Temples and Temple Patronage in Kakatiya Andhra
DOI:10.1093/0195136616.003.0004
Abstract and Keywords
Stone inscriptions document religious gifts made to Hindu temples by a wide range of donors who sought not only religious benefit but also social prestige and political advancement. Temple patronage was a major stimulus to economic growth since it led to the extension of agriculture and the creation of irrigation facilities. The older temples of coastal Andhra such as Draksharama and Srisailam received the most endowments, mainly in the form of livestock, whereas the newer temples of the interior were generally given land. The patrons of these two types of temples also differed in occupational background, demonstrating that the communities constituted by temple worship varied considerably. The standard model of the Hindu temple institution as a harmonious force for social integration and economic redistribution thus needs to be modified in recognition of the competitive character of temple patronage.
Keywords: Draksharama, economic, endowments, Hindu, patronage, redistribution, religious gifts, Srisailam, temple
Stone inscriptions tell us more about temples than about any other aspect of Kakatiya Andhra. Since stone inscriptions generally record gifts of lasting value made to temple deities, we can learn much about forms of temple worship, the economic resources possessed by temples, and the identities of temple donors. The sheer abundance of data from temples emphasizes their importance; this impression is reinforced by the paucity of other types of information that were not thought worthy of such permanent documentation. From the perspective of inscriptions, all paths appear to lead to the temple. It is thus easy to exaggerate the centrality of the temple, which is often represented in the secondary literature as the single most crucial institution of medieval South India (e.g., Breckenridge 1985a: 53). We should retain a healthy dose of skepticism toward such claims, recognizing that our reconstruction of the past is skewed by the nature of the extant primary sources. The rhetorical submission of a king to a deity, made within the context of a temple inscription, may not signify his submission outside the setting of the temple, to cite just one example.1
While we may doubt that the temple was the epicenter of medieval society, there is no question that the patronage of temples was a highly significant practice with repercussions for many facets of social, economic, and political life. The desire to support the worship of temple gods resulted in the erection of numerous costly stone structures throughout Andhra and the alienation of substantial economic assets on their behalf. In the process, both the geographic and social landscapes of Andhra were considerably transformed. While the building of new temples reflected the agrarian expansion that was occurring in inland localities, it simultaneously stimulated more economic growth. Moreover, temples offered arenas for the formation of new sociopolitical identities, and the patronage of specific temples was often motivated by such factors. The patronage of temples can hence be viewed as both a symptom and a cause of the dynamism of medieval Andhra society: it both reflected ongoing processes and helped shape their further evolution.
How and why all these consequences could result from the act of endowing a temple is the main subject of this chapter. I begin with an overview on the ideology (p.88) of the religious gift and the ways in which religious gift‐giving differed in praxis, for there are substantial differences between literary norms and the patterns revealed in stone inscriptions. The manner in which agrarian expansion was encouraged by the construction of temples and their accompanying tanks is a second topic, followed by a discussion of the types of objects given to temples and how they enabled the temple to act as a redistributive center. Significant variations in the temple institutions and endowment practices of coastal and inland Andhra are examined next, pointing to the differing developmental trajectories of these two subregions. In the fifth section, I return to the question of the multiplicity of motives fueling temple patronage and the various purposes hence served by the temple as an institution situated within the larger world of Kakatiya Andhra.
The Religious Gift in Theory and in Action
Both the beliefs inspiring temple patronage and the actual forms of religious endowment recorded in Kakatiya Andhra inscriptions bear scant resemblance to the classical Sanskrit norms of religious gift‐giving. In the Sanskrit literature on dāna (the religious gift), the brahman is designated as the proper recipient, a role that seems to have evolved out of the fee (dakṣiṇā) paid to brahmans for the ritual performance of Vedic sacrifices. Gifts or hospitality to brahmans gradually became incorporated into a range of other religious practices, such as the śrāddha funerary ceremonies. As the centuries progressed, the variety and cost of items that were recommended as gifts to brahmans increased, and so we find mention of clothing, gold, and cows in the dharmaśāstra legal literature and the Mahābhārata epic. The culmination of this trend was reached in the second half of the first millennium C.E., with the formulation of a series of complex gift rituals known as the mahādānas. They were modeled on the Vedic sacrifice, with its construction of a sacrosanct area, attendance of several priests, use of mantras, and giving of dakṣiṇā (ritual fee). But the core of the mahādāna ceremonies was the giving of lavish quantities of gold and precious stones to brahmans (Hazra 1940). The best‐known mahādāna is the tulāpuruṣa, in which the donor gives away his weight in gold, recorded in South Indian inscriptions from the sixth century onward (Mangalam 1976–77: 91).
The mahādāna rituals were intended to be sponsored by kings, for who else could have afforded such expensive gestures of faith? The importance of gift‐giving for kings, as opposed to sponsorship of Vedic sacrifices, increased in the second half of the first millennium (Dirks 1976). In both literary and epigraphic sources, the king emerges as the primary patron of brahmans and the religious donor par excellence.2Hundreds of royal grants inscribed on copper plates were issued during this era, to record the granting of land rights to brahmans. The oldest existing copper‐plate charter in South India (which is also the first recorded land grant to a brahman) comes from late‐third‐century Andhra.3 From this time onward until ca. 1000, the great majority of Andhra inscriptions record land grants to brahmans on copper plates. The purpose of the copper‐plate grants was to support brahmans well‐versed in Vedic knowledge so that they could both perform the rituals and transmit their teachings to the younger generation, which in turn was meant to increase the (p.89) spiritual prosperity of the realm. At times the revenues from entire villages were alienated so as to establish settlements of learned brahmans, in Andhra commonly known as agrahāras.
The literary emphasis on the mahādānas and on brahman recipients of the gift continued into the second millennium C.E. By this time a distinct genre of Sanskrit literature was dedicated to the norms of religious gift‐giving (dāna‐dharma) and huge compendiums drawing on earlier works were compiled, often in a court setting and for a court audience. For instance, Hemadri, minister of the Seuna kings Mahadeva and Ramachandra of Devagiri during the late thirteenth century, devoted a lengthy section of his Caturvarga‐cintāmaṇi to the subject of the religious gift. Known as the Dānakhaṇḍa, Hemadri's text on gift‐giving came to be considered authoritative throughout South India within decades of its composition (Kane 1975: 755). Several Andhra kings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries claimed to have followed Hemadri's injunctions in extending generous patronage to brahmans.4
Despite the continuing literary emphasis on giving to brahmans, however, inscriptions issued after 1000 show that this practice was rapidly waning in popularity. Rather than copper‐plate grants to brahmans, we find an ever‐increasing proportion of stone inscriptions recording gifts to temples. By the Kakatiya period, copper‐plate grants had become a rarity.5 Brahmans still received some gifts, but no longer in order to perform Vedic rituals for the good of the universe. They might instead, in the thirteenth century, have received land as a reward for priestly services. The performance of funerary rites for Queen Kota Ganapamadevi's dead husband at Gaya in North India earned the brahman Rudrapeddi the gift of a village as his fee, we are explicitly told (EA 4.11). Other inscriptions similarly record gifts to brahmans in return for traveling to holy sites like Gaya and Rameshvaram to conduct rituals (CPIHM 1.10; HAS 13.51) or for carrying out vows as the donor's substitute.
But most brahmans in Kakatiya Andhra received endowments because they were associated with a temple in some manner.6 When a temple was established, an attached brahman village was frequently also set up or separate plots of land were given to brahmans. In these cases, it is clear that the brahmans were subsidiary to the temple, for they are mentioned only at the end of the inscription and are sometimes not even named. Because the gōtra clan membership or Vedic affiliations of the brahman grantees are rarely specified, they were most probably priests rather than scholars or Vedic sacrificialists. Another type of brahman recipient during the Kakatiya period was the Shaiva sectarian leader. Most of this category were affiliated with the same school or monastic order, the Golaki Matha of the Shuddha Shaiva or Shaiva Siddhanta sect of Shaivism. Two Golaki Matha leaders served as spiritual preceptors to the Kakatiya kings in thirteenth‐century Andhra, and several Golaki Matha monasteries were established at major pilgrimage sites (Talbot 1987).
The eclipse of the brahman in our records is attributable partly to the vast expansion in the number of documented religious patrons after 1000. While the brahman land grant inscribed on copper plates had been out of the economic and political grasp of all but the most powerful in the realm and was made primarily by kings and their officers (Sircar 1965: 74), more modest gifts could be given to the god at his temple abode. To be sure, kings were still important sources of religious (p.90) patronage, but they were now overshadowed by the hundreds of nonroyal donors. Members of land‐controlling groups joined merchants, artisans, and herders in making endowments, and the recipients of their gifts were temple deities. These people may still have made occasional gifts to brahmans, as well as other religious specialists, of objects like cows, cash, food, and clothing, but this type of impermanent object was not documented in imperishable form. Clearly, the growth of bhakti devotionalism within a temple context relegated brahmans to second place as religious‐gift recipients just as it diminished the royal role in religious patronage.
The majority of the endowed deities in thirteenth‐century Andhra were Shaiva. On a statewide level, the 247 Shaiva temples constituted 67 percent of all institutions documented in the corpus. Vaishnava temples, comprising 19 percent of the sites statewide, are most numerous south of the Krishna River. The farther south the coastal district, the larger the proportion of Vaishnava temples—23 percent of Guntur District's Kakatiya‐period sites, 34 percent of Prakasam District's, and half of Nellore District's temples. Sheer proximity to the Tamil region, where Vaishnavism was rapidly gaining ground subsequent to the reforms of Ramanuja (1016–1137 C.E.), was probably a factor in the greater proportion of Vishnu temples in southern coastal Andhra (Hanumantha Rao 1973: 254–57).7 The remaining 14 percent of temples either enshrined images of both Vishnu and Shiva, or independent goddesses, or minor gods like Karttikeya, the son of Shiva.
In temple worship the god or goddess is essentially treated as an honored guest. Thus, the traditional customs observed in welcoming a respected brahman are transferred to the temple setting (Goudrian 1969–70: 209). After a number of preliminary rites of purification, the service culminates in a series of offerings made to the deity. Commonly known as the 16 attendances (ṣōḍaśōpacāra), these offerings vary in content and sequence from place to place (Diehl 1956: 95–148; Goudrian 1969–70: 161–215). At the Jagannatha temple in neighboring Orissa state, the first step is the offering of a seat to the deity, who is then welcomed with an invocation. The next few offerings all involve water—for cleansing the feet, for sprinkling on the image, and for rinsing the mouth. A sweet refreshment is then presented, followed by more water for mouth rinsing. The image is bathed, dressed in clean garments, and adorned with ornaments. Sandalwood paste or other perfumes are then provided, as well as flowers and incense. A lamp is waved in front of the deity, who is then given a substantial food offering (naivēdya)—the main course, so to speak. The ceremony ends with an obeisance to the image (Tripathi 1978: 297–300).
Most endowments in Kakatiya Andhra were given for general worship of a deity—aṅga‐raṅga‐bhōga—and do not specify the exact rituals to be performed. In its narrowest meaning, aṅga‐bhōga refers to the decoration of the image which takes place during daily worship (Sircar 1966: 20). By extension, it acquired the broader sense of all the various daily services performed for the main image (mūla‐bēra or mūla‐sthāna). Daily ritual worship was conducted at specific junctures of the day known as sandhya, in the Kakatiya period typically at daybreak and twilight.8 Raṅga‐bhōga, in contrast, denoted the worship services undertaken on special festive occasions, for raṅga refers to the special hall (raṅga‐maṇḍapa) where the processional image of a god (utsava‐bēra, utsava‐mūrti) was worshiped (Sreenivasachar 1940: (p.91) 201). When the purpose of a gift was to support the performance of a specific ritual, it is the food offering that is most often mentioned.9 A good number of inscriptions expressly state that land was granted in order to raise crops for the food offering (ARE 338 of 1934–35; HAS 19 Km.15 and Mn.27–B).
The fact that thirteenth‐century inscriptions do not mention a range of different worship services suggests that the elaborate rituals of later centuries had not yet developed. Most noticeably, there are few references to festival rituals, which involve carrying an image outside the temple precincts in procession. Because of the accessibility of the deity on these occasions and the public nature of the activity, ceremonies such as the annual enactment of the deity's marriage were to become highly popular. At both Tirupati and Simhachalam (a Shrivaishnava temple in Visakhapatnam District), festivals figure more frequently in inscriptions beginning in the fourteenth century (Sundaram 1969: 131–32; Viraraghava Charya 1982: 43–57). A corollary to the modest scale of worship at Kakatiya‐period temples is the relatively small size of the temple staff who serviced their needs. Although few endowments were intended to support members of the temple establishment, in most cases arrangements for their payment were made internally. Only in the larger temples of coastal Andhra do we find mention of different classes of temple employees, such as the sthānapati administrators, the māni officials like treasurers and accountants, the sāni temple women,10 and the more lowly nibandhakāru cooks, sweepers, conch‐blowers, artisans, and watchmen (Parabrahma Sastry 1978: 284–87).
The temple cult of Kakatiya Andhra exhibits traces of past Buddhist practices. For one thing, several temple complexes were probably erected in places that had previously been Buddhist centers. This is certainly true of Amaravati in the lower Krishna valley, the most famous of Andhra Buddhist sites. As late as the twelfth century, the Buddha continued to attract endowments at Amaravati (EI 6.15), but the site now boasted a large Hindu temple that superseded the Buddhist establishment in popularity. It is quite likely that Hindu temple worship in Andhra also had Buddhist antecedents. Andhra was a major center of Buddhism in the early historic period and was studded with stūpas from Salihundam in the north to Ramatirtham in the south. The stūpas themselves appear to have been worshiped with garlands, flags, and the like, if sculptures from Amaravati are any indication (Ramaswami 1975: 9, 30). M. Rama Rao also believes that fruit, flowers, and lamps were offered on the balconies of Andhra stūpas (1967: 56). Some such similarities may derive from a common “folk” source and therefore not be attributable to any specific religion. But the very fact that both early Buddhist and medieval Hindu religious patronage took place in an institutional setting distinguishes them from the classic Sanskrit patronage of an individual learned brahman. Moreover, the classical Sanskrit land grant to brahmans was a royal act, whereas nonroyal donors were prominent in both Buddhist stūpa and Hindu temple worship. In terms of practice, therefore, significant resemblances between religious gift‐giving to Buddhist and Hindu institutions have been overlooked due to the scholarly differentiation of the two religions on the basis of doctrine.
