The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c13.s3: Government and Social Conditions

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c13.s3

Language: English

v2.c13.s3.t1 People — 8 parts
v2.c13.s3.t2 Literature — 50 parts

Government and Social Conditions

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ON the state of government and society under the Eastern Chālukyas we learn little from our sources, either epigraphical or literary. We may assume that at its foundation the Eastern Chālukya court was more or less a replica of that of Bādāmi, and that as generations passed, local factors gained in strength and the monarchy of Vengi developed features of its own; still, external influences must have also continued to flow in from the Rāshṭrakūṭas, the Chōḷas, and the Chālukyas of Kalyāṇī, with all of whom the Vengi kingdom had had long and intimate contact, now friendly, now hostile. In the early stages some Pallava colouring also must have been present, particularly in the southern marches of the kingdom.

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The inscriptions make mention of the traditional seven components of the State (saptāṅga), and the eighteen tīrthas (offices), such as mantri (minister), purohita (chaplain), sēnāpati (commander), yuvarāja (heir-apparent), dauvārika (door-keeper), pradhāna (chief), adhyaksha (head of department) and so on.¹ A rather late copper-plate grant records the fact that Mēḍamārya was appointed by Vira-Choḍa to the dignity of sēnāpati and that the king placed a tiara on his head when investing him with this high office.² A grant of Amma I speaks of the Paṭṭavardhani family as holders of offices in the State for several generations following; and the expression used here, niyogādhikṛta (superintendent of the niyogas),³ may well indicate the existence even at a relatively early date of the complex organization of the palace staff into seventy-two niyogas; this system is known to have obtained in some of the larger temples of the Vengi country during this period,⁴ and it is a well-known fact that the court and the temple were organized on parallel lines.

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¹ EI, iv, 307; vi, 307; CP, 1 of 1916-17.

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² SII, i, 39; v, 30.

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³ Ibid., no. 36, l. 45.

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⁴ 729 of 1920.

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The vishaya and koṭṭam were administrative subdivisions; the Karma-rāshtra, later Kammanāḍu-vishaya, and the Bōya-Koṭṭams are examples of these.⁵ The Chendalūr grant of Sarvalōkāśraya is addressed to all naiyogika-vallabas, a very general term containing no indication of their duties, as well as to the grāmēyakas, the residents of the village which was the subject of the grant.⁶ The manneyas are another class of officials occasionally mentioned;⁷ they held assignments of land or revenue in different villages, but nothing more is really known about them. In fact there is good reason to hold that there was no settled administration worthy of the name in the kingdom as a whole; civil war and foreign invasion frequently harried the land; and the territory was parcelled into a number of small principalities held by a warlike nobility comprising such collateral branches of the Cāḷukyas themselves as the houses of Elamañchili, Piṭhāpuram, and Mudu-goṇḍa, lines dynastically connected with them like the Sarōnāthas of Koḷanu and the Haihayas of Kona, and others who had been raised to high rank with a corresponding award of territory in recognition of loyal services rendered to the ruling family. The Velaṇāḍus, Koṇḍapaḍumaṭis, Chāgis, Parichchhēdis, and others belonged to this latter class. All of them paid allegiance and tribute to the Vengi ruler when he was strong, but were equally ready to intrigue with the enemies of the suzerain or take sides in the numerous wars of succession when weakness was apparent. The villages, however, must have carried on their local affairs in the traditional manner, not very much affected by the political storms blowing over the country; their economy was necessarily simple and the references to *grāmeyakas* and *rāṣṭrakūṭa-pramukhas* show that the people lived under the guidance of their natural leaders, the men of substance and character who happened to be living in their midst. In the Pabhuparru grant of Śaktivarman I we come across an instance of the king removing a *grāmaṇi* for disloyal and treasonable conduct, and appointing another in his place.¹ Even in these troubled times, the central government was not, as it could indeed never afford to be, out of touch with life in the villages, the cells of the body politic.

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⁵ IA, vii, 186 f.; EI, viii, 236; IA, xx, 104, &c.

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⁶ EI, viii, 239.

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⁷ Ibid., xxi, 33.

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¹ JTA, ii, 403.

People

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Hiuen Tsang, who travelled in the Andhra country soon after the establishment of the Eastern Cāḷukya kingdom, has surprisingly little to say of the people of those provinces.² He noted that the country had a rich fertile soil and a moist hot climate; the people were of a violent character; their mode of speech differed from that of the Madhyadēśa, but they followed the same system of writing—all of which is fairly correct for the epoch. He adds elsewhere that the people were of a dark complexion and were fond of the arts. Some parts of the country were sparsely populated and others, the Telugu-Chōḍa country for instance, were wild jungle where bands of highwaymen went about openly. Everywhere he found Buddhism in a decadent condition, and Hinduism, Deva-worship as he calls it, in the ascendant.

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² K. A. N. Sastri, *Foreign Notices*, pp. 98-101.

