The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c15.s2.t3.8

v2.c15.s2.t3.8

The reign of Gaṇapati, though it began under unfavourable circumstances, was destined to become one of the most brilliant epochs in the history of the Āndhra country. Gaṇapati was an energetic monarch, and during his long reign of sixty-three years he brought under his sway by war or diplomacy almost the whole land inhabited by the Telugu-speaking peoples. The political disintegration which followed the dismemberment of the Western Chāḷukyan and Chōḷa empires rendered his task comparatively easy. The country was subjected to the authority of numerous petty chiefs engaged in constant internecine warfare for self-aggrandizement. The chiefs of Velanāḍu demand attention first. Although their power declined after the death of Chōḍa II about A.D. 1181, inscriptions at Dākshārāmam, Piṭhāpuram, and Śrīkūrmam indicate that Pṛthvīśvara’s authority over the northern portion of the maritime Āndhra country remained intact until the time of his death about A.D. 1210.¹ Some of the loyal subordinates of his family in the Divi island and its neighbourhood acknowledged his suzerainty and helped him in his wars,² though ruling their own fiefs as independent princes. A tradition preserved in the Telugu *Simhāsana-dvātriṁśika* of Gōparāju, a work composed in the early fifteenth century A.D., represents Pṛthvīśvara as ruling from his ancestral capital Tsandavōlu in the Krishna district.³ The evidence of the inscriptions, as well as literary tradition, thus bears testimony to the continuance of the rule of the Velanāṭi family over part, if not the whole, of the coastal Āndhra country. Their authority, such as it was, must have been limited by the power of numerous autonomous or semi-autonomous petty feudal states which honeycombed the country. The chiefs of Kolanu or Sarasipurī ruled over the region round the Kolair lake. The Chāgis of Guḍimeṭṭa held sway over parts of the Krishna tract in the interior, and the Nātavāḍis over the territory along the northern bank of the same river now included in the Kambhammet district of the old Hyderabad State. The Kōṭas, and the Telugu Chōḷas of Koṇidena, governed parts of the present Guṇṭur region and farther south lay the Telugu Chōḷa kingdom of Nellore, comprising the Nellore and Cuddapah districts of the Āndhra Pradesh, and the major portion of the Chingleput district of the Madras State with the cities of Nellore and Kāñchi as alternate capitals. The petty chiefs of Ēruva, a small tract of territory at the junction of the Nellore, Guntur, and Kurnool districts, acknowledged the supremacy of the Nellore Chōḷas, whilst several minor principalities flourished in the Cuddapah and Kurnool marches. And in the north-east the Gaṅgas of Kaliṅga were supreme in parts of that country. Such was the political state of the Āndhra country at the moment when Gaṇapati at length took the reins of the government into his own hands.