We note further deviations between classical Sanskrit theory and Kakatiya Andhra practice when we turn to the motivations for religious gift‐giving. According to the ideology of the gift expounded in Sanskrit legal literature from the first (p.92) millennium onward, the pure gift known as dāna was utterly different in character from the dakṣiṇā fee paid to the brahman for his performance of a ritual. True dāna could never be construed as payment for services, since the merit from the gift arose precisely because the giver held no expectation of reward. Complicated Mimamsa techniques were applied in this argument that only the disinterested gift could yield the maximum spiritual fruit (Trautmann 1981: 278–88; Kane 1941: 837–88). In most Kakatiya‐period inscriptions, the purpose of the gift is similarly said to be a generalized spiritual merit (dharma or puṇya). The merit resulting from the gift could be transferred to others—another practice that originated in the Buddhist period—and was customarily dedicated to parents or other relatives in the thirteenth century.11
But because temple patronage was oriented toward a specific deity, temple endowment was often undertaken either in return for some perceived mercy already extended by a deity or in hopes of a future boon. One man who was grateful for the boon of a son from the god Bhavanarayana endowed a perpetual lamp at Sarpavaram in East Godavari District (SII 5.8). A warrior thankful for his success in battle made another gift of a lamp, in an inscription translated in chapter 2 (Vishaveli Masake Sahini, SII 10.283). The religious motives for temple endowment thus resemble other Puranic Hindu practices such as vows and pilgrimages more than those of the classic dāna gift, which required that the giver expect no reward or benefit in return. Many temple patrons wanted specific assistance from a god or goddess rather than the indeterminate religious merit accruing from dāna, especially in its form as a brahman land grant. Using inscriptions, a historian of religion could reconstruct the growing popularity of Hindu devotional practices and the ways in which orthodox brahmans adapted to this trend, both by carrying out vows and pilgrimages for patrons and by affiliating themselves with temples.
Puranic beliefs are also revealed in the many references to heaven in Kakatiya Andhra inscriptions. A significant number of gifts aimed to secure residence in heaven, commonly for a father. Because thirteenth‐century Andhra temple worship was largely Shaiva, the word used for “heaven” is typically śiva‐lōka (realm of Shiva).12 The general idea is that the religious gift would enable a person to reach heaven:
When the excellent king Beta, after ruling with her the great kingdom and acquiring everlasting merit, departed to the court of the king of gods (Indra), she had golden pinnacles placed on top of the brilliant lord Amareshvara's holy shrine at Shri Dhanyakapura. Her husband obtained the joy of an everlasting and pleasurable residence in the world of Shiva, after she had a temple of the lord (Shiva) named after the king Beta built in this city.13
In the inscription just translated, the recipient of the gift's merit—Beta, husband of Queen Kota Ganapamadevi—was evidently deceased. A temple endowment could thus complement or replace other types of religious observances for the dead such as the śrāddha funerary ceremony. This aspect of medieval religious practice and ideology has received very little scholarly attention. What little we do know suggests that love and reverence for a deceased relative was a compelling motivation for religious gifting. Some of the later Puranas describe a yearlong process during which the soul of a deceased person evolves through three types of bodies before finally (p.93) going to either heaven or hell (Kane 1953: 265). This notion of permanent residence in heaven, particularly strong in the widespread hero‐cults of South India and the Deccan, presents an alternative to the orthodox doctrine of reincarnation and dates back to the beginnings of Indian civilization (Thapar 1981: 306, 308; Filliozat 1982: 3). Gifts made at the time of dying were especially efficacious in leading a soul to heaven, although those made subsequently could still be of benefit (Kane 1953: 182–84; Garuḍa Purāṇa 1978–80: 821, 868). Medieval literature even enumerated different types of heavens that could be attained through making specific kinds of gifts (Rangaswami Aiyangar 1941: 114).
Since most Kakatiya‐period inscriptions that document gifts given so that another could attain heaven were intended to benefit a father, the beneficiaries were most likely dying or deceased. We know that gifts might be given immediately before death, as when Enapotana Ketana dedicated the merit of a sandhya lamp to his younger brother who was on his deathbed (SII 5.186), or soon after death, as when Annaya Lenka endowed a tank just after his elder brother had passed away (HAS 19 Mn. 18). Temples themselves were increasingly constructed as a method of commemorating the dead.14 An inscription commissioned by the prince Soma is explicit in stating that his chief queen had recently died (“Annama Mahadevi, having abandoned Lord Soma, has assumed leadership of the women of heaven,” in SII 10.262). In order to make absolutely sure of her blissful afterlife in heaven, the prince had a temple built for the god Rameshvara of Duttika (West Godavari District). Those who died in battle were now sometimes recognized in this manner, rather than simply through the erection of hero‐stones. So, for instance, Nalam Brolayandu consecrated a liṇga on behalf of his sons who had gone to the “world of the gods” in 1298 (APAS 31.30). Close by is a hero‐stone bearing an image of two heroes holding bows, which possibly depict the sons referred to in the inscription. Records of religious endowments made to honor heroic deaths were occasionally left at the site of the death itself rather than at the endowed institution, perhaps as a carryover from the earlier practice of erecting stones where a hero had died (IAP‐C 1.128).
Anxiety over the welfare of a loved one and fear of what lay beyond this worldly existence were hence among the greatest impetuses for temple patronage in Kakatiya Andhra, a fact we should keep in mind as we examine other aspects of temple patronage in the pages to come. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of analyzing ostensibly religious behavior as “a bowlful of strategies,” as Richard M. Eaton warns us, and discount religious devotion and piety as causal factors (1992: 235). Many goals could be subsumed into the act of religious patronage, but the justification for these activities was always the desire for religious well‐being, for oneself or for another.
Agrarian Expansion through Temple and Tank Construction
The rise in the temple cult's popularity is evidenced materially by the many new physical structures erected during the Kakatiya period.15 Twelve percent (120) of the total 963 epigraphs in the Kakatiya temple corpus record the founding of new temples.16 But the construction of new temples must also be understood as a (p.94) reflection of the expansion of Kakatiya Andhra's agrarian resource base—it was motivated by devotion but made possible by economic growth. Establishing a new temple meant far more than merely providing the image of a god with a stone residence. The human caretakers of the god also had to be supported, and the rituals of worship required continual supplies of foodstuffs and other material offerings. Almost always, therefore, the construction of a new temple also entailed the endowment of rights to land. The ability of donors to alienate such important property rights in favor of a temple indicates that economic development in their localities had advanced to the point of a surplus in agrarian production. High levels of temple construction thus characterize regions experiencing high rates of economic change. In turn, as the following discussion makes clear, the founding of temples stimulated further agrarian expansion.
The construction rates of new temples show that inland Andhra was undergoing the most dramatic transformation. The highest number of new temples are found in Guntur District (25) and Prakasam District (18), as shown in table 6. But these are also the two districts with the largest numbers of inscriptions overall. More revealing is the proportion of new temples in any given district, calculated in column “% Founding” of table 6. The frequency of new temples is notably higher in the Telangana and Rayalasima subregions than in coastal Andhra. In these inland districts, the percentage of temple foundation records runs from a peak of 47 percent in Warangal to a low of 22 percent in Nalgonda and Cuddapah Districts. New temples were erected at considerably lower rates in the coastal subregion, with a
Table 6. Temple Founding by District
District
|
All Records
|
Foundinga Records
|
% Founding
|
Temple Sites
|
% Sites New
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Warangal
|
38
|
18
|
47
|
31
|
58
|
Karimnagar
|
14
|
6
|
43
|
8
|
75
|
Medak
|
7
|
2
|
29
|
6
|
33
|
Kurnool
|
7
|
2
|
29
|
5
|
40
|
Khammam
|
11
|
3
|
27
|
9
|
33
|
Mahbubnagar
|
34
|
8
|
24
|
15
|
53
|
Nalgonda
|
64
|
14
|
22
|
29
|
48
|
Cuddapah
|
18
|
4
|
22
|
14
|
29
|
Nellore
|
36
|
7
|
19
|
18
|
39
|
Prakasam
|
160
|
18
|
11
|
56
|
32
|
Guntur
|
230
|
25
|
11
|
114
|
22
|
Krishna
|
152
|
8
|
5
|
32
|
25
|
W. Godavari
|
116
|
3
|
3
|
23
|
13
|
E. Godavari
|
76
|
2
|
3
|
10
|
20
|
Total/Average
|
963
|
120
|
12%b
|
370
|
32%c
|
(a.) Refers to the establishment of a new temple.
(b.) 12% of all inscriptions are founding records.
(c.) 32% of all sites are new.
In Telangana entire villages were sometimes created expressly to provide for the deity enshrined in a new temple. Mailamba, the sister of the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati, was responsible for the founding of at least three new villages in Yellandu Taluk of Khammam District (APRE 193, 197 and 198 of 1965). These new settlements were dedicated to deities Mailamba had just installed in temples. At each site she had a tank excavated which would then irrigate the land being transformed into a village for the deity. Through her donation land that was forested or unproductive prior to irrigation was brought under cultivation. Presumably Mailamba possessed some sort of proprietary right over this territory, probably acquired as part of her dowry or marriage portion. Because the villages were named after her mother, her guru, and her second son, their creation and endowment was a form of honoring these individuals. In this way a religious incentive could simultaneously extend the agricultural resource base.
At other times new temples were established in already‐existing settlements. This is illustrated in an unusually short and simple foundation inscription from Inumella in Vinukonda Taluk, Guntur District:
The person who had the temple built in this case also provided it with land to allow for the performance of certain daily and festive rituals. The endowed lands may have been situated on the outskirts of the existing settlement, as was usual in Chola‐period Tamil Nadu (Heitzman 1997: 107). By bringing uncultivated land into production, the founding of a new temple in an established village could still be a means of extending agrarian activity.May all fare well! In year 1176 of the Shaka era [1254 C.E.], the illustrious Kalapa Nayaka, who possesses all the praiseworthy titles such as upholder of the kingdom of the Cholas, ornament of the Manma clan, he whose mighty right arm is formidably skilled with the bow, the husband of the goddess of victory in fierce battles, ruler of the Vengi territory, a potent procreator, like the sun in sincerity, worshiper of the divine and illustrious lotus feet of the god Malleshvara of Bejavada [Vijayavada], subduer of the armies of the foes, rescuer of Kulottunga Rajendra Chola of Velanadu, lord of the excellent city Manyapura in Kandavadi and of Bejavada, a Ravana in courage;Having consecrated the lord Chenna Keshava in Inumella and having had a temple built, gave land to the extent of 5 kha(ṇḍugas of unirrigated land) for the food offering and perfumed ointment of the Lord Keshava. For the worship outside the sanctum of the god, he gave land to the extent of 10 kha(ṇḍugas of unirrigated land) and 1 maṟturu (of irrigated land) behind Chintala tank to the east of that village and a flower garden; for the religious merit of Virayadeva, who rules over him, and of (Kakatiya) Ganapatideva Maharaja.The land given by Kessava Gopala‐dasi is. . . .[boundary details are illegible]. Whether given by oneself or by another. . . .17 (SII 6.602)
The quantity and quality of arable land was often enhanced through the common (p.96) practice of providing a new temple with a tank.18 When this was done, at least a portion of the land irrigated by the tank would be set aside for the temple's needs. All the land irrigated by the two tanks built by Nami Reddi of the Recherla family was given to the deity he consecrated and named after himself at Pillalamarri, Nalgonda District (HAS 13.41). In contrast, Vrekkanti Malli Raddi donated only some of the land irrigated by the Mailasamudra tank he had constructed at Bekkallu, Warangal District (IAP‐W.38). He seems to have retained proprietary rights over the remaining land. Tanks were also built for established temples. For example, the donor Guddali Vaitama Setti is said to have built a tank and demarcated the resulting wet lands around it, a portion of which were given to the deity (NDI Ongole 139).
One of the most explicit inscriptions recording the simultaneous founding of a temple and a tank comes from Karimnagar District (IAP‐K. 38, from Chittapur, Metpalli Taluk, dated 1303). The donor in this instance was a man named Bairi Setti, a Vira Balanjya merchant‐trader affiliated with the famous Ayyavole 500 organization that had originated in Karnataka. Only one‐third of the land brought under irrigation through construction of his tank was to go to the new temple, while the remaining two‐thirds was designated as rācādinamu, possibly meaning “crown land” (Parabrahma Sastry 1978: 198–99). The inscription expressly stipulates that this ratio 1:2 between the temple's land and the other land be maintained regardless of the total amount of land under cultivation—in other words, in the future, even if the tank was extended or further channels to convey water from it were dug, the irrigated land was to be divided in the same proportion.
Bairi Setti does not seem to have directly benefited, except in a religious sense, from the tank that he had constructed. He could not have been a local land‐controller, since he had to purchase fields from brahmans in order to endow the temple. But his financing of a tank would have benefited the local ruler, whose lands were now far more productive. For this reason, the Andhra epigraphist P. V. Parabrahma Sastry believes that Bairi Setti must have received some concession from the local ruler either in the form of a trade license or a percentage of the sales tax from the local market (1978: 245). If Parabrahma Sastry's conjecture is correct, what we have in this inscription is an early example of agrarian entrepreneurship. In the most widespread mode of agrarian enterprise during the later Vijayanagara period, individuals who financed irrigational facilities received either a share of the produce grown on the newly irrigated land (Stein 1980: 425–26) or a plot of tax‐free land comprising one‐tenth of the area irrigated by the tank, hence the “ten” (daśa) in the name of the arrangement, daśavandha (Venkataramanayya and Somasekhara Sarma 1960: 680). Although the daśavandha contract is most widely noticed in later inscriptions from Rayalasima, the term twice appears in Kakatiya‐period records from Telangana (CTI 41 and HAS 19 Mn.27).19 Stein calls the initiative displayed by the individuals who undertook tank construction “rural development entrepreneurship,” because it resulted in expanded productivity for the locality as well as personal gain for the entrepreneurs themselves (1980: 425–26).
