture page describes the temples and their bracket sculptures.

Parabrahma Sastry describes society in terms of the four varnas, the classes of the Sanskrit law books, each divided into regional groups. The inscriptions often call the whole people the ashtadasa-praja, the eighteen groups. Sastry takes the list of eighteen from a late Vijayanagara copper plate and assumes that it held in Kakatiya times. Most groups in that list are named after an occupation, such as potters, weavers, dyers, oil pressers, herdsmen, washermen and barbers.

The Prataparudra Caritramu, a Telugu chronicle of the sixteenth century, lists twenty-seven classes of people in Orugallu, including painters and fishermen. Sastry accepts the classes in that list but not its numbers of houses. Cynthia Talbot warns against reading modern castes back into the Kakatiya period. She argues that names such as reddi and setti then marked open occupational classes, not closed groups defined by birth.

People formed corporate bodies called samayas, which kept their own customs and chose their own elders. In 1228 the weavers of Anumakonda, Orugallu and Mattewada jointly installed gods, and each member contributed to their upkeep. Epigraphia Telanganica names three gods, Salesvara, Ganapatesvara and Sakalesvara, while Sastry names only Salesvara. The record threatens anyone who refuses to pay with expulsion from the samaya. Other records name bodies of carriers of goods, oil pressers, craftsmen, warriors, temple servants and merchants. Saiva priests formed a body called the Asamkhyata Mahesvaras.

Rudrama Devi ruled the kingdom from 1262 to 1289, and records of her reign name the ruler as Rudradeva Maharaja. Parabrahma Sastry writes that she held court in male dress and led her troops in person. He suggests that some nobles probably revolted because they would not accept a woman as ruler. His evidence for this is a later family chronicle. Other women also held power. Ganapamba, a daughter of Ganapati Deva, governed part of the Kota country as a great feudatory after her husband died about 1219. Her Yenamadala inscription of 1249–50 records her pious works as a widow. The Rulers page tells the life of Rudrama Devi.

Women appear often as donors in the inscriptions. In 1117 Mailama, the wife of the minister Beta, built a Jain temple on the Padmakshi hill. Another Mailama, the sister of Ganapati Deva, built the Bayyaram tank and built temples at Inugurti in 1221. Her sister Kundamamba founded a brahmin village, a temple and a tank at Kundavaram in 1213. In 1277 Kuppamamba, the widow of Malyala Gunda, built a temple at Bothpur and set up a linga in his name. Dannamadevi, a queen of Rudra Deva, gave a lamp to the Bhimesvara temple at Draksharama.

Farmers marked the start of the farming year and the harvest with festivals, according to Parabrahma Sastry. On Eruvaka Punnama, the full moon of Jyeshtha, villagers took decorated ploughs and bullocks to a common place for worship before sowing. In Sastry's reading, the Upparapalli inscription of Ganapati Deva's reign names a hill called Eruvaka-gubbali, where this worship took place. A record of Ganapati Deva's reign at Durgi required a feeding house to feed five Pasupata ascetics daily during Chaturmasya. Chaturmasya was the four months of the rains. Epigraphia Telanganica dates a Durgi record of the same temple, of the god Vankesvara, to 29 September 1251.