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Besides the normal castes of the social order, tribes like Bōyas and Savaras are heard of in the inscriptions, and they doubtless took a lower place in the social scale. The Brāhmans took premier place and were generally respected for their learning and character; they were the recipients of gifts on ceremonial occasions. Frequently, however, they entered the service of the state as civil or military officers, and some of these attained great distinction in such callings. The warrior class of fighting men and their general activities have been noticed above. The *Kōmaṭis*, as the trading class of the Telugu country were called, were a flourishing community whose benefactions to temples and other religious and charitable foundations often figure in the inscriptions. It may be that their organization into a powerful guild (*nakara*) which had its headquarters in Penugoṇḍa (West Godavari) and branches in seventeen other centres had its beginnings in this period; a full description of the guild and its organization is to be found in the *Vaiśyapurāṇa* (canto 7), a work written probably in the sixteenth century. The *Telikas* (oil-mongers) are another guild nominally numbering 1,000 who secured certain social privileges from Rājarāja Choḍa-Ganga, the Choḷa viceroy of Vengi, in A.D. 1084.¹ For the bulk of the population the army furnished a career, and the successful adventurer or condottiere had, as noted already, every chance of setting himself up as a chieftain over some small territory either as a vassal of a more powerful leader, or on his own account.

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¹ EI, vi, 33.

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In the sphere of religion Buddhism had lost ground more and more since the days of Hiuen Tsang, and the Buddha of Amarārāma (Amarāvatī) had in fact come to be worshipped as an incarnation of Viṣṇu; the other four *ārāmas* of Bhīmapura, Ḍākarēmi, Palakolanu, and Drākshārāma are believed to have been once famous centres of Buddhism, but subsequently became Hindu shrines which attained great celebrity and attracted vast crowds of pilgrims. The shrines of Mahāsēna at Chebrolu, Huṁkāra-Śaṅkarī at Bidapura, and Mallēśvara at Bezwada were other great centres of pilgrimage. The temple of Mahāsēna at Chebrolu was specially noted for its annual *jātra*, one of the features of which was a grand procession of the image all the way from Chebrolu to Bezwada and back—a distance of about twenty-five miles. Śaivism was more popular than Vaiṣṇavism, and we hear rather more of the construction of Śaiva temples than of those of Viṣṇu. The 108 Narendrēśvaras of Vijayāditya II Narendra Mṛgarāja have been already mentioned; Yuddhamalla I erected a temple to Kārttikēya at Bezwada; Chāḷukya Bhīma I constructed the famous temples at Drākshārāma and Chāḷukya-Bhīmavaram; and Rājarājanarēndra erected three memorial shrines at Kalidiṇḍi to commemorate the three Choḷa generals who fell in battle at that place.

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Jainism, unlike Buddhism, continued to command some support from the people, and inscriptions record the construction of *basadis* and grants of land for their support from the monarchs and the people. Amma II Rājamahēndra showed favour to the Jainas but no king of the Eastern Chāḷukya line, with the possible exception of Vimalāditya, ever became a declared follower of the doctrine of Mahāvīra. Amma II built two Jain temples (*Jinālayas*) called Sarvalokāśraya and Kaṭakābharaṇa, and established a feeding house (*satra*) attached to each where *śramaṇas* of all the four castes were to be fed at the expense of the foundation.²

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² EI, ix, 49; vii, 191.

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Monasteries, in fact, played an important part in the promotion of education and morality in the country, and, as might be expected, Śaiva institutions of this character were more numerous than the rest. There were two of them in Bezwada attached to the temples of Śiva and Mahāsēna which had been built by Vijayāditya II and Yuddhamalla I respectively. The monks fed the poor, tended the sick, consoled the afflicted, and set up schools for educating children and young people.

Literature

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Telugu verse makes its first appearance in the inscriptions of the time of Guṇaga Vijayāditya III in the latter half of the ninth century. But the rise and progress of Telugu literature cannot be traced with any certainty as all evidence relating to its beginnings seems to have disappeared. Nanne Chōḍa, the author of the Telugu *Kumārasambhava*, says in his introduction that at first poetry was composed only in the *mārga* or classical style, and that the Chālukya king and others caused poems to be written in the *dēśi* or popular style and encouraged the literary use of the Telugu language in the Andhra country.¹ Though he does not give the name of the Chālukya ruler in question, there can be no doubt that he must have long preceded Rājarāja Narendra, the patron of Nannaya Bhaṭṭa, whose *Mahābhārata* is the earliest extant work of Telugu literature. The birth of Telugu literature seems indeed to have been delayed and its growth hampered by the prevailing political conditions and literary tradition. The independence and integrity of Vengi were constantly threatened by foreign invasion and civil war; Telugu had not yet become the polished idiom that it was to be later, and next to Sanskrit, Kannada was the language that commanded prestige and position in the literary world. Three great Kannada poets, Ponna, Pampa, and Nāgavarma, were closely associated with Kammanāḍu and Vengipalu, i.e. Vangipuram in the Narasaraopet *tāluk* of the modern Guntur District; all three were Jainas. But surely Nannaya was not the first poet in the Telugu language, as his poetry shows a highly developed technique which presupposes a fairly long period of development. It is a fact, however, that with the exception of a few verses in the inscriptions, no work of the pre-Nannaya period has survived. Of Nannaya’s work, the conditions under which it was done, and the probable cause of its being broken off in the middle, something has been said in our account of the reign of his patron Rājarāja. We may add that Nannaya is said to have undertaken the Telugu version of the Great Epic in order to counteract the influence of Pampa’s *Bhārata*, a work conceived in the spirit of Jainism. Incomplete as it is, Nannaya’s work is universally regarded as a masterpiece of art. It has set the norm for epic poetry in Telugu. Graceful and dignified in its diction, the poem has a charm rarely met with elsewhere in Telugu literature. As a model of sweet, mellifluous, and elegant verse, it remains unrivalled.