Enhancement of the agricultural resource base through construction of irrigational facilities has been most closely studied in reference to the Tirumala‐Tirupati temple complex in Chittoor District. Fifty‐one grants of irrigational facilities (mainly tanks and channels) were received by this group of temples, primarily in the second half (p.97) of the fifteenth century. The number of direct endowments of irrigational facilities decreased after that time, but the number of cash grants rose sharply (Jayasree 1991: 97–103). Much of that money was used to improve the temple's agricultural lands through the provision of water, and so cash grants in this case also extended the acreage of irrigated land (Stein 1960: 167). The growth of the Tirumala‐Tirupati temple complex was relatively late, reflecting Rayalasima's general lag in agrarian development. Its endowments are concentrated in the short span of time from the second half of the fifteenth century through the third quarter of the sixteenth century (Subrahmanya Sastry 1930: 1–3). Earlier donors were almost solely local notables, but the patronage circle began to expand after Saluva Narasimha became the Vijayanagara governor of Chandragiri province in 1456. He subsequently usurped the Vijayanagara throne, and his successors continued to patronize the temple. Stein has remarked on the high proportion of what he calls “state” donors (that is, individuals associated with a particular polity) at Tirupati during the sixteenth century and suggests that state resources were being allocated to land development in this indirect manner (Stein 1960: 176).
Because Tirupati has been regarded as the paradigm for Andhra temples by many scholars, the scale of irrigational investment in Kakatiya‐period Telangana has been generally overlooked. One example is the statement by Carol Breckenridge, “It is in the Vijayanagara era that South Indian temples and irrigation technology became, in some special, if not essential, way linked one to the other” (1985b: 41). This is true of Tirupati, the focus of Breckenridge's study, and for many other localities in Rayalasima. But if one's perspective is broadened to include Telangana, then the seminal period would have be identified as that of the Kakatiyas. Tank irrigation is only one of the many phenomena that are typically identified as characteristic of South India in the Vijayanagara period, but whose origins can be traced back earlier in Andhra. The main reason continuities with Kakatiya Andhra are not more widely recognized is the Tamil orientation of most historians of South India. Since practices associated with the drier upland areas of Andhra (and the peninsula at large) are not prominent in Tamil historical sources until the Vijayanagara period, they are usually regarded as originating in that era.
The momentum of agrarian expansion into dryer zones may indeed have accelerated during the Vijayanagara period for South India as a whole, but in the case of northern Andhra (and probably Karnataka as well) the trend was firmly established by the thirteenth century. Among the most important groups responsible for financing the development of inland Andhra were the many intermediary chiefs and officials who formed part of the Kakatiya political network. The same pattern is found throughout South India during the medieval period. Tanks in the dry Pandya country of southern Tamil Nadu were also financed mainly by local or subregional chiefs (Ludden 1979: 352). Even in tenth‐ and eleventh‐century Tamil Nadu, when agrarian expansion occurred primarily in the wet zone, the instigators were mainly local notables (Heitzman 1997: 52–54). During the Vijayanagara period, local chiefs known as pāḷegāḍu (Telugu) or pāḷaiyakārar (Tamil) were responsible for much agrarian expansion through the provision of irrigational facilities (Subrahmanyam 1990: 330–32).
Two of the largest tanks in Telangana were built under the direction of Kakatiya (p.98) subordinate chiefs. One is the Ramappa Lake, adjoining the well‐known Ramappa temple at Palampet in Mulug Taluk, Warangal District. Formed by a ring of hills on three sides, it has a colossal bund only on one side that extends 2000 feet in length and rises up to 56 feet (Gopala Reddy 1973: 63; Parabrahma Sastry 1978: 205). The construction of this tank in 1213 was instigated by Recherla Rudra, a sēnāpati (general) of the Kakatiya King Ganapatideva (HAS 3.1). Pakala Lake in Narsampet Taluk of Warangal District is even larger, with a dam composed of laterite pebbles and earth that is one mile long from which 40 artificial channels have been extended (Parabrahma Sastry 1978: 205). It was also constructed during Kakatiya Ganapati's reign (1199–1262) by a subordinate, Jagadala Mummadi, who was the son of a minister (mantri; HAS 4).
Temples were not the recipients of all 38 tanks documented in inscriptions from Kakatiya Andhra.20Sometimes they were given to brahmans, as when Malyala Gunda had a tank constructed near Bothpur (Mahbubnagar Taluk) in 1272 and donated the land irrigated by the new tank to 13 different brahmans, as payment for rituals they had performed on his behalf (HAS 13.51). In several other instances, as with the Ramappa and Pakala tanks just described, no recipient is named. Similarly Loki Reddi documented the construction of a tank named after himself in 1215 but does not tell us whose property the tank was (APAS 31.26). Like the temple, which belonged to the god rather than to a person, tanks were not necessarily regarded as personal property. The gift of a tank was praised along with several other donations that benefited the public at large, in the following verses of a Telangana inscription:21
The donor's munificence and his concern for the people are highlighted in the preceding quote, and he is said to have been praised by the ones to whom he brought happiness in this manner.That great soul of great prosperity beautified land by big tanks (which had) deep, extensive and good waters and (which) gave happiness to numerous living beings.He planted for the sake of Dharma groves of cool shades, very pleasant with shining sprouts filling the quarters with the fragrance of the flowers, beautiful with the humming of bees, bent (under the weight of) tasteful and excellent clusters of fruits, and (in fine), enjoyable and giving pleasure to all senses.In his wonderful alms‐houses, people from various parts of the country, having eaten to their heart's content well‐cooked food rich in good pulses, noteworthy ghee, along with vegetables of various tastes, buttermilk and curd, utter forth (i.e., praise loudly) amidst people, in their extreme joy, his good qualities in manifold ways.In his water‐sheds containing cool water, constructed for the sake of numberless thirsty people, the fatigue of travelers quickly disappears even in the terrible summer and happiness arises. (HAS 13.41)
While many other gift objects were cherished for their economic value, the gift of water had an even deeper value as an object necessary for survival, especially in the harsh heat of the hot season. The emphasis on tank building as a form of religious charity is apparent in a peculiarly Andhra conception, that of the sapta‐santāna (seven offspring). Like the procreation of a son, the other six activities on the list also perpetuated one's name and fame for future generations. There is some discrepancy in the various accounts of the sapta‐santāna, but all of them include (p.99) building a tank, installing a god in a temple, commissioning a poem, and planting a grove or garden among the seven, in addition to having a son of one's own.22 The other two commonly listed acts are arranging a marriage for a brahman or establishing a brahman village and hoarding treasure.
The provision of water sources was so desirable that it came to be considered a commendable religious act even when devoid of any explicit religious association. The true number of tanks built in Andhra between 1175 and 1324 must be many times more than what the 38 records of tank construction we have from that time span would suggest. The existing documents all appear to be inscribed on loose pieces of rock—a stone slab or pillar—and while many are located around the precincts of a temple, others were discovered in fields or set up next to a tank. The likelihood of destruction of a tank foundation inscription would have been heightened in the case of tanks that stand ruined today. And if small temples are sometimes bereft of any record of foundation, we can surmise that the creation of many small reservoirs, ponds, and the like were similarly undocumented. Indirect testimony of the high levels of irrigational investment comes from the many place‐names ending in‐samudra, ‐sāgara, or ‐ceruvu (all meaning “tank”) in contemporary inscriptions, as well as traditional village accounts that describe the thirteenth century as an era of extensive tank construction (Parabrahma Sastry 1978: 203). The multitude of historical traces confirms that a boom in the building of tanks occurred in inland Andhra while the Kakatiyas were ruling.23
When the spurt in tank construction is viewed in conjunction with the high rates of new temple foundation, we can safely assert that Telangana was rapidly developing economically and also, most probably, profiting from its newly ascendant political position. The same can be said to a lesser degree of the Rayalasima districts Kurnool and Cuddapah and of Nellore in southern coastal Andhra. In contrast, the three northern coastal districts of East Godavari, West Godavari, and Krishna, which comprise the long‐settled Vengi core area of Andhra, were in a static phase during this time. Presumably, the rates of population increase and agricultural expansion had slowed down in Vengi by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Telangana, not the well‐established coastal strip, was undergoing the greatest degree of change. The twin processes of tank and temple foundation resulted from demographic increase in the interior and, at the same time, contributed to further growth by improving agricultural productivity. New settlements were being established, forest land was being reclaimed, and the quantity of arable land was being enlarged through irrigational investment in this frontier zone of Andhra.
The Temple as a Redistributive Center
Western scholarship since the 1960s has stressed the significance of religious gift‐giving as the main integrative force in medieval South Indian society. Impelled by a variety of religious, social, and political incentives, a diverse range of patrons gave generously of their valuables to temple institutions. In societies without highly developed state structures or public spheres, this type of gift‐giving along with the exchange of hospitality and women served as the fundamental binding mechanism, (p.100) according to the theories of Marcel Mauss (1967) and other French sociologists. Hence, a number of historians have argued that the various strata of society in medieval South India were interconnected primarily through the large‐scale giving of religious endowments and the subsequent redistribution of economic resources and honors back to the community.
The model of redistributive exchange is an anthropological one, clarified largely by Marshall Sahlins (1972), who contrasts it with reciprocal exchange. Reciprocity, characteristic of relatively simple and unstratified societies, consists of a direct one‐on‐one exchange. Redistribution, on the other hand, is found in more complex societies such as chiefdoms. With the emergence of strong leaders, the resources of a society accumulate at certain foci (i.e., in the hands of chiefs) and are then passed back out in the form of extravagant feasts and the like. Hindu temples, which acted as magnets in attracting valuable property, were the main centers of accumulation in medieval South India and the conduit through which exchange occurred: material goods were transformed into the symbols of prestige and influence known as temple honors (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976). By providing employment to artisans, peasants, and herders, South Indian temples in turn redistributed resources garnered from the wealthy to other segments of society.
Beyond this function of economic redistribution, temples additionally served as social and political integrators. They incorporated members of different communities into one community of worship—the main nexus through which the disparate elements of medieval society were bound together to form one social fabric. And in the absence of an extensive administrative structure, the cohesion of the state system derived primarily from the religious networks created by donations. This is how, in Stein's (1977) view, the semi‐autonomous localities were loosely woven into a larger segmentary state, presided over by ritual sovereigns. I discuss the issue of social integration further on in this chapter (and look at the model of the segmentary state in chapter 4). But here my primary concern is the economic dimension. To better understand how temples operated as redistributive centers, we must first examine what resources they controlled and to whom these resources were later allocated.
The prime gift object recorded in stone inscriptions was land—the most valuable and most enduring of all items. Without land, no temple could function, and an abundance of land ensured the proper honoring of the god with lavish ceremonies. In thirteenth‐century Andhra, land was the donation preferred by an overwhelming margin. Plots of land alone comprised 39 percent of all gifts made in our corpus (table 7, column “Entire Corpus”). The more prized type of land was the low‐lying land irrigated by a tank, canal, or well and called wet (nīru‐nēla, also nīrnēla) because the soil is kept well soaked in water while crops are being cultivated. In contrast, dry land (veli‐volamu or veli‐cēnu) is found on a more elevated level and cultivation depends solely on rain for the water supply (Sreenivasachar 1940: 208). In addition to plots of wet or dry land, a third category of lands given to temples was known as tōṇṭa‐bhūmi (or tōṇṭa‐polamu). Generally translated as “garden” land, this was not only for growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers but for orchards of palmyra, coconut, and mango trees.
Unlike the more detailed land grants of the Tamil country, Andhra inscriptions (p.101) do not typically clarify the exact boundaries or locations of donated land. We see this rather cavalier attitude in the following gift of land:
Table 7. Gift Items at Andhra Temples
Gift Object
|
Entire Corpus
|
Major Temples
|
Minor Temples
| |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
No.
|
%
|
No.
|
%
|
No.
|
%
| |
Land plot
|
454
|
39
|
56
|
17
|
113
|
49
|
Livestock
|
308
|
27
|
193
|
57
|
18
|
8
|
Village
|
66
|
6
|
17
|
5
|
17
|
7
|
Implementa
|
49
|
4
|
28
|
8
|
6
|
3
|
Building/pillar
|
47
|
4
|
14
|
4
|
8
|
3
|
Miscellaneousb
|
47
|
4
|
7
|
2
|
11
|
5
|
Garden
|
35
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
14
|
6
|
Tax income
|
38
|
3
|
3
|
1
|
15
|
7
|
Group tithe
|
40
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
12
|
5
|
Cash
|
34
|
3
|
11
|
3
|
4
|
2
|
Irrigation
|
21
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
6
|
3
|
Tax remission
|
17
|
1
|
3
|
1
|
6
|
3
|
Total
|
1,156
|
99%
|
337
|
100%
|
230
|
101%
|
(a.) Refers to a metal object used in ritual worship.
(b.) Includes gifts of oil presses, salt pans, timber, and foodstuffs.
May all fare well and prosper! In the 1,243rd year of the Shaka era [1321 C.E.], (corresponding to the cyclic) year Durmati, on the 2nd (day of the) bright (fortnight of the) intercalary Ashadha (lunar month), a Thursday;May all fare well! For the religious merit of the illustrious Mahamandaleshvara Kakatiya Prataparudradeva Maharaja, Malayankaru, the minister of Mottupalli Bhaskaradeva, gave one puṭṭi of dry land (to provide) for the food offering of the lord Kedaradeva, the main deity of Kunkalakuntta, and . . . . [unclear] one oil press, to be maintained as long as the sun and moon (endure), to the lord Kedaradeva, the main deity of Kunkalakuntta. (SII 6.592)
A last type of land grant involves the gift of an entire village, rather than just a field or a garden—this generous donation constitutes 6 percent of all gifts recorded in the corpus. The term used in Andhra to designate lands endowed to a deity is dēva(ra)‐vritti, the god's vritti (from the Sanskrit vṛtti, “means of subsistence or livelihood”). Brahmans could also possess vrittis, as did a few warriors.24 Rather than having any religious meaning, therefore, vritti most probably indicates a special, reduced, tax status. Parabrahma Sastry believes that taxes were still levied on land and villages given as religious endowments to temples and brahmans, though at a concessional rate (1978: 212). This view is confirmed by several records in which a temple's land is exempted from the payment of specific taxes (SII 10.492, 499, 509, 521, and 540). Without such an exemption, one gathers, temples would have been assessed some taxes.
