The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c13.s5.2

v2.c13.s5.2

Vēmulavāḍa, also called Lēmulavāḍa, in the Karimnagar District of Hyderabad, was the capital of a dynasty of Cāḷukyas who ruled a considerable area as the feudatories of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas. Their history, which forms a luminous footnote to the records of the suzerain dynasty, is to be gathered mainly from three inscriptions and from references to it in the Kannaḍa poet Pampa’s Bhārata or Vikramārjunavijaya. Pampa was patronized by Arikesarī II of Vēmulavāḍa, and the poet identified his patron with the epic hero Arjuna and thereby contrived to interweave several incidents of contemporary history into his narrative of the epic story, besides giving a reasonably accurate account of his patron’s ancestors in the introduction to his work. The three inscriptions mentioned are: the Kollipara (Guntur District) copper plates of Arikesarī I,¹ the Vēmulavāḍa rock inscription of Arikesarī II,² and the Parbhaṇi copper plates of Arikesarī III.³