The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c15.s2.t4.3

v2.c15.s2.t4.3

² AR, No. 194 of 1905 and SII, x, 398. The relationship between Gaṇapatidēva and Rudrāmbā had been, until recently, a subject of controversy. The Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who visited the Telugu country in or about A.D. 1295 during the closing years of Rudrāmbā's reign, speaks of her as the wife of her predecessor, viz. Gaṇapatidēva (K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, *Foreign Notices of South India*, p. 174). Similarly, Kumāraswāmi Sōmapithi, the son of the famous commentator, Kolachelama Mallinātha Sūri, asserts in his celebrated commentary on Vidyānātha's *Pratāparudra-yaśōbhūshaṇam* that after the death of Gaṇapatidēva, who had only female issue, his chief queen, Rudramadēvī, ruled the kingdom for several years without opposition (*Kākatiya Samchika*, App.). His evidence is not, however, consistent; for in the *Nāṭaka-prakaraṇam* of the same work he states that Rudrāmbā was the daughter of Gaṇapatidēva by his queen, Sōmāmbā, thereby contradicting his own earlier statement. How Kumāraswāmi Sōmapithi came to commit himself to two contradictory statements about Gaṇapatidēva's relationship to Rudrāmbā is not easily explicable. The *Pratāpacharita* and the *Local Records* (*Saivaprachāriṇī Granthamāla*, Warangal, No. 3, p. 40) also refer in the same manner to Rudramadēvī as Gaṇapatidēva's queen. On the authority of the works mentioned above, especially the first, several scholars and historians of the last generation held that Gaṇapatidēva was succeeded by his queen Rudramadēvī. This view, however, is utterly untenable. The contemporary epigraphic evidence leaves absolutely no room for doubt that Rudrāmbā was not the wife but the daughter of Gaṇapati. As this fact has now been universally recognized, it is not necessary to cite evidence or to embark on a fresh discussion of the subject here.