The exact terms of the tenure rights transferred to a temple in an endowment (p.102) of land or a village is never specified in Kakatiya Andhra inscriptions. In the case of Tamil Nadu under the Chola dynasty, Noboru Karashima states that land grants to brahmans conveyed the right to actual possession whereas land grants to temples conveyed only the right to enjoyment of revenues (1984: xxxi). That Andhra brahmans who received land grants obtained full rights of proprietorship, as in Tamil Nadu, is evidenced by the numerous inscriptions that record the gift of land after it was purchased from an individual with a brahman personal name or other brahman marker (e.g., HAS 13.55; IAP‐W.92; SII 10.422 and 478). The situation with temple land grants is less clear. It may be that most temples only obtained the rights to revenues from endowed land, but at least in some instances they had rights approximate to possession. For one thing, land given to temples as vritti was on occasion sold, as several records from Pushpagiri in Cuddapah District reveal (IAP‐C 1.147, 1.148, 1.149, 1.151).
Although details are scanty, it appears that land belonging to temples was either cultivated under the direct management of temple staff or farmed out to local agriculturalists on lease. An inscription from Katukuru, Khammam Taluk, the most informative record, tells us that the village assembly levied a cess on all double‐cropped wet land, which was intended to provide for ritual services in the local temple dedicated to Gopinatha, a form of Vishnu (HAS 19 Km.6). Certain exceptions were made to this cess, for it did not have to be paid on land belonging to the Shiva temple whether it was cultivated by Shaiva priests or by peasants (kāmpulu). On the land belonging to the Vishnu temple, the cess was waived if the land was cultivated by Vaishnava priests but had to be paid if cultivated by peasants. Since the priests certainly did not engage in actual cultivation themselves, the reference to the lands they cultivated must mean the lands others cultivated under their supervision. In contrast, the land cultivated by kāmpus must have been leased to them. Another inscription stipulates the exact amounts of rice and other crops that kāmpus should pay a temple yearly in exchange for their use of temple lands (NDI Atmakur 25). The individual to whom donated land was to be given on lease (gutta) is named in a different record (NDI Atmakur 7).
There was yet a third, occasional alternative to direct management of land or leasing. A donor could formally make a gift of land but actually retain the management of it in his own hands, giving only a portion of the produce to the temple. In other words, while “proprietorship” of the land would be officially transferred, immediate control of it was not. Such grants may have been motivated by not only piety but also the desire to evade taxes from which temple lands were exempt. An example of this type of situation was translated in chapter 2—the inscription of Tammili Chodaya Raddi, who said he was granting land but was actually just promising to supply foodstuffs produced on the land (SII 5.131). Chodaya Raddi had purchased this land from another man, which he might not have been able to do had its proceeds not been intended to benefit the temple. Although this sort of land grant wherein the donor undertook to supervise the land himself is quite rare, many herders adopted the similar practice of formally donating livestock to a temple while retaining actual possession of the animals in their own hands (e.g., SII 10.330 and 441).
Because so much land was donated to temples, these institutions were inextricably (p.103) enmeshed in local agricultural networks. Whether their land was cultivated by hired laborers, tenants, or former proprietors, the end result was similar—a forging of links between temples and agriculturalists in the vicinity. Popular temples that attracted patronage from far and wide might have linkages with villages and lands in numerous scattered localities.25 A whole series of individuals, who might have no occasion to interact otherwise, were thus connected through participation in a common economic web. Wealthy temples in some areas could also serve as a source of capital for neighboring villages. Cash donations received by the Rajarajeshvara temple at Tanjavur (Tamil Nadu) during the eleventh century were sometimes loaned out to village assemblies or merchant associations at a standard rate of interest (Spencer 1968: 287–88). At Tirupati during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, cash endowments were invested in irrigational improvements to the temple's own lands. Stein believes the increased productivity benefited not only the temple but the cultivators of its lands as well (1960: 167–69).
Pastoralists were similarly brought into close relations with temple institutions through the endowment of livestock. After land, the most popular category of gift in Kakatiya Andhra was that of milk‐bearing animals—ewes, she‐goats, and cows—comprising 27 percent of all donations. The gift of livestock was almost invariably intended to furnish fuel for lamps. Two types of lamps are referred to in Kakatiya‐period records. The more popular was the akhaṇḍa‐dīpa (lit., “lamp without a break”) or perpetual lamp, meant to be continually replenished with ghee so that the flame would never go out. Stands for these perpetual lamps were commonly donated to the Draksharama temple along with livestock (SII 4.1092 from 1369). One of the most characteristically South Indian form of votive lamps was modeled on the human figure, with the cup that held the oil and wick being carried in the hands. These lamp‐bearing statues were sometimes actual portrayals of the donor and even otherwise were meant to symbolize his or her personal devotion, expressed here as the rendering of a perpetual service to the Lord (Sivaramamurti 1962: 38). Sandhya‐dīpas were also occasionally endowed. Because endowments for these lamps required far fewer animals than did an akhaṇḍa‐dīpa, sandhya‐dīpas must have been lit only at the two or three times a day (sandhya) when ritual services were conducted.26
Many inscriptions that recorded the gift of livestock for a perpetual lamp are very short, and each large temple had its own characteristic format for this type of donation. An example from the village Yenamalakuduru, documenting an endowment to the Malleshvara temple at Vijayavada, dates from 1241:
May all fare well! In the year 1163 of the Shaka era [1241 C.E.], on the occasion of the winter solstice; Jakki Raddi gave 25 cows to the illustrious great lord Malleshvara of Bejavada [Vijayavada] for a perpetual lamp as a meritorious deed for (the religious benefit of) his mother and father. Having taken (charge of) these (cows), Male Boyundu's son Sure Boyundu and Nannaya Boya's son Kommana Boyundu, and their descendants after them, are to supply a māna of butter daily for as long as the moon and the sun (endure). (SII 6.92)
For each of these perpetual lamps a standard number of animals—normally 25 cows as in the record above, or 55 sheep (SII 4.685), or 50 goats (SII 10.327)—were handed over to bōya herders, who were then held responsible for providing a stipulated amount of butter for the maintenance of the lamp. Once the bōya had (p.104) received charge of the herd, he had to ensure that its size did not fall below the minimum required. Any decrease in the number of animals would have to be made up by him, if his contract with the donor was to be honored. What would happen in the event that the herd grew larger is clarified in a record dated 1291 C.E. from Malyala village, Kurnool District (ARE 323 of 1937–38). The inscription stipulates that cows were never to be sold, and any transgression of this prohibition resulted in a cash penalty per animal. Regardless of the number of calves born that year, two male calves were to be raised as breeding bulls annually. The other male calves could, however, be castrated and sold as bullocks, to the profit of the herder. In essence, what this is means is that all female (i.e., milk‐yielding) animals were to be reserved for the temple whereas all except for two males a year were regarded as the herder's property.
Inscriptions recording livestock donations to temples are essentially contracts between the donor, the temple, and one or more herders. They set up long‐term arrangements for supplying one kind of service to a deity, the provision of lamps—note that in the inscription above, which is typical, the descendants of the herders are obligated to maintain the terms. The contractual nature of the agreement is also indicated by the specificity with which the herders are identified. That is, the herder's father's name is almost always stated along with the herder's own personal name, to clarify who was responsible. More than one bōya is usually involved, perhaps as another means of ensuring that the contract would be honored. In fact, each separate livestock endowment at any given temple appears to have been entrusted to a different herder or group of herders.27 The requirements of ritual worship thus ensured that hundreds and perhaps even thousands of pastoralists and their families were drawn into temple economic networks during the Kakatiya period.
Numerous other categories of gift items existed during the Kakatiya period, in addition to those of land and livestock. On occasion, all the taxes on particular goods in a particular marketplace were endowed (see “tax income,” table 7). For example, in one endowment made at Velpuru, taxes levied on the buyers of horses, oxen, carts, reins, sesame, and grain were donated along with other minor imposts (SII 10.314). The inscription is translated here:
The donor in this example was presumably authorized by the Kakatiyas to collect taxes and tolls, and his endowment represented a loss of income either for the state or for the donor. Through the donation of tax revenues, resources extracted from many diverse individuals were rerouted to central collection points, the local temples.May all fare well and prosper! For the sake of the religious benefit of the illustrious Mahamandaleshvara Kakatiya Ganapatideva Maharaja who is endowed with all the praiseworthy titles such as the Mahamandaleshvara who has acquired the honors known as the five great sounds, the human lord of the city of Hanumakonda, exceedingly devoted to Shiva, he whose actions are for the good of his overlord, one for whom modesty is an ornament;To the glorious great lord Rameshvara of Velpuru, in the 1,169th year of the Shaka era [1248 C.E.], (corresponding to the cyclic) year Plavanga, on the 15th (day of the) dark (fortnight of the lunar month) Magha, a Sunday;The son of Dochena Pregada, Ganapaya—who is foremost in carrying out his appointed duties and is comparable to (the minister of Chandragupta Maurya) Chanakya in his understanding of policy—gave as a religious endowment the fees assessed on the following items purchased within the limits of the licensed marketplace of Velpuru where he has recently been appointed:When a horse is purchased, when an ox is purchased, when a cart is purchased, when a rope is purchased, when a varu [meaning unclear] is purchased, when sheep (p.105) are purchased or sold, when a marriage is performed, when sesame is purchased, when grain is purchased or fetched from afar and sold, as well as the registration fee and periodic tax on oil presses.I have pledged (the Kakatiya king) Ganapatideva Maharaja that these terms will be met.
Corporate bodies undertook a similar activity, for they often levied a tithe on themselves that consisted of a percentage of the taxes on goods sold and bought in a local market (“group tithe,” table 7).28 These groups, usually mercantile, would voluntarily contribute an extra amount over and beyond the existing taxes on items such as grain, oil, or areca‐nut and betel leaves (e.g., ARE 313 of 1932–33; EA 4.14; SII 10.495). Instead of cash, sometimes a percentage of goods that were brought into the marketplace was given (e.g., ARE 277 of 1934–35; SII 10.473). The cess might be levied on bulkloads of transported goods, in the manner of tolls, rather than on goods bought and sold, as when a coastal merchant association voluntarily decided to donate a small amount of money for each boatload passing through the town (EI 3.15).
Sometimes a tax revenue due from a temple was simply remitted and the temple was declared exempt from payment of that tax (“tax remission,” table 7). Generally, revenues from land belonging to the temple were remitted. In order to celebrate success in a recent military campaign, a warrior named Bolneningaru exempted all the land owned by a Vishnu temple from payment of the paṅga tax (SII 10.540). The money that would have gone toward the tax obligation was to be used for offerings of food and perfumed ointment to the deity instead. In another instance, five taxes on temple land were remitted by a man called Rudradeva:
In the 1,233rd year of the Shaka era [1311 C.E.], (corresponding to the cyclic) year Virodhikrit, on the 15th (day of the) dark (fortnight of the lunar month) Ashvayuja, a Thursday;For the religious merit of his mother and father, Rudradevaningaru, the son of Mayideva Lenka, remits the upakṣiti, paṅgamu, puṭṭi‐māḍalu, kānika, and dariśanamu (taxes), for as long as the sun and moon (endure), (that is), for all time, on those lands in the villages of the Konduri nāyaṅkuṟamu (territory) which are currently and which will henceforth be (endowed as) the subsistence lands [vritti] of the glorious Chenna Keshava Perumal of Penunguduru, no matter how much anyone should give (in the future). (SII 10.499)
Some individuals preferred to donate sums of money (see under “cash” category in table 7), often in order to provide for perpetual lamps. In most cases the money was invested and the interest from it used to purchase the necessary oil or butter, as is stipulated in NDI Kavali 25, where the Vaishnava priests were entrusted with a gold coin by the donor for this purpose. In addition to tanks, other kinds of waterworks (“irrigation” in table 7) were also donated to temples—wells (bāvi), canals (Telugu, kāluva; Sanskrit, kulyā), sluices (tūmu), and ponds (kuṇṭa). Under the rubric “building” I have counted various architectural additions, ranging from (p.106) the erection of a major temple edifice such as a maṇḍapa pavilion, or the gift of a pillar, to repairs and rebuilding of a main shrine. Further minor categories of endowments include metal vessels or plates used for the sixteen offerings to the deity, gold and jeweled ornaments for the image, and metal lamp‐stands on which perpetual lamps were kept burning (“implement,” table 7). “Miscellaneous,” a further category, groups together diverse kinds of gift objects: images of gods and goddesses, a metal torch for temple processions, and timber for a water pulley.
The wide range of goods donated to temples represented the variety of economic resources of the propertied classes of the Kakatiya period. Pools of wealth were thus formed at certain nodal sites, to be parceled out in turn to numerous other individuals, pastoralists as well as agriculturalists. In this manner, expanding circles of economic interdependence were created, which brought both diverse peoples and diverse localities together. The size and ecological setting of these redistributive centers varied considerably, however, and the assemblies of people being integrated differed from place to place. These subjects are further discussed in the next sections.
Diversity of Temple Types
Our model of the “traditional” South Indian temple has been derived from scrutiny of a few select sites—the Tirupati temple in southern Andhra, the Minakshi temple in the Tamil city of Madurai, the Tanjavur temple of the Chola period, and the Jagannatha temple in Puri, Orissa.29 These famous temple complexes were situated in either royal centers or places that had been considered sacred for centuries. By their very nature, these sites are unusual and this special status is reflected in the large number of donations recorded at each one. In turn, the copious documentation at famous institutions has attracted scholarly interest and made them popular subjects of study.
