The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c13.s1.7

v2.c13.s1.7

By the date when the Kopparam plates of Pulakēśin were being issued (A.D. 631), his brother Viṣṇuvardhana had many successes in the Eastern Deccan to his credit and had already become virtually independent. This seems to be the meaning of the statement that he had secured the kingdom for his son, and the eighteen years uniformly allotted to him in all later charters may be taken to be covered by the period A.D. 624-41. He had acquired the titles Viṣamasiddhi (one who has attained successes in difficult enterprises), a name he is said to have owed to his great ability in taking all types of impregnable fortresses, and Makaradhvaja and Kāmadeva, both words denoting the Indian Cupid—epithets which would seem to convey a satire on his person if he really was a cripple. The two copper-plate records of grants which he issued as an independent ruler both come from the Vizagapatam District; one of them is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign, while the other, bearing no date, was given at Piṣṭapura. It is a reasonable inference that a part of Kalinga was included in Viṣṇuvardhana’s kingdom; but traces of his rule farther south are not wanting, and if the Viṣṇukuṇḍins continued their rule in Vengi (Dendaluru) under Mādhava III or his son Mañcaṇṇabhaṭṭāraka, they must have done so as vassals of a superior power in the same way as did the Durjayas of the forest country to the north of their territory.¹ An archaic rock inscription of Viṣamasiddhi from Chezarla in the Guntur District may well be a record of his reign.² But even if this be doubted, there is the explicit statement in an inscription of A.D. 1132, also from the Guntur District, that Buddharāja, the founder of the Koṇḍapaḍumaṭi family, was employed by Kubja Viṣṇuvardhana, and obtained from him as a reward for his services the rulership of a district comprising seventy-three villages.³ And beside this the land which formed the subject of Pulakēśin’s gift recorded on the Kopparam plates was situated in Karma-rāṣṭra, also part of the Guntur and Nellore territories.⁴ There is in fact little doubt that Viṣṇuvardhana I became eventually the ruler of very nearly the whole of the Vengi kingdom of which the extent has been indicated above. The wars between his brother Pulakēśin and the Pallava Narasimhavarman I may perhaps have given him his opportunity for increasing his own holdings in the south.