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THE VELANANDU CHIEFS
Saka 1123. Since Pṛithvīśvara was the ruling chief in Śaka 1108 as stated in his
Piṭhāpuram inscription (Ep. Ind., Vol. IV, p. 32), his father Goṅka III must have
had a short rule of four to five years only between Śaka 1103 and 1108. Thus
the chronology of the above-mentioned Velanāṇḍu chiefs may be set forth roughly
in the following table :â
Goṅka I.
Śaka 998 ; Śaka 1028 (No. 277 of 1905).
Chōḍa or Rājēndrachōḍa-Gāṅgēyarāja
Śaka 1039 (No. 219 of 1935-36) ;
Śaka 1058 (S. I. I. Vol. V, No. 161) ;
Goṅka II.
Śaka 1050─1079.
Rājēndrachōḍa or Velanāṇṭi
Kulōttuṅga Rājēndra-Chōḍa
Śaka 1085─1102
Goṅka III.
Śaka 1103─c.1108
Pṛithvīśvara
c. Śaka 1108─1123
Its subordinate position under the Kākatīyas after Śaka 1123.
15. No. 322 found on a mutilated Nandi-pillar in front of the Narēndrēśvara
temple at Peddapulivarru in the Repalle taluk is record of Velanāṇṭi-Chōḍa,
who is stated to have presented rich spoils
of war to the temple of Bhīmēśvara at
Drākshārāma. The inscription is badly
damaged and the name and exploits of his father who appears to have ruled over
the ‘ Fifty-lakh Andhra country’ cannot be made out. In the latter part of the
inscription which is also similarly damaged occurs, with reference to the chief,
the expression Gaṇapati-kshitīśaṁ saṁsēvya which testifies to the subordinate
position of the Velanāṇḍu chiefs under the Kākatīyas after Śaka 1123, as
stated above. The Śaka date of the present epigraph is expressed by the chronogram ‘ [sō]m-ēshu-rudra-gaṇitē’, i.e., Śaka [1]151, which falls during the reign
of Kākatīya Gaṇapati, to whom the chief paid allegiance. The present
epigraph thus furnishes a date 8 years earlier than the earliest known date for
him, i.e., Śaka 1159 (S. I. I., Vol. IV, No. 1333), and brings the interval between
Pṛithvīśvara, the last independent chief of the family, and Velanāṇṭi-Chōḍa of the
inscription under review, into a narrow compass of within 30 years, which were
perhaps covered by the reigns of himself and his father, whose name is lost
in the record.
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