Most of the thousands of temples found in South India are far more humble, in levels of both patronage and extant documentation. Yet it is generally assumed that they resemble the larger temples in their structure and functioning, being merely smaller replicas of them. Little attention has been paid to possible variations in temple types, because of the assumption that the same principles were operative on all levels, from the most unassuming local shrine to the most magnificently endowed pilgrimage center. This is part of a larger trend focusing on homologies of all kinds, inspired primarily by Stein's (1977) segmentary model that envisions the Chola state as composed of a pyramidal series of essentially uniform segments, the semi‐autonomous localities. Whether the subject is temples, kings, or state systems, the various units have been regarded as being structurally similar regardless of scale (Dirks 1982, Breckenridge 1985a).
In the process, the great range in temple sizes has generally been overlooked, as well as the considerable diversity in types of terrain and in resulting socioeconomic formations. Given the marked variations in temples, can we really assume that they were all functionally identical? A related question has been raised by C. J. Fuller in reference to temple cults. He points out the noteworthy distinction between temple cults with Sanskritic deities and those with non‐Sanskritic ones. Analysis (p.107) of temple rituals shows that the power of the non‐Sanskritic deity in a local caste temple is thought to extend only to a specific locale and social space, while the realm of a Sanskritic deity such as the goddess Minakshi of Madurai is conceived as limitless and universal. Such differences have led Fuller to call for greater investigation into the significance of variations in temple cults (1988: 65–66). In a similar vein, I suggest that we look more carefully at the diversity of temple types and their possible functions.
The uneven distribution of patronage is in fact the most striking feature of the temple corpus of inscriptions. An astonishingly high percentage of records—29 percent—come from just 10 sites within the area of the state under consideration (all districts excluding Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Nizamabad, Adilabad, Anantapur and Chittoor; see map 3). Since 370 sites possess undamaged inscriptions from the years 1175–1324, this means that slightly less than 3 percent of the sites account for over one‐quarter of all the records. Conversely, at 188 temples only one endowment was recorded during this period; in other words, 51 percent of the sites yield only 20 percent of the inscriptions. The remaining sites constitute 46 percent of all temples and account for 52 percent of all records in the corpus. In order to clarify the significant variations between temples, I concentrate on the two most disparate types of institutions in this section—the 10 heavily endowed sites and the 188 poorly endowed sites.30
Map 9 displays the location of the most popular sites of Kakatiya Andhra, what I call “major” temples for the sake of convenience. The two temples with the greatest number of extant inscriptions from the period are the Tripurantaka‐Mahadeva temple at Tripurantakam (Markapur Taluk, Prakasam District) and the Bhimeshvara temple at Draksharama (Ramachandrapuram Taluk, East Godavari District). They both commanded pilgrimage networks encompassing all of Andhra and must have owned a staggering amount of property in view of the numerous donations documented at each temple—68 at Tripurantakam and 52 at Draksharama. In addition to these gifts, many pilgrims undoubtedly made donations of movable property that went unrecorded.
The Shiva temple at Tripurantakam derived much of its popularity and sacred character from its association with the renowned Shaiva center at Srisailam (Atmakur Taluk, Kurnool District), of which Tripurantakam is considered to be the eastern doorway or gateway. Srisailam and its four satellites constituted the most important sacred region (tīrtha‐kṣētra) of inland Andhra in this era. Because earlier inscriptions at Srisailam were apparently destroyed in the early fourteenth century, Srisailam itself yields few Kakatiya‐era records. Many pilgrims who visited Srisailam during the medieval period performed a circumambulation of it that included a visit to each of the four gateway temples. The central shrine at the current temple complex at Tripurantakam was built during the Kakatiya period, but the site is certainly much older (Parabrahma Sastry 1982: 17; Rama Rao 1966: 41).
The second most heavily documented site is Draksharama, where the main temple is said to have been erected by the Eastern Chalukya king Chalukya Bhima I (r. 890–922) and the deity named after him (Hultzsch 1896–97: 227). Sanskrit and Prakrit literary references to the site suggest that a temple may have existed there even earlier (Srinivasachari 1971: 217). The high regard accorded to (p.108)
Map 9. Location Of Major Temples
At least four of the liṅgas at these five ārāmas are unusual in shape: tall (15 to 25 feet high), cylindrical, and made of marble or marblelike stone.34 The (p.109) resemblance of these liṅgas to the āyaka pillars that are a unique feature of Andhra Buddhist stūpas is one reason for believing that these places have a long and hallowed history as religious sites. Amaravati was an important Buddhist site in the second and third centuries and some scholars believe that Draksharama and Palakol were also originally Buddhist centers (Ramesan 1962: 88, 114–15). While not directly attributable to the king Chalukya Bhima I, who was responsible for the construction of temples at the other three ārāmas, the central shrines at Palakol and Amaravati also date back to the late Eastern Chalukya period of the tenth and eleventh centuries (Rao 1973: 221–22; Meister and Dhaky 1986: 165).
The temple with the third largest number of endowments (51) in the corpus is that of Malleshvara at Vijayavada. It was also a well‐known pilgrimage center as far back as the Eastern Chalukya period, when the current shrine appears to have been built.35 Vijayavada's Malleshvara is the special deity of the Teliki (oilmonger) community in Andhra, collectively known during the early medieval period as the Teliki‐1,000 (Sundaram 1968: 30–39). Situated on the north bank of the Krishna River, Vijayavada has been acclaimed for its sanctity as a Varanasi of the south (Ramachandra Murthy 1983a: 307).
The other major temples, in sequential order from sixth to tenth in the number of their endowments, include the Rameshvara temple at Velpuru in Guntur District (15 endowments); the Vallabha temple at Srikakulam in Krishna District (12 endowments); the Someshvara temple at Eluru in West Godavari District (12 endowments); the Bhimeshvara temple at Mogallu in West Godavari District (10 endowments); and the Aruneshvara temple at Tadikalpudi in West Godavari District (9 endowments). These sites have received less scholarly scrutiny. Although there was certainly active worship at these sites prior to the thirteenth century, the dates of the temple structures themselves are not known. During the Kakatiya era, they received a fair amount of patronage from local princely families and were situated in localities of some political significance.36
The 10 major temples hence all predate the Kakatiya period. In most cases the main structures were probably built in the tenth or eleventh centuries, sometimes at sites sacred since Buddhist times. They share another similarity, for all but Tripurantakam are situated in the Krishna‐Godavari deltas. Draksharama, the northernmost temple, is located very near the Gautami River, one of the seven branches the Godavari River splits into as it nears the coast (Ramana 1982: i). The village Palakol is similarly near another branch of the Godavari River. Mogallu, Tadikalpudi, and Eluru are all squarely in the middle of the broad Krishna‐Godavari deltaic area. The four villages of Velpuru, Amaravati, Vijayavada, and Srikakulam are situated in the vicinity of the Krishna River. Only Tripurantakam lies at any considerable distance from the other major temples. It is situated in uneven terrain approaching the Nallamala Hills where Srisailam is located. Tripurantakam is the sole place among the 10 that is not close to a sizable center of population today, and the temple is currently in a semiruined condition. With the exception of Tripurantakam, the major temples are all located in Vengi, the longest‐settled territory in Andhra Pradesh.
It appears that the great religious prestige of the major temples, acquired over the centuries and justified through association of their deities with pan‐Indic (p.110)
Table 8. Major and Minor Temple Inscriptions by District
District
|
All Records
|
Major Records
|
(%) Major
|
Minor Records
|
(%) Minor
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
E. Godavari
|
76
|
52
|
68
|
3
|
4
|
W. Godavari
|
116
|
61
|
53
|
2
|
2
|
Krishna
|
152
|
63
|
41
|
14
|
9
|
Mahbubnagar
|
34
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
15
|
Prakasam
|
160
|
68
|
43
|
26
|
16
|
Nellore
|
36
|
0
|
0
|
8
|
22
|
Nalgonda
|
64
|
0
|
0
|
14
|
22
|
Guntur
|
230
|
32
|
14
|
65
|
28
|
Kurnool
|
7
|
0
|
0
|
3
|
43
|
Karimnagar
|
14
|
0
|
0
|
6
|
43
|
Cuddapah
|
18
|
0
|
0
|
9
|
50
|
Warangal
|
38
|
0
|
0
|
21
|
55
|
Khammam
|
11
|
0
|
0
|
7
|
64
|
Medak
|
7
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
71
|
Total/Average
|
963
|
276
|
29%a
|
188
|
20%b
|
(a.) 29% of all records are major records.
(b.) 20% of all records are minor records.
The focused pattern of endowment found in East Godavari, West Godavari, and Krishna Districts can also be seen in Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam Districts. These two districts at the extreme northeastern corner of modern Andhra Pradesh state also yield many Telugu inscriptions from the Kakatiya period but formed part of the Kalinga cultural and political sphere. Although they have not been included in the present study of Kakatiya Andhra for that reason, the donative patterns found in Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam resemble those of other districts in coastal (p.111) Andhra. Thus, the Kurmanatha temple at Srikurman in Srikakulam Taluk possesses 85 reasonably undamaged inscriptions that record gifts to the temple from the years 1175–1324. Only 3 other temples in Srikakulam District besides Srikurman bear inscriptions from the Kakatiya period. (One of these is at Mukhalingam, the dominant site of Srikakulam District in the two centuries before the Kakatiya period.) In the case of Visakhapatnam District, the premier institution of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries was the Narasimha temple at Simhachalam.37 It possesses 66 donative inscriptions in good condition from the Kakatiya period. Elsewhere in Visakhapatnam District, we find only eight temple sites. As was the case in Vengi, these areas of Kalinga had large, well‐endowed temple complexes that inhibited patronage at other sites in their vicinities.
Because major temples were so prominent in the northern coastal districts, these areas have few temples with only one inscription from the period—what I call minor temples (column “% Minor” in table 8). Less than 10 percent of all endowments in East Godavari, West Godavari, and Krishna Districts were made at such institutions, although on a statewide basis minor temples received 20 percent of all gifts. At the other extreme are several districts situated in the northern and southern peripheries of Kakatiya Andhra. Gifts to minor temples accounted for roughly 40 to 70 percent of all donations in Kurnool, Cuddapah, Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam, and Medak Districts. This is two to three times the statewide figure and is similar to the share of endowments garnered by the major temples in the northern coastal districts.38 None of these interior districts contained any major temples.
The two types of temples I differentiate, major and minor, characterize different geographical areas of Andhra. The major temple, a large complex dating back at least to the Eastern Chalukya period and renowned as a pilgrimage site, flourished in the northern coastal districts. Conversely, the minor temple, a local institution attracting little patronage and of recent origin, was most commonly found in the interior portion of the state. Many of the minor temples were established during the time span 1175 to 1324–30 percent of the 188 minor temple records are foundation inscriptions, whereas the overall average of inscriptions documenting the establishment of temples is only 12 percent. In other words, a large number of minor temples were established during the Kakatiya era.
More than just varying patronage levels, age and location separated these two institutional types, however, for the social background of their donors and the kinds of gift objects they received also show a marked divergence. The kinds of people being incorporated into the temple's community of worship are dissimilar at the major and minor institution, in other words. With different sorts of resources at their disposal, the redistributive roles of major and minor temples were quite distinct. That entire clusters of opposing traits define the major versus the minor temple confirms the thesis that they represent two separate donative patterns or styles and justifies the distinctions drawn between the religious cultures of coastal and interior Andhra. It also suggests that the two kinds of temples served different functions in their respective areas.
To understand the integrative role of temples as institutions, it is crucial to know the identity of the chief patrons. Thus far, we have considered only who was (p.112)
Table 9. Donor Types at Major and Minor Temples
Type
|
All Records
|
Major Records
|
(%) Major
|
Minor Records
|
(%) Minor
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bōya
|
39
|
21
|
54
|
1
|
3
|
Woman
|
92
|
46
|
50
|
11
|
12
|
Seṭṭi
|
54
|
22
|
41
|
6
|
11
|
Royal Rāju
|
70
|
26
|
37
|
11
|
16
|
Clerical Rāju
|
39
|
13
|
33
|
7
|
18
|
Reḍḍi
|
78
|
25
|
32
|
16
|
21
|
Mahārāja
|
53
|
13
|
25
|
15
|
28
|
Nāyaka
|
122
|
21
|
17
|
34
|
28
|
Other
|
282
|
75
|
29
|
56
|
20
|
Total/Average
|
829
|
262
|
32%a
|
157
|
19%b
|
(a.) 32% of all records are major.
(b.) 19% of all records are minor.
The 10 temples with the greatest number of extant inscriptions from Kakatiya Andhra hence attracted an unusually high level of gifts from herders, women, and merchant‐traders and a disproportionately low level of gifts from lords outside of Vengi and from military leaders. This varying distribution of patronage would not be so remarkable in itself were it not mirrored in reverse by the patronage patterns of minor temples. At minor temples—those institutions with only one recorded endowment from the period—we find the antithesis of major temple patronage (see column “% Minor” in table 9). The prominent donors at minor temples were mahārājas and nāyakas, the two groups who gave less to major temples than any other social group. Both of them made 28 percent of all their donations at minor temples, in comparison to the 19 percent norm among individual donors. Conversely, the least generous minor temple donors were bōyas, women, and seṭṭis, the primary donors at major temples. Only 3 to 12 percent of their gifts went to minor temples.
The inverse correlation in the social composition of donors helps explain another (p.113) difference in the patronage patterns at major and minor temples—the predominant type of gift donated to them. The variety of goods and revenues given to Kakatiya‐period temples was discussed in the previous section in general terms. Land and livestock were found to be the most popular gift items overall, but at minor temples the gift of land was far more popular than livestock (see column “Minor Temples,” table 7). At major temples, on the other hand, the incidence of land grants was much lower than the norm whereas livestock grants were very abundant. The characteristic gift object received by the two types of temples was hence different—livestock in the case of major temples versus land in the case of minor temples. The scarcity of land donations at major temples may be partially due to the scarcity and expense of land in their vicinities. The major temples were in localities where intensive agriculture had been practiced for many centuries, and rights to the cultivable lands in their neighborhoods would have been well‐established and difficult to acquire. But minor temples were typically located in the interior districts of Andhra, regions that were more recently settled. Much unclaimed land must therefore have been available near the minor temple sites.
