The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c15.s2.t3.31

v2.c15.s2.t3.31

*Kaliṅga Expedition*. After his victory over Pṛithvīśvara, Gaṇapati naturally desired to bring the latter’s possessions in Kaliṅga under his rule. He therefore sent an army into that country to reduce it to subjection. The conquest of the coastal districts to the east of Warangal, including the powerful principality of Kolanu (Sarasī- or Kamalākarapuri) as well as that of Kaliṅga, was effected, according to the *Sivayōgasāra*, a fifteenth-century treatise on Vīra-Śaiva theology, in the course of a single campaign under the command of Indulūri Sōma Pradhāni, one of the ministers of Gaṇapati.³ The available epigraphic evidence does not lend colour to this account. The Kākatīya conquest of the coastal Āndhra and Kaliṅga appears, on the contrary, to have been effected piecemeal. Kolanu did not, as a matter of fact, come under the Kākatīya power until A.D. 1231, several years after Gaṇapati's invasion of Kaliṅga. Bhīma, the Telugu Chōḷa chief of Ēruva, who must have been a contemporary of Gaṇapati, appears to have joined the expedition; for in a verse in the Tāḷḷa-Prodduṭūru inscription of Jagatāpi Gaṅgadēva dated Ś. 1244 (A.D. 1322-3), it is stated that Bhīma conquered several places situated in Vēṅgi, Orissa, and the Bastar State in the Madhya Pradesh.¹ Bhīma was a petty chief who could scarcely have carried out all these successful raids entirely with his own resources. He must have joined, like other nobles and soldiers of fortune, the Kākatīya army, and have participated in Gaṇapati's campaigns in the districts mentioned above. Besides these, Rājanāyaka, the commander of the Rēcherlas, accompanied the expedition and distinguished himself during the campaign.²