Inscriptions of Telangana Nizamabad District (Nizamabad & Kamareddy)

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Foreword The present book titled 'The Inscriptions of Telangana - Nizamabad District' is the first publication on inscriptions brought out by the Department of Heritage Telangana after formation of Telangana State.

Nizamabad has a prominent and unique place in the history of Telangana. Nizamabad is popularly known as 'Induru'. The place gained it's name after Rastrakuta Indra-III Nitya Varsha of 10th century A.D. Another prominent place in the district is Bodhan. Originally known as Potala or Podana or Bahudhanyapura, the present day Bodhan was part of Asmaka Janapada of Buddhist literature. Bodhan (Potala) was one of the 30 walled cities mentioned by Megasthenes of 4th century B.C. Thus the history of Nizamabad spans back to several hundred years. However after Satavahanas one comes across a historical interregnum till the period of Kalyana Chalukyas due to the absence of any inscriptional evidence.

Preface The Department of Archeology & Museums has proposed the scheme of conducting village wise survey in 1964 for collecting epigraphs in all the districts. Till now, the department has conducted epigraphical survey and published inscriptions of (1) Warangal, (2) Karimnagar, (3) Nalgonda (2 Vols) (4) Medak and (5) Mahaboobnagar districts (2 Vols). The department conducted village wise survey of Nizamabad district and is now publishing Inscriptions of former Nizamabad as 6thin the series and first after the formation of the State of Telangana. During the preparation of this Volume, the districts in Telangana have been re-organized and the present volume contains original texts of available Inscriptions in the present Nizamabad and Kamareddy districts belonging mainly to the Western Chalukyas of Kalyana (A.D.10th-12th), and Kakatiya (A.D. 12- 13°), besides few miscellaneous ones. Also texts of Arabic and Persian records have been included for providing a complete historical account of the district. This, we, hope would cater to the needs of future research, as these form the original source material.

Introduction The District of Nizamabad, forms part of the present Telangana State, situated towards north-west of Hyderabad. It lies between 18° 05' and 190 of the northern latitude and 770° 40' and 78° 37' of the castern longitudes. The District is bounded on the east by Karimnagar district, on the south by Medak district, on the west by Nanded district of Maharastra State and on the north by Adilabad and Nanded districts. The District is rich in paddy cultivation and sugar cane industry. It has a glory past. In the begining the territory was called as Asmaka in "Anguttara Nikaya" of the Buddhist literature (A.N.P.T.S.312) which lay on the border land between Marathwada and Telangana and might have embraced the Telugu speaking district of Nizamabad. Geographically, Nizamabad district is situated in the central part of Godavari valley, called as mid Godavari valley, which lay between the Nirmal ranges in the north and Balaghat ranges in the south. Both in literature and inscriptions, the territory Asmaka finds mention with its capital at a place called Potali, which became Potana, Podana or Paudanya and Bahudhänya afterwards, situated to the south of the confluence of the rivers Godavari and Manjeera.