Another reason that major temples received relatively few land endowments, however, has to do with the identity of their donors. The social groups most closely associated with major temples were also the categories of people least likely to make land grants. In table 10 the proportions of the various gift items donated by each of the primary donor types is displayed. Only 20 to 27 percent of all merchant‐trader (seṭṭi), herder (bōya), and women's gifts in Kakatiya Andhra consisted of plots of land, considerably below the 40 percent average for all donations. Instead, merchants, herders, and women were much more likely than average to make gifts of livestock. The high levels of livestock donations at major temples can thus be largely attributed to the close association of major temples with patrons who favored livestock to land when making endowments. Conversely, the main patrons of minor
Table 10. Gift Items by Individual Donor Type
Item
|
Percentage of Endowments
| ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nāyaka
|
Reḍḍi
|
Royal Rāju
|
Rājaa
|
Clerical Rāju
|
Seṭṭi
|
Woman
|
Bōya
|
All
| |
Land plot
|
50
|
44
|
37
|
36
|
44
|
27
|
27
|
20
|
40
|
Livestock
|
18
|
23
|
35
|
13
|
33
|
49
|
43
|
66
|
28
|
Village
|
2
|
5
|
10
|
29
|
7
|
2
|
4
|
0
|
6
|
Implement
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
0
|
6
|
5
|
0
|
4
|
Building
|
6
|
6
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
3
|
5
|
0
|
4
|
Misc.
|
7
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
5
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
4
|
Garden
|
3
|
1
|
5
|
5
|
2
|
0
|
4
|
0
|
3
|
Tax income
|
2
|
5
|
5
|
4
|
7
|
5
|
0
|
0
|
3
|
Irrigation
|
3
|
2
|
0
|
5
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
Cash
|
3
|
7
|
1
|
0
|
2
|
5
|
3
|
7
|
3
|
Tax remission
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
(a.) Rāja is an abbreviation for the title mahārāja.
In view of their primary occupations, herders and merchants would not be expected to have easy access to land, which they typically had to purchase first before donating to a temple.40 Nor does brahmanical legal literature condone the ownership of land by women, although it is clear from our data that such prohibitions were routinely ignored. However, it seems likely that the bulk of women's personal property then, as now, consisted of movable goods such as jewelry. Compared to the formalities involved in purchasing land, granting livestock for the purpose of lamp maintenance must have been more straightforward. Since each temple had a set number of livestock (e.g., 55 ewes or 25 cows) laid down for each lamp, it is quite possible that the donor had only to furnish cash or goods deemed equivalent in value to the animals. Although not agriculturalists, nāyakas and mahārājas obviously had rights over land as did reḍḍi village leaders and rāju lords or ministers. Since kings, military chiefs, and influential villagers all ultimately subsisted on the proceeds of agriculture, they would logically be more likely than merchants and pastoralists to either possess land that could be alienated or have the authority to transfer revenues from land.
In summary, we can formulate two abstract models of the representative institutions of the coastal and interior regions of Andhra based on aggregate data. In doing so, I inevitably exaggerate the differences between the two types of temples. What is typical of one is not necessarily unknown at the other. This is especially true of the characteristic donors and gift items, since we are actually talking about predominant trends rather than absolute cleavages. Any analysis of the diversity of temples as institutions requires the use of such ideal types, however, in order to highlight the significant variations that are witnessed in the data. With this caveat in mind, let me reiterate the distinctive attributes of the major and minor temples. The major temple had a large number of endowments, was located in the Krishna‐Godavari delta, and dated back to at least the tenth or eleventh centuries. The abundance of donations at the major temple meant that a variety of social groups were involved in their patronage, but they were uniquely favored by nonlanded donors. Partially as a consequence, the typical gift at the major temple was livestock. The minor temple received only one endowment, was located in upland regions of the state, and was of relatively recent origin. The range of patrons was obviously limited, given the very definition of a minor temple. On the whole, minor temples were favored by land‐controlling donors and typically received gifts of land.
Motives for Temple Patronage
It is easy to see why older temples located in the fertile delta would be the institutions most successful at attracting patronage. But what was their special appeal for social (p.115) groups that did not control land? Conversely, why were land‐controlling chiefs and military leaders so partial to the minor temple? Before we can differentiate between the motives of these two broad classes of donor, we must examine the issue of the benefits accruing from temple patronage in general. Beyond the obvious religious incentives for gift‐giving, how else did temple patrons benefit? In the standard model of the medieval South Indian temple, the economic integration created by resource distribution is seen as only one of its unifying aspects. The temple also fostered social solidarity through the incorporation of diverse groups into a single community of worship. Additionally, it brought about political cohesion through the legitimacy conferred on kings and local power elites.
Prestige is most often cited as the motivation behind large‐scale gift‐giving by the propertied classes of medieval South India. The desire to publicize generous benefactions was a major motivation for documenting donations in inscriptional form, although another reason was to ensure that the terms of the property transfer were permanently maintained. Inscribing records in highly visible locations on temple walls and columns or on separate slabs and pillars within the temple compound was a way of honoring the benefactors of the temple (Stein 1980: 132). The act of giving was itself a public event, often witnessed by local notables and performed in the presence of a deity (ARE 13 of 1941–42). Once having made valuable endowments, donors continued to be publicly recognized on important ritual occasions. Ceremonial presentation of various temple honors was a widespread method for acknowledging and rewarding an individual or group's status as a generous patron. The most popular temple honor in recent times is a silk cloth that has adorned the deity (Fuller 1992: 80).
During the Kakatiya period, epithets (biruda) proclaiming devotion to a particular deity were borne by some individuals, including the Kalapa Nayaka whose inscription was translated earlier (SII 6.602). Although Kalapa Nayaka was documenting his founding of a Vishnu temple, one of his titles is the epithet “worshiper of the divine and illustrious lotus feet of the god Malleshvara of Vijayavada” (Bejavāḍa‐Mallīśvara‐dēvara‐divya‐śrī‐pāda‐padm=ārādhaka). In this standard formulaic phrase, the name of other deities such as the god Mallikarjuna of Srisailam could be substituted (SII 10.339). Almost always, the deity alluded to is one of the famous gods enshrined in a major temple. Presumably, such titles were conferred as a form of temple honor, in return for conspicuous acts of generosity.
The names of major benefactors were incorporated into temple worship at times. For example, a daily ritual service or a periodic festival paid for by a particular donor might be named after that person (SII 10.464). Tanks, temples, and villages frequently bore the name of the person who was responsible for their establishment. They could also be named after someone else whom the donor designated, usually a relative. Naming of a deity was a widespread practice, occurring in slightly more than half of the newly founded temples of the Kakatiya era (62 out of 120 temples). As a rule, it is explicitly referred to in foundation inscriptions with the phrase “in the name of” (pēranu) so‐and‐so. When a liṅga was consecrated ca. 1203 by the Telangana chief Malyala Chaunda, its name was compounded from the donor's personal name Chaunda and the title Ishvara, which denoted a Shaiva deity (HAS 13.8). Technically, the term Chaundeshvara meant “Chaunda's Lord” or “Chaunda's (p.116) God,” to indicate the favored deity of Chaunda rather than imply that Chaunda himself was a god. But the deity's name served as a constant reminder of Malyala Chaunda's piety and perpetuated his memory for future generations.
Fame is often depicted as accruing from religious beneficence in Sanskrit inscriptions of the period. It is said to be the consequence of having a tank built in HAS 13.51: “By the praise of the good, the fame (yaśas) of the constructor of this praiseworthy tank . . . rests in the ten quarters.”41 A pillar is referred to in the record inscribed on it as a kīrti‐stambha—“a pillar of fame” because it recorded the donor's generosity in gift‐giving (HAS 13.7). Temples and other monuments were themselves sometimes known as kīrti in the sense of being a fame‐producing work (Sircar 1966: 158). In his study of early modern temples in Bengal, H. Sanyal notes that many small temples were built by individuals on or adjacent to their house‐sites. Although private in that sense and in enshrining family deities, care was taken to assure that these Bengali temples were visible and accessible to other villagers. The temples not only enhanced the eminence of their founders but gave them more influence in village affairs (1976: 342–44).
The notion of fame in Kakatiya Andhra had religious connotations, in addition to its social dimensions. The religious gift‐giving that led to fame also resulted in tremendous spiritual merit, sufficient perhaps to ensure safe arrival in heaven. That, in any case, seems to be the implication of the following verse in praise of Viryala Mailama, the wife of Malyala Chaunda: “There she, the one called Mailama, made a triad of temples, as if providing a pathway for her fame which yearns to ascend to heaven” (v. 10, HAS 19 Km.4). The Andhra scheme of the sapta‐santāna (seven sons) also reflects the wish to leave something behind to perpetuate one's name while simultaneously enabling one to reach heaven. A son was important in Indian society not only to carry on the lineage but for the performance of funerary rituals without which the deceased could not find peace. Religious benefactions could be substituted for the śrāddha funeral rites, in the view of some medieval religious and legal texts (Kane 1953: 182–83, 265). Hence the various items included in the seven sons such as the building of a temple or tank could guarantee a life after death both in this world and in the other. The composition of a poem, one of the seven sons, was motivated by “the underlying belief . . . that a person lives in heaven as long as his/her name is remembered on earth” (Narayana Rao 1992: 143).
It seems likely that many donors also experienced tangible material benefits from their acts of endowment. I do not mean to diminish the importance of religious and social incentives for gift‐giving in saying this. But a multiplicity of objectives could simultaneously be satisfied through a single incident of gift‐giving, undoubtedly a strong part of its appeal. Some scholars have argued that temple endowments were a strategy for retaining or gaining control over resources both human and nonhuman. James Heitzman believes that many Tamil land grants of the Chola period were actually only assignments of revenues and not transfers of ownership over land. That is, only the share of produce that would have been appropriated by the state as tax revenue was endowed to the temple recipient. The rights of proprietorship would remain with the donor, who could keep what was known as the cultivator's share. Since he or she would have had to pay taxes in any case, assigning those revenues to the temple did not lead to an overall economic loss for the donor. (p.117) Meanwhile, the donor's status as the cultivator‐proprietor of the land would be confirmed and protected by the temple, strengthening his control over agricultural labor and his rights vis‐à‐vis the state. Because the endowed temple was generally a local institution, donors might also be able to influence the allocation of other temple resources (Heitzman 1997: 58–59, 72–78).
Similar advantages may have been gained by some Kakatiya‐period donors of land, although I do not believe that these grants were necessarily confined to the assignment of revenues from land, as Heitzman suggests. In the inscription of Chodaya Reddi mentioned twice previously (SII 5.131), he was portrayed as purchasing land for donation from a man who was probably a brahman. Chodaya Reddi retained the land he bought but vowed to give the temple specified units of produce daily from that land. Under the guise of religious gift‐giving, this individual acquired rights over land that he might not have been able to attain outside the context of temple endowment. Because not all aspects of these transactions are recorded, it is quite possible that other donors of land retained cultivating rights. Certainly, we witness continued access to their livestock endowments in the case of herders. Vemana Bondu (a variant of the title Boya) and Nara Bondu documented an endowment of two flocks of sheep to the god Gopala for a perpetual lamp. By stating that they (and their descendants after them) would each supply, on a daily basis, butter in amounts that would fill half a lamp, it is made clear that these flocks physically remained with the two men who ostensibly donated them (SII 10.441). The shepherd‐donors obtained religious merit, social prestige, and—if they successfully managed the flocks—a potential economic gain.
In her analysis of the Tirumala‐Tirupati temple complex during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Carol Breckenridge points out several benefits possible from temple endowments. They were a primary means used by immigrant groups to claim agrarian produce, she explains:
In the post‐Kakatiya period, when the trade in sacred leftovers of the god (prasāda) became widespread at large Vaishnava temples, donors would get a return of about a quarter‐share of the food offerings they had financed. They could consume it themselves, transfer it to others to form linkages, or lease it to contract‐holders who would then sell it to pilgrims. Sociopolitical alliances and monetary gains were thus some of the benefits gained in addition to religious merit and prestige (Breckenridge 1986: 31–38).In a context of uncertainty, religious gifts can be seen as a complex system for ensuring some subsistence for non‐claimants on local (agrarian) goods. A gift entitled the donor (and specified others) to rights of call on a share of the agrarian produce. And, if the gift of land was preceded by purchase, to rights of call on a share of agrarian labor. A gift then could mobilize a constituency which was not necessarily coextensive with the donating group. (1985b: 59)
In short, temple patronage was a means of accruing religious merit and social prestige and influence, and possibly led to greater control over economic resources including labor. It could provide an entry into social circles outside one's kinship or occupational networks and access to property and labor beyond one's immediate command. Economic rights and privileges already possessed might also be guaranteed through endowment. With this overview of the motives for patronage behind us, (p.118) we can now return to the issue we began with:—Why would different types of donors be drawn to different types of institutions when making religious gifts? Obviously, an individual's social status and occupational background were important in determining which institution to endow, for the kinds of alliances and benefits to be gained from patronage would vary according to the nature of the temple.
Brenda Beck's ethnographic study of the modern Kongu region in Tamil Nadu aptly illustrates the way that religious worship varied according to occupation. She found that the religious life of castes who base their livelihood on agriculture (known as right‐hand castes), was quite distinct from that of castes who pursue nonagricultural occupations such as trade, banking, or the crafts (known as left‐hand castes). The right‐hand section of the community is closely bound to the land on which it works and has elaborate clan and lineage groupings based on territorial divisions. The hierarchy of social units is mirrored in the extensive network of local temples, each associated exclusively with a specific clan or lineage. These local temples were the sites of periodic group worship by the various groupings of the right‐hand castes. In contrast, castes of the left‐hand section do not possess territorially based clan and lineage groupings and are much less locally oriented. Their work often involves them in travel and communication with caste members in other localities. The larger perspective of the left‐hand castes is relevant not only in their economic and social lives but extends to their religious concerns. Members of the left‐hand castes in Kongu prefer to worship at large pilgrimage temples, sacred centers used by all communities. Furthermore, the left‐hand castes seldom undertake group worship (Beck 1972: 13–14, 61–62, 74, 99, 106).
