Reference

Parabrahma Sastry notes that some records allow one manika of ghee for a perpetual lamp. Other records allow only three solas of ghee.

Parabrahma Sastry warns that the exact value of these coins is unknown. He writes that any conclusion about their values cannot be better than a conjecture.

The royal standards were the kesari-tumu and the kesari-putti. Parabrahma Sastry finds no way to convert these units into modern measures.

Parabrahma Sastry dates the nayamkara system to Rudrama Devi and Prataparudra. He writes that Rudrama Devi introduced the system and Prataparudra organised it well.

Rudra Deva calls himself only Mahamandalesvara in the Thousand Pillar inscription. Fleet judged the title a custom and thought that Rudra Deva was really an independent king.

The Chandupatla record also calls Rudrama Devi Mahamandalesvara. Royal women therefore carried the same title as the kings.

Raya-gaja-kesari appears for Ganapati Deva and Rudrama Devi in the Bidar inscription. Daya-gaja-kesari appears for Prataparudra at Terala in 1292 and on the seal of the Khandavalli plates.

Parabrahma Sastry used these titles to assign gold coins with the legends Raya-gaja-kesari and Daya-gaja-kesari to the Kakatiyas. Earlier scholars had assigned the same coins to the Western Chalukyas.

Parabrahma Sastry warns that inscriptions are hard to read. The old language and script are unfamiliar, many stones are broken, and errors by old scribes and modern editors are frequent.

Different editors can read the same stone differently. An early editor read a place called Vakataka in the Thousand Pillar verse on the limits of the kingdom. Fleet rejected that reading.

Editors also differ on dates. For the Vilasa grant of Prolaya Nayaka, Parabrahma Sastry gives about 1330, while Epigraphia Telanganica gives 1325.

Early Saka dates are less certain. Burnell found that dates up to the tenth century, and even later, can vary by two or three years from the usual reckoning. He thought a fairly exact chronology possible only after the tenth century.

Printed books contain misprints. Epigraphia Telanganica Volume III prints the Kotagiri date once as 31 December 1264. Another entry in the same volume prints the Saka year as 11[6]5. The correct reading is Saka 1195, which is 1273.

Volume II of Epigraphia Telanganica heads one summary of the Thousand Pillar inscription with 19 January 1162. The text of the same summary gives 1163.

The database on this site comes from an OCR reading of Epigraphia Telanganica. Its abstracts can therefore contain OCR errors in names, numbers and dates. Check the printed volume before you rely on a detail.

Later writing can sit beside old writing. The Yenamadala pillar carries several later Telugu records. E. Hultzsch found that a short recent inscription had been mistaken for part of the first record.

Barnett also found scratched writings in modern hands on the floor of the Ramappa temple. He judged them of no importance.

Some grants survive only as copies, and some are forgeries. The Tumkur grant names Mahadeva as the father of Prataparudra. Its original was never found, and only a copy was recorded.

Parabrahma Sastry calls the Tumkur grant spurious. Its date in Saka 855 is far too early for Prataparudra. He still accepts its statement that Mahadeva belonged to the Kakatiya family.

A royal name alone can mislead. Gold coins with the Nagari legend Kakati Prataparudra once seemed to be Kakatiya coins. N. Venkataramanayya showed that they belong to the Gajapati king Prataparudra of Orissa.

Translations of prasasti verses involve judgement. The 1925 editors called the Kotagiri poem poor in style, full of hyperbole, long compounds and far-fetched constructions.

Fleet could not say whether one Thousand Pillar phrase means that Rudra Deva conquered Choda lands or descended from the Cholas. Readers should treat both meanings as open.

Technical words are not always understood. The editor of the Salakalavidu record calls her explanations of its tax names purely tentative.

Some historical statements rest on one scholar's reading. Parabrahma Sastry inferred from the Chandupatla record that Rudrama Devi died in battle ten or twelve days before 25 November 1289.

The Chandupatla stone itself says only that Rudrama Devi and Mallikarjuna Nayaka had reached the world of Siva. The battle is Parabrahma Sastry's inference from the deaths on the same occasion.

Epigraphia Telanganica, in four volumes of 2023, gives English translations and summaries of the Telangana inscriptions. The Government of Telangana allows free use for non-commercial reference. The volumes do not print the original Telugu or Sanskrit texts.

The Hyderabad Archaeological Series of the Nizam's government edited single records with plates. Number 3 (1919) covers the Ramappa and Uparpalli pillars. Number 6 (1925) covers the Kotagiri plates.

The Nizam's government also began A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts. P. Sreenivasachar edited Parts I and II in 1942 and Part III in 1956. M. Somasekhara Sarma prepared Part IV in his last years, and it appeared in 1973.

Epigraphia Indica printed several major Kakatiya records. Volume III has Ganapesvaram, Volume VI has Chebrolu, Volume IX has the Padmakshi pillar, and Volume XII has Motupalli.

J. F. Fleet published the Thousand Pillar inscription in The Indian Antiquary, Volume XI, in 1882. Fleet worked from an ink impression supplied through the Hyderabad authorities.

South Indian Inscriptions, Volumes IV, V, VI and X, print many Kakatiya-period records from the coastal districts. Parabrahma Sastry calls these volumes of immense value. Volume X (1948) holds the Telugu records of the Madras Presidency.

The Andhra Pradesh Department of Archaeology published district volumes for Warangal, Karimnagar and Nalgonda. Parabrahma Sastry reports that the Warangal and Karimnagar volumes of 1974 hold about 225 inscriptions.

S. S. Ramachandra Murthy gathered 367 Kakatiya inscriptions, with text and English translation, in one volume in 2011.

Parabrahma Sastry's Kakatiya Sasana Sahityam, in Telugu, reads the inscriptions as literature. The book names many composers and quotes their verses.

The public-domain volumes are free on the Internet Archive. These include HAS 3, HAS 6, the Corpus Parts I to III, Epigraphia Indica and The Indian Antiquary. The sources page of this site gives each link.