Sacred Journeys Beyond Borders
How Telangana's Kings & Pilgrims Worshipped from Dwarka to Varanasi
Long before modern maps drew borders between states and nations, the people of the Telangana region — kings, ministers, generals, and merchants — traversed the subcontinent as pilgrims, scholars, and devotees. From the shores of Dwaraka in Gujarat to the ghats of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, from the Vishnupada temple in Gaya to the Ranganatha temple in Srirangam, inscriptions left by Kakatiya and later dynasties reveal a profound truth: India was always one sacred country, united by faith, pilgrimage, and shared cultural memory.
The Kayastha general Brahmarakshasa Gangaya granted the village of Chittalu to a learned Brahmin named Jayasarman, who is explicitly identified as a resident of Dvaraka-kshetra — the sacred coastal city where the Gomati river meets the Arabian Sea. The gift was intended for the worship and offerings to the god Krishna of Dwaraka, connecting the Telangana region to one of India's holiest western pilgrimage centers.
The inscription of Kakatiya King Rudra I extolls his minister Gangadhara for his deep devotion. Gangadhara is recorded as having worshipped the god Visvanatha at Varanasi — the holiest of Shiva shrines. Further, he bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganga at the Dasasvamedha ghat in Kashi, the very ghat where Brahma is said to have performed the ten-horse sacrifice. He also made pilgrimage to Prayag (modern Allahabad), the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Sarasvati.
This remarkable record from the Kakatiya period reveals how even those who could not travel themselves ensured their connection to the sacred geography. Malyala Gunda sent a proxy named Aletappa to Varanasi (Benares) and Gaya to perform religious duties on his behalf — a testament to the enduring belief in the sanctity of these distant tΔ«rthas.
The lady Mailamba is recorded as having installed temples for Lord Shiva at a remarkable network of sacred sites, with Kasi listed prominently among them. This demonstrates that royal women of the Kakatiya court were also active participants in the pan-Indian sacred landscape.
π± The Sin of Violating Endowments
The Nelakondapalli inscription of Vijayanagara King Krishnadevaraya contains a powerful curse formula that reveals how deeply Varanasi was embedded in the religious consciousness of the Deccan: those who violate the dharma of the grant would incur the sin of "killing cows and women in Benares" — a curse invoking the holiest of cities to protect the charitable act.
One of the most extraordinary pieces of evidence for Telangana's connection to the north is a Sanskrit inscription found on the wall of a Shiva shrine in front of the Vishnupada temple at Gaya, Bihar — the holiest site in India for performing Gaya-shraddha (funeral rites for ancestors). The record documents the rites performed by Gauri for her deceased husband, who was a general of Kakatiya King Prataparudra I. This inscription physically proves that a Kakatiya family traveled thousands of kilometers to Gaya to honor their dead — seeing no boundary between their Telangana homeland and the sacred soil of Bihar.
In a powerful act of sacred replication, the temple town of Alampur on the banks of the Tungabhadra river is explicitly identified in a Vijayanagara-era record as Dakshina Varanasi (the Varanasi of the South) and Kasi-kshetra. This reveals how the sacred geography of the north was consciously mirrored in the Deccan, creating a unified ritual landscape from the Himalayas to the Krishna river.
The great Shaiva center of Srisailam (Sri Parvata) is frequently referred to in inscriptions as Kailasa — the Himalayan abode of Shiva. This identification transformed a Telangana hill into a cosmic mountain, connecting local devotion to pan-Indian mythology. The site's four cardinal gates — Tripurantakam (east), Alampur (west), Umamaheswaram (north), and Kalesvaram (north-east) — created a vast sacred territory that replicated cosmic geography.
This record mentions a devotee named Mellacheruvu Venkaya who paid homage to Kalabhairava (the guardian deity of Varanasi) daily after bathing in the Prayagakunda — a sacred tank whose very name invokes the holy confluence at Prayag. Again, we see the sacred geography of the north replicated and invoked in the Deccan.
The reach of Telangana's people extended even to the deep south. An inscription at the great temple of Sri Ranganatha on the banks of the Kaveri river in Srirangam records a grant by the general Devari-nayaka after his victorious campaign in the south. A Kakatiya general, having fought battles in Tamil country, did not merely conquer — he also worshipped, donating to the holiest Vaishnava shrine in the south.
What emerges from these inscriptions is a vision of India as a unified sacred geography. The Kakatiya king or his minister did not feel that Varanasi or Gaya or Dwaraka was "foreign" — these were tΔ«rthas (crossing places) where the divine touched the earth, accessible to any devotee regardless of which king ruled the intervening territory. Political boundaries between the Kakatiyas, the Delhi Sultanate, the Yadavas, the Hoysalas, and the Vijayanagara Empire did not create religious boundaries.
πΏ The Concept of "Dakshina Varanasi" — Sacred Replication
A particularly sophisticated aspect of this worldview is the deliberate replication of northern sacred sites in the Deccan. Alampur is explicitly called "Dakshina Varanasi" (Southern Varanasi). Srisailam is called "Kailasa" (Shiva's Himalayan abode). The Prayagakunda at Yeleswaram invokes the triple confluence of Prayag. This was not mere imitation — it was a conscious theological project: the sacred geography of the entire subcontinent was portable and replicable. Wherever a devotee went, they could find Varanasi, Gaya, or Kailasa — because divinity was not confined to a single coordinate.
These inscriptions collectively demonstrate that medieval India was characterized by intense pan-regional pilgrimage networks. The Kakatiya court patronized Brahmins from Dwaraka, sent proxies to Gaya, recorded pilgrimages to Varanasi and Prayag, invoked the sacred geography of the north in Deccan inscriptions, and made grants at southern temples like Srirangam. The modern political divisions between "north" and "south," "Telangana" and "Uttar Pradesh," "Andhra" and "Bihar" simply did not exist in the sacred imagination of the time.
As the Chityala inscription shows, a Kayastha general under the Kakatiyas could endow a scholar from Dwaraka. As the Gaya inscription proves, a Kakatiya queen could perform funeral rites at the Vishnupada temple in Bihar. As the Srirangam inscription records, a Kakatiya general could make donations on the banks of the Kaveri. India was always one country — not in the political sense of a unified empire, but in the deeper, more enduring sense of a shared sacred landscape.
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