Some of the unique characteristics of the modern left‐hand Kongu castes can be extended to the merchants and artisans of thirteenth‐century Andhra. Seṭṭis were more mobile individually and more dispersed as a group than their landed counterparts, who were bound to the specific localities from which they derived power and wealth. By patronizing the major temples, which were pilgrim sites drawing on an expansive circulatory network, Kakatiya‐period merchants extended their own network of alliances over a larger territory and became participants in socially and geographically diverse communities. Temple patronage could allow merchants entry into the complex economic networks of large temples. The process of expanding commercial activities through religious gifting has been documented by David W. Rudner for the Tamil Nakarattar caste of salt traders. They established contacts outside their areas of residence through patronage of the famous Murugan temple at Palani during the seventeenth century (Rudner 1987: 365–68).
Herders (bōyas) were the other prominent group of male donors at coastal Andhra's large temples and comprise the social category most closely linked with patronage of these sites. While they are similar to merchants and artisans in being more mobile and less bound to specific territory, the extent of the herder preference for the major temples is rather surprising. Indeed, practically no herders figure in inscriptions from the interior as either donors or trustees of livestock grants. But there is every reason to suppose that raising animals was a more important livelihood in interior Andhra. Telangana, in particular, is ecologically well suited for pastoralism (Alam 1968: 293–94). Today, the interior districts possess high ratios of sheep and other livestock in comparison to the human population (Sopher 1975: 189). And (p.119) it is in inland Andhra that remains from protohistoric pastoralists have been recovered.
David Sopher reminds us that there is a significant difference between animal herding as an economic activity and the same pursuit as a social designation. Only when there is a differentiation of lifestyles and livelihoods does the specific social category of herder emerge. It is a classification implicitly formulated in opposition to that of agriculturalist. To restate Sopher's point, a mixed economy of field cultivation and animal husbandry is required before pastoralism becomes a defined occupational specialization (Sopher 1975: 204–7). Where agriculturalists had yet to settle in large numbers or where a distinct agrarian mode of production had yet to crystallize, we would not hear about pastoralists even if they constituted the majority of the population.
Modern herding groups have forged symbiotic bonds with the agricultural communities surrounding them. Research on the Dhangar pastoralists of Maharashtra reveals that the farming villages near their seasonal camps rely on sheep manure to fertilize their fields (Sontheimer 1975: 166–69). By ensuring that peasants depend on them economically, these pastoralists have protected themselves and their lifestyle. In the more densely populated and long‐settled coastal country of Kakatiya Andhra, herders would have been similarly compelled to come to terms with agriculturalists, if they were to retain any rights over grazing land and preserve their livelihood. The epigraphic evidence indicates that temple endowments were a significant method of assimilation and accommodation for this community of people who were marginal to wet rice production. By making gifts to religious institutions, herders, like merchant‐traders, became part of a larger social unit and established linkages with other communities.
The third group of donors who patronized major temples in large numbers were women. Quite a few female donors were the wealthy and influential relatives of powerful kings and princes. Others (roughly 50 percent) were of humbler descent, being the wives or daughters of reḍḍis, nāyakas, bōyas, and seṭṭis. Their reasons for patronizing large temple cults are not entirely clear, although we might point to the greater sanctity and religious prestige of the major temple as one likely factor. Patronage of religious institutions was the main public activity in which the women of Kakatiya Andhra could participate, and thirteenth‐century inscriptions eulogize women almost solely on the grounds of their religious beneficence while praising men mostly in terms of their military accomplishments. Since social norms restricted the opportunities for enhancing their fame, many women may have sought the largest public arenas possible for their religious patronage. This certainly was true of royal women in medieval South India, who often played a more prominent role as donors of temples than did the men in their families. As an example, the queens and princesses of the imperial Chola dynasty made far more direct gifts to temples than did the kings and princes (Heitzman 1987: 41–42; for more on donations by Chola women, see Spencer 1983b).
The minor temple of the thirteenth century was preeminently a local institution with a restricted transactional network. Its local nature most sharply differentiates it from the large major temple. Minor temples received the bulk of their support from prominent individuals who controlled land and its produce. These patrons (p.120) were not the peasant leaders or village headmen themselves, since reḍḍi donors were not noticeably involved with minor temples, but mahārāja chiefs and nāyaka military leaders who occupied the intermediate strata between the overlord and landed peasants. Inasmuch as a state system could be said to have existed, it was this class of people who represented the state at the local level. Nāyakas and mahārājas had the authority to alienate land and its revenues for their own purposes; they appear in the sources as the primary extractors of agrarian surpluses. Religious gifting to temples within the territories over which they wielded military power and economic control enabled these individuals to affirm their ties with the locality and consolidate their power base. The small size of the minor or local temple's redistributive network and social community would not be a disadvantage for nāyakas and mahārājas, who sought above all to intensify their control over local agrarian resources.
This brings up an important aspect of temple patronage that I have not yet discussed. One of the primary effects of endowment was to establish hierarchical relations between various property‐holding individuals and groups. True, the making of religious gifts to a common deity may have united many social categories into a single larger community of worship, but the community itself was clearly stratified. That is, temple patrons were not ranked equally but hierarchically, partially on the basis of their relative munificence. Festivals were particularly significant in this regard, for it was on such occasions of procession with the deity that prominent patrons were most publicly rewarded with temple honors (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976). Textual prescriptions regarding entry into the temple grounds also imply that different social categories were accorded differing levels of access, and again one of the determining factors was the quantity of gifts they gave (Inden 1985: 62–70). The more lavish donors garnered greater social prestige and, we can assume, greater influence over the temple's assets and their allocation. The hierarchical function of temple patronage was especially crucial for political elites who derived considerable moral authority from gift‐giving, supplementing and reinforcing their economic and military clout.
In the rapidly changing setting of Andhra's interior frontier zone, patronage of temples was crucial for political elites in the process of consolidation. It validated their social position and at the same time facilitated greater intrusion into local agricultural processes. Temple endowments and inscriptions were an additional important means for creating and affirming political ties. The embedding of political strategies in religious gift‐giving is apparent in a variety of forms. One is the simple citation of the name of the overlord in an inscription. Unlike the Tamil country, where the reigning king is almost always mentioned, many Kakatiya‐period inscriptions are silent on the matter. When the king or a lord is specified in Andhra, we can therefore interpret it as a sign of political affiliation. Donors might also express their allegiance through transferring the religious merit of their gift to a lord or overlord. Naming the deity of a newly founded temple after a political superior was another means of displaying political loyalties.
In all these respects, we witness a marked divergence between major and minor temples, with political relations figuring much more prominently in minor‐temple inscriptions. Donors at minor temples were almost four times more likely to (p.121) acknowledge their overlord's name. They also transferred merit to a lord at over four times the rate that major temple donors did (Talbot 1991: 332–33). The naming of deities was, of course, a phenomenon that occurred at newly founded temples, a category that includes some minor temples but no major ones. But minor temples were proportionately more frequent in interior districts, whereas the major temples were all situated in coastal Andhra. Of the 11 instances of naming a new temple deity after an overlord, only 4 occurred in the coastal districts.42 Honoring an overlord in this manner was hence more common in interior Andhra. The existence of these various practices—citing the identity of an overlord, dedication of religious merit to the overlord, and establishing a deity in the overlord's name—suggests that the consolidation of political networks was one of the purposes behind the giving and recording of religious gifts. And their distributional pattern indicates that political objectives were more strongly pursued in Telangana and Rayalasima than in coastal Andhra.
The sociopolitical relations of Kakatiya Andhra can also be studied through a peculiar type of record I call the multiple‐act inscription, which records a series of endowments made by different donors on the same day to the same deity. In format this inscription resembles the typical epigraph with its single documented endowment, but the donative core of the record is replicated more than once. Since only one introduction and one concluding set of benedictory‐imprecatory verses frame the various donations, it is clear that these endowments were somehow associated, however. Multiple‐act inscriptions do not appear at minor temples, since by definition a minor temple received only one endowment during this period. Although their geographical distribution does not correlate exactly with the distribution of minor temples, multiple‐act inscriptions are more typical of the hinterland districts and less common at major temples, where they document only 8 percent of all donations.
Since we have 75 multiple‐act inscriptions, we have evidence of 75 instances of donative action by affiliated people and groups.43 They can be classified into three categories on the basis of the relationship between the donors. First of all, in 32 percent of these sets of grouped donations, the individuals are related by ties of kinship or bear the same status title and must have been neighbors or friends. These associations of relatives and friends appear mainly in the coastal region. Instead of such bonds, however, some multiple‐act inscriptions uncover associations between people based on political ties. Typically, in this second category, the status of the two (or more) donors was dissimilar and one person was politically subordinate to the other. Many of these inscriptions include donations by collectives such as village organizations and merchant groups which fell under the jurisdiction of a local lord or official. Forty‐nine percent of all the multiple‐act inscriptions belong to this class. In other words, half the time people came together to engage in religious gifting, they did so not on the basis of shared occupational or kin allegiances but, rather, of some political affiliation. None of the records in this category are found at major temples, and most of them are located in Telangana or the southern coastal districts of Guntur and Prakasam. Very few occur in Vengi. In a third, miscellaneous category comprising 19 percent of the multiple‐act inscriptions, the affiliations between donors cannot be identified.
(p.122) Religious gifting by coalitions of political associates was not always initiated by the person of superior status. In slightly less than half of these cases, the first donor noted in the multiple‐act inscription—the one who made the initial gift—was subordinate to another donor (commonly an individual with the title of mahārāja, rāju, or nāyaka). Often the primary donor had founded a new temple, which the overlord then endowed with lands. The overlord's financial support for the institution established by his subordinate was a public acknowledgment of their relationship, as well as a practical means to help the subordinate enhance his local position. When the first donor was superior in status, he was generally the chief of a region or an official in charge of supervising a town. In such instances we frequently find corporate bodies making donations, presumably in order to gain the favor of this official or chief by endowing his favored deity.
The political alliances revealed in Kakatiya‐period inscriptions are vertically aligned factions of political superiors and subordinates, not horizontally aligned assemblies of equals from different locales. Participation in vertically structured coalitions of lords and subordinates was far more typical of inland and minor temple donors than of northern coastal and major temple donors and may reflect the greater importance of military associations or war‐bands in interior society. A patron of a small local temple might therefore not only be enhancing his own prestige and legitimacy in the locality through an act of religious donation but concurrently be confirming his membership in a powerful political network, usually headed by the Kakatiyas of Warangal. It was the Kakatiya subordinates who engaged in religious gifting, not their overlords, and their interest was in solidifying their positions in the locality. These political motivations contributed to the high level of Kakatiya‐period inscriptions noted in chapter 1.
We can now return to an issue raised in a previous section of this chapter—whether all temples were functionally equivalent or homologous. I would argue that this is not the case, for the minor temples are not merely smaller replicas of their more successful major temple counterparts. The social groups associated with the minor temple were distinct from those at major temples and the motives for patronage also diverged. Of the two, the major temple more closely approximates the standard model of the precolonial South Indian temple. Major temples were significant—and nonlanded groups chose to make religious donations to them—because they brought together all the important property‐holding communities of the period. The intensity of donative activity at these sites created a pool of wealth drawn from many sectors of society that was parceled out to numerous individuals, pastoralists as well as agriculturalists. By integrating nonlandowning social groups with landed groups, the large pilgrimage temple was a significant channel for the establishment of linkages between various types of peoples. It enabled individuals from many walks of life to participate in a culturally meaningful and honored activity.
Many features of major temples are noticeably lacking when we turn to the smaller temples more characteristic of the Andhra hinterland. Surplus economic resources were contributed by only a small segment of the society of the interior regions and redistributed among a limited number and range of people. The economic networks established by temple patronage in inland Andhra thus involved (p.123) fewer social groups than in coastal Andhra. Furthermore, the scale of temple economies was far more localized in inland Andhra, since resources were alienated to numerous institutions in a diffuse pattern of temple patronage, in contrast to the centralized foci where gifts accumulated in coastal Andhra. Religious endowments in inland Andhra created linkages mainly among members of local society and particularly among the social groups that controlled land. Unlike the major temple which effected the horizontal integration of socially and geographically diverse peoples, the minor temple integrated a local power structure vertically. Patronizing the two types of temples could lead to radically different effects—this is my chief rationale for insisting that they served different functions.
Because of the broad horizontal integration fostered by large temple complexes, there has been a tendency to view temples as beneficial institutions for the society as a whole. Indeed, the very concept of integration implies a positive force, one that acts to harmonize discordant elements. Yet conflicts in temples over issues of inclusion or precedence in temple rituals are often noted in the secondary literature on colonial India (Appadurai 1981). In the distant past, just as in the recent past, temple patronage was frequently an arena of contention because of the hierarchical sociopolitical relations established in temple worship. Economic redistribution also worked in an unequal manner, for resources were not allocated evenhandedly to all comers. The definition of redistributive exchange postulates a power center toward which goods flow and from which patronage is dispensed. Redistribution by its nature fosters patron‐client ties or a hierarchical set of relationships.
Richard G. Fox has criticized the common depiction of the medieval South Indian temple as a “consensus and homeostatic model” and point outs that redistribution of resources is also a strategy for creating inequalities, both economically and politically (Fox and Zagarell 1982: 15–16). Temple patronage, particularly at smaller local temples, was a significant means of articulating the power structure and of suppressing alternate claims. It could lead to a greater stratification of society rather than initiate any form of inclusive and reciprocal interaction. In a recent revisitation of South Pacific exchange systems, Nicholas Thomas rejects many of the earlier romantic assessments of small‐scale societies (for which we can substitute “premodern societies”), which are characterized as possessing solidarity, equality, and coherence. Regardless of the size or stage of development in an economy, he asserts that exchange is always implicitly a political process of negotiation (1991: 7, 10). Susan Bayly believes that temple patronage was a form of conquest for South Indian warriors and kings, a fundamentally violent and contentious transaction (1989: 58–61). Perhaps the most elegantly phrased criticism of the earlier model is the following paragraph, penned by V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam to describe South India of the seventeenth century:
This is not a system of orderly, reciprocal mutuality, or of redistribution rooted in reciprocity—as the political economy of medieval South India is sometimes described, in ideal terms, with the king regulating exchanges through the medium of court and temple—but of symbolic interdependence in a competitive mode which constantly enlarges the circles of political activity and pushes the major actors into new, more elaborate, and more risky exchanges. (1992: 19)
(p.124) Temples were a public arena in which an ever‐increasing number of Andhra people were active over the Kakatiya period. Seeking both to achieve religious goals and to articulate social and political identities, donors had a range of options for their patronage. It is tempting to create models of the institution which stress its homogeneous and harmonious character. But that would collapse the diversity of temple types and gloss over the competitive nature of endowment. Temples, like every other aspect of medieval life, were situated in a context of historical change and thus subject to processes of conflict, contention, and diversity.
Summary: Subregional Patterns of Endowment
Analysis of donative patterns in Kakatiya Andhra highlights the contrasts in the historical development of the coastal subregion as opposed to the interior. While the temple cult was already well‐established in coastal Andhra by the beginning of the Kakatiya era, it had not yet spread far into the inland territories. The greater age and sanctity of coastal temples meant that they garnered the lion's share of the religious endowments. We witness a concentrated network of donative activities in coastal Andhra, centered on a relatively small number of temple sites that had established a reputation and built up a varied community of patrons over the centuries. The endowment patterns of the coast changed little over the Kakatiya period, for rates of donative activity remained relatively level and new temples were rarely founded. In contrast, the volume and frequency of religious donations in inland Andhra was rapidly accelerating during the Kakatiya period, as new temples sprang up throughout the landscape. Hence, this was a time of great vitality in the religious culture of inland Andhra, which was experiencing a dramatic expansion of the temple cult.
The dynamism of interior Andhra in terms of temple building and patronage is closely connected to its character as a frontier region. During the Kakatiya era, inland Andhra's economy underwent considerable growth due to the extension of agriculture into uncultivated territories, the boosting of agricultural productivity through the construction of irrigational facilities, and an overall rise in trade—all trends in which the temple as an institution was intimately intertwined. Meanwhile, the social and political systems of the inland territories were still very much in the formative stages. As land and the labor of the populace became more valuable, political stratification intensified with the appearance of local chiefs and military leaders who attempted to assert control over these newly emergent resources, and temple patronage was one means by which they could allocate surpluses to allied or sympathetic groups. Many members of the interior political elites had only recently risen to dominance and hence relied on temple patronage as a crucial source of social prestige and political legitimacy. The diffuse network of donative activities in Telangana and Rayalasima is therefore not only a result of the dispersed settlement patterns, when compared to coastal Andhra, but also of the greater fragmentation and instability of political power in this situation of flux.
Due to the varying ecological, social, and political contexts within which the temple operated, its role was different in coastal Andhra than in the hinterland. (p.125) The characteristic institution of the coast was the major pilgrimage temple, whose patronage was broadly based as a result of the well‐diversified economy and more complex social organization of this long settled subregion. While political elites were included among the major temple patrons, they were not as prominent as in the interior, perhaps because their claims to lordship were older and more widely acknowledged, thus requiring less validation. Because coastal temples drew on patrons from a large geographical territory and a range of social categories, they functioned as a means of incorporating varied social communities over a wide area. The minor temple of the hinterland, in contrast, had a limited pool of patrons and served rather as a way of strengthening political alliances among social groups that wielded power and authority over land in a restricted, local geographic space.
While I have emphasized the divergences in temple patronage between the dry peninsular interior and the wet coastal zone, I should point out that, from a larger perspective, the expansion of the temple cult into Telangana and Rayalasima also acted as a unifying force. Just as they had done centuries before in coastal Andhra, the people of the inland territories now increasingly participated in forms of religious worship and practice that revolved around the temple and hence resembled practices found widely elsewhere in India. While the specific foci of temple devotion remained largely local, there was a greater commonality in the religious culture of Andhra after the Kakatiya period in that all subregions were now encompassed within the cult of temple worship. The growing popularity of temple patronage should therefore be regarded as one of the processes that contributed to the formation of Andhra as a regional society.
Notes:
(2.) I should clarify that I am referring to the period from the late third century onward. Prior to that time, there are numerous stone inscriptions in Andhra that record gifts made at Buddhist stūpas by a range of donors. The two most renowned Buddhist sites of Andhra were Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda, both in the lower Krishna River valley.
(4.) During the second half of the fourteenth century alone, kings and chiefs of the Kondavidu Reddi and Recherla Nayaka lineages and of Vijayanagara's Sangama dynasty cited Hemadri in the following inscriptions: EI 14.4; HAS 19 Mn.35; IAP‐C 2.6; NDI Kanigiri 10; SII 10.555.
(5.) Copper‐plate grants from the Kakatiya period are ARE A.5 of 1915, A.10 and A.11 of 1918–19, A.1 of 1961–62; Bhārati 15: 555ff., 36: 4ff., 37: 11ff.; CPIHM I.10 and 11; EA 4.11, 4.12‐A and B; EI 18.41 and 38.16; HAS 6; IAP‐K appendix; NDI copper plate 17. Traditional grants of brahman villages that were formerly recorded on copper were sometimes inscribed in stone in the thirteenth century, however; see APAS 38.14 and 15; ARE 282 of 1935–36 and 16 of 1943–44; EI 34.13; IAP‐C 1.109; NDI Kavali 35 and 39, Ongole 17; SII 6.204, 228, 229, 237; SII 10.248.
(6.) E.g., APRE 5 of 1966; ARE 282 of 1935–36; CTI 22; IAP‐W. 57; NDI Kandukur 60 and 62; SII 10.259 and 312.
(7.) The use of Tamil terms in some Vaishnava grants of the Kakatiya period is evidence for the growing impact of Shrivaishnava doctrine. Several different terms with the Tamil honorific prefix tiru appear. The word tirupratiṣṭha (meaning “installation of a form of Vishnu”) occurs in NDI Kanigiri 24 (Prakasam District) and HAS 19 Ng.2 (Nalgonda District). The term tirumuṭṭamu occurs in NDI Kanigiri 24, ARE 26 of 1929–30 (Guntur District), and SII 4.700 (Guntur District). It designates a Vaishnava temple (Iswara Dutt 1967: 12).
(8.) Donations were sometimes given to provide for lamps lit only at the times of worship and several of these specify that the sandhya was performed twice daily (NDI Kavali 23, 29, 31, and 43). ARE 39a of 1929–30 refers to three periods of worship, however, while a midday service (ardhajāmu avasaramu) is endowed in SII 5.131.
(9.) Besides the Sanskrit term naivēdya, it is also referred to as amudupaḍi or ōgirālu (e.g., SII 4.979; SII 10.218). Endowments also provided for the offering of flowers, for decorating the image, or for supplying sandalwood paste and unguents.
(11.) E.g., SII 6.162 (dama taṇḍri Ritta Nalle Bōyunikin dama talli Nūṇkkāsānikini dharmārthamugā) and SII 10.456 (tama tallidaṇḍrulakum buṇyamugānu).
(12.) Śiva‐lōka appears in APRE 116 of 1965; ARE 13 of 1973–74; EI 3.17; HAS 13.48; SII 6.144; and Parabrahma Sastry 1974. Other terms for “heaven” are puṇya‐lōka, para‐lōka, and Vaikuṇṭha‐lōka (the Vaishnava heaven), figuring in ARE 366 of 1915; HAS 13.50, HAS 19 Mn.18; IAP‐W.69; NDI Ongole 150; SII 10.471 and 472.
(15.) The actual number of temples built in Andhra at this time is not large when compared to other regions and eras. In the 150 years between 1300 and 1450, for instance, 358 new temples were constructed in only a portion of the Tamil country, according to a study conducted by Burton Stein (1978: 21). But the percentage of inscriptions recording the establishment of new temples in Andhra is high, evidence that a substantial proportion of resources were diverted to this end.
(16.) The temple corpus of this chapter contains 963 distinct acts of religious gifting (by individuals, joint groups, and corporate bodies) contained in 814 separately inscribed epigraphs. Because my emphasis is on endowments here, I have chosen to consider the 963 instances of religious gifting as separate records and use the word “inscription” to describe them although it is not strictly accurate. Only inscriptions situated at the temples to which they document endowments are included; see column C of Appendix B, pt. 1 for a list. Occasionally, inscriptions were also placed at the village where land was being given away, in order to publicize the transfer of ownership embodied in the gift.
(17.) This is the first line of an often‐quoted benedictory‐imprecatory verse. The complete verse would run, “He who steals land, whether donated by himself or by another, will be reborn as a maggot living in excrement for the (next) 60,000 years.” Note that the beginnings and endings of inscriptions are the portions most likely to be abraded and hence difficult to read.
(18.) APRE 93 and 198 of 1965 and 408 of 1967; HAS 3.1; HAS 13.41, 42, 52; IAP‐K. 29 and 38; IAP‐W.39 and 54—all from Telangana—and also SII 10.289 from Guntur District.
(19.) I have found about twenty instances of it from the Vijayanagara period, including IAP‐C 2.106 and 3.215; NDI Udayagiri 46; ARE 369 and 397 of 1940–41.
(20.) The following inscriptions all record the excavation of a tank: APAS 31.26; APRE 193, 197, and 198 of 1965, 286 of 1966; APRE 408 of 1967; ARE 19 of 1971–72; EA 1.7; EI 34.13; HAS 3.1; HAS 4; HAS 13.1, 41, 42, 43, 51, and 52; HAS 19 Km.1, Km.15, Mn.17, Mn.18; IAP‐C 1.131, 1.159; IAP‐K.29 and 38; IAP‐W.38, 39, and 54; NDI Darsi 24, Darsi 74, Nellore 106, Ongole 138, Ongole 139 and Udayagiri 3; SII 10.289, 10.312, 10.340, and 10.472.
(23.) The tank foundation inscriptions are distributed throughout Telangana, the southern coastal districts, and Cuddapah in Rayalasima. They are most concentrated in Telangana, however, particularly in Warangal and Khammam Districts.
(24.) Warriors used the term in reference to land over which they had proprietary rights and could alienate—nija‐vritti or tana‐vritti, “my subsistence grant” (ARE 317 of 1934–35 and 346 of 1937–38; NDI Atmakur 55; SII 5.55; SII 10.291, 321, 388).
(26.) In SII 4.751, for example, only 7 cows were required in order to establish a sandhya lamp at the Malleshvara temple in Vijayavada. For a perpetual lamp, 25 cows were always given at this temple.
(28.) APRE 248 of 1965; HAS 19 Mn.46; IAP‐K.38; SII 5.116, SII 10.314, 358, 413, 427, 447, 455, and 528.
(31.) The three liṅgas are those at Srisailam and Kaleshvaram (Karimnagar District), besides Draksharama; while the five ārāmas consist of Kumararama at Samalkot‐Bhimavaram (East Godavari District), Kshirarama at Palakol, Amararama at Amaravati, and Bhimarama at Gunupudi‐Bhimavaram (West Godavari), in addition to Draksharama.
(36.) On the grounds of the Rameshvara temple at Velpuru is a stone pillar bearing an inscription of the sixth‐ and seventh‐century Vishnukundin dynasty (SII 10.1). This temple was patronized from the beginning of the twelfth century onward by the Kota kings based in Amaravati. The Vallabha temple at Srikakulam received a few donations from members of the Parichchhedi family, another minor dynasty of the coastal area. It may have roots in the Eastern Chalukya period since one of the favorite dynastic titles of those kings was “pṛthvīvallabha.” Eluru, where the Someshvara temple is located, was the capital of the chiefs known as the Saronathas or Kolani Mandalikas. Tadikalpudi was the capital of a minor noble family of Vengi, claiming descent from the Eastern Chalukyas, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries (Yasodadevi 1949–50: 142–43 and 1950–52: 66). The Bhimeshvara temple at Mogallu can also tentatively be dated to the era of the Eastern Chalukyas, when several other Bhimeshvara temples (as at Draksharama) were constructed.
(37.) Simhachalam inscriptions are listed by Sundaram in his book on that site (1969) and are discussed in Berkemer 1992. Inscriptions from temples in Srikakulam District have been published in Ramesan and Mukunda Row 1980. Ramachandra Murthy has analyzed the records from the Srikurman temple in that district (1983b).
(38.) Because the inland districts received so little in the way of religious patronage as compared to those on the coast, the actual numbers of minor temples found in them are quite small. But minor temples were very significant institutions for most of the interior, in the sense that they received a large share of all the religious gifts made there. The more centrally located districts of Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, Nalgonda, and Mahbubnagar fall somewhere in between the two extremes described above.
(39.) The remaining one‐third of all individual donations, covered in the category “other” in table 9, were made by men who either possessed no status title or who possessed a status title other than bōya, seṭṭi, rāju, reḍḍi, mahārāja, or nāyaka. Numerous endowments were also made by corporate bodies and joint groups of donors but are not included in table 9.
(40.) For example, ARE 76 of 1958–59; IAP‐K.38; SII 5.136, 137, 148, and 152.
(42.) APRE 358 of 1966 and 407 of 1967; ARE 325 of 1934–35 and 322 of 1937–38; EI 3.15; HAS 13.49, HAS 19 Mn.41 and 46; IAP‐W.61 and 69; SII 10.373. In one case the deity was named after the overlord's religious teacher (ARE 40 of 1942–43).
(43.) They are APRE 286 and 358 of 1966; ARE 21 and 26 of 1929–30, 321 of 1930–31, 261 of 1932–33, 274 and 285 of 1949–50, 89 of 1958–59; Bhārati 54:56; EA 4.14; EI 3.15 and 6.15; HAS 13.11, 18, 25, 34, 41, 43, 53, HAS 19 Mn.4, 5 and 41, Ng.1 and 2; IAP‐C 1.137, 1.156; IAP‐K.38; IAP W.40, 61, 65, 73; NDI Atmakur 24, Darsi 35 and 70, Kanigiri 24, Kavali 31 and 51; SII 4.933 and 939, SII 5.70 and 131, SII 6.120, 165, 214, 228, SII 10.274, 275, 276, 282, 289, 295, 309, 331, 333, 334, 351, 352, 373, 375, 377, 386, 412, 420, 422, 427, 452, 465, 475, 489, 526, 533, 544.
No comments:
Post a Comment