EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 64 of 120

Correct — A, (a) Peddavegi. Vengi, or Vengipura, the city that gave its name to the Eastern Chalukya kingdom, is identified with the village of Peddavegi, also written Pedavegi, near Eluru in the Krishna-Godavari delta of coastal Andhra Pradesh. The identification rests on archaeology rather than on tradition alone: excavation at the site has exposed extensive brick structures, a large mound long known locally as Dhanamdibba, fortification remains, coins and terracottas, and occupation layers running from the early centuries of the Common Era onwards. The place had already been a capital before the Chalukyas reached it, since the Salankayanas ruled from Vengi in the fourth and fifth centuries, and it was that established seat of power that the Chalukyas took over. The kingdom itself begins when Pulakeshin the Second of Badami conquered the coastal Andhra country and installed his brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana there as viceroy in about 624; within a generation the branch had become independent of Badami and it went on ruling the delta for roughly five centuries, far outlasting the parent house. The dynasty's later history moved its centre north-east to Rajamahendravaram, the modern Rajahmundry named after Rajaraja Narendra, but Vengi remained the name of the kingdom and the title of its kings, which is why the country between the Krishna and the Godavari is called Vengi-nadu in inscriptions and why the long Chalukya-Chola contest over it is described as the struggle for Vengi. The other three options are real and important archaeological sites in the same coastal belt, which is what makes the question worth setting, but each of them is a Buddhist religious site or an unrelated settlement rather than a royal capital.

• (b)Erumaiyur — This is the option carrying no association at all, and it is included precisely because it sounds like a south Indian village name without bringing any historical baggage with it. The ending is the ordinary Dravidian element for a settlement, the same one that closes thousands of village names across the peninsula, so the word reads as a plausible toponym to anybody who has looked at a map of the south. It is not the site identified with Vengi. The lesson is about what a genuine identification looks like: a capital city is placed at a modern village on the strength of excavated structures, inscriptions found in situ, and the agreement of later records, and every serious candidate site therefore comes with a body of published archaeology attached to it. A name that carries nothing behind it is unlikely to be the answer to a question that begins with the words is identified with.
• (c)Salihundam — Salihundam is a genuine and well-known site, but of an entirely different kind. It stands on a hill above the Vamsadhara river in Srikakulam district in the north of coastal Andhra Pradesh, not far from the old port of Kalingapatnam, and it is a Buddhist establishment: stupas of several sizes, monastic remains and relic caskets, with material spanning the Hinayana and Mahayana phases. Nothing about it makes it a royal capital, and it lies far to the north-east of the Krishna-Godavari doab where Vengi sits. The option works on a candidate who recognises the name as an important Andhra site and stops there. Coastal Andhra is unusually rich in early Buddhist sites, so the recognition test is not enough on its own; ask what kind of site it is before asking whether the name is familiar.
• (d)Bhattiprolu — Bhattiprolu is the strongest of the three wrong options, because it is famous and it is in the right general region — Guntur district, near the mouth of the Krishna. It is famous, however, as a Buddhist stupa site of the last centuries before the Common Era. Its excavation produced relic caskets said to hold relics of the Buddha, and the inscriptions on those caskets are written in a distinctive variant of Brahmi now called the Bhattiprolu script, which is one of the reasons the site matters for the history of Indian writing. That is a monastic and epigraphic site several centuries older than the Eastern Chalukyas, and it was never their capital. Keep the categories separate: Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Bhattiprolu, Salihundam and Guntupalli are Buddhist centres of coastal Andhra, while Vengi and Rajamahendravaram are its royal seats.

The Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi are a branch of the Chalukyas of Badami, created when Pulakeshin the Second overran the Andhra country in about 624 and left his brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana in charge of it. The branch soon became an independent kingdom and outlived the Badami house by centuries, ruling the fertile deltaic country between the Krishna and the Godavari from Vengi and later from Rajamahendravaram. Its long history is dominated by two things. The first is a running contest with the Rashtrakutas and then with the Cholas over the delta, which made Vengi one of the most fought-over provinces in peninsular India. The second is a dynastic merger with the Cholas: Rajaraja Narendra married the Chola princess Ammangadevi, and their son, born Rajendra Chalukya, ascended the Chola throne in 1070 as Kulottunga the First, uniting the two lines and effectively ending Vengi's separate existence. The dynasty also matters for Telugu literature, since it was under Rajaraja Narendra's patronage that Nannaya, remembered as the Adikavi or first poet, began rendering the Mahabharata into Telugu. The kingdom's name survives in the regional label Vengi-nadu used in inscriptions, and its capital is one of the standard identifications a student of early medieval Andhra is expected to know: Vengi is Peddavegi, near Eluru.

This paper's history block asks for identifications — a capital with its modern village, a text with its author, a dynasty with its king — because such items have a single verifiable answer and cannot be argued around. The skill they test is not memory of a map but the discipline of asking what category each option belongs to. Here all four options are or sound like places in coastal Andhra Pradesh, and two of them are well-known enough that a candidate may recognise them; but recognition is the trap, since both are Buddhist religious sites and the question asks for a royal capital. The same discrimination works on many identification questions in this part of the syllabus: capitals, ports, monastic complexes and rock-cut sites form separate classes, and an option drawn from the wrong class can be discarded even by a candidate who cannot place the right one. It is also worth registering how much of early Andhra's archaeology is Buddhist — Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Bhattiprolu, Salihundam, Guntupalli — because that concentration is what allows a setter to build a whole option set out of correct facts about the wrong kind of site.

• Vengi, the capital of the Eastern Chalukyas, is identified with Peddavegi near Eluru in the Krishna-Godavari delta of coastal Andhra Pradesh; excavation there has exposed brick structures, a large mound known as Dhanamdibba, fortification remains, coins and terracottas.
• The Eastern Chalukya kingdom began when Pulakeshin the Second of Badami conquered coastal Andhra in about 624 and installed his brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana as viceroy at Vengi; the branch soon became independent and ruled for roughly five centuries.
• Vengi had been a capital before the Chalukyas, since the Salankayanas ruled from it in the fourth and fifth centuries, which is why the site carries occupation layers older than the dynasty the question asks about.
• The Eastern Chalukya capital later moved to Rajamahendravaram, the modern Rajahmundry, named after Rajaraja Narendra, under whose patronage Nannaya, remembered as the Adikavi, began the Telugu rendering of the Mahabharata.
• Rajaraja Narendra married the Chola princess Ammangadevi, and their son ascended the Chola throne in 1070 as Kulottunga the First, uniting the Chola and Eastern Chalukya lines and ending Vengi's separate existence.
• Bhattiprolu in Guntur district is a Buddhist stupa site whose relic-casket inscriptions are written in a variant of Brahmi called the Bhattiprolu script, and Salihundam in Srikakulam district is a hilltop Buddhist complex above the Vamsadhara river.

• Choosing the site whose name you recognise rather than the site of the right kind; Bhattiprolu and Salihundam are famous Buddhist establishments, not royal capitals
• Confusing the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi with the Chalukyas of Badami or the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani; the three are related but ruled from different capitals in different periods
• Assuming Vengi was founded by the Chalukyas; it was already the Salankayana capital in the fourth and fifth centuries and was taken over as an existing seat of power
• Forgetting that the Eastern Chalukya capital later shifted to Rajamahendravaram, so a question about the dynasty's capital has to be read for which capital and which period it means
• Treating Kulottunga the First as purely a Chola king; he was born a Chalukya of Vengi and his accession in 1070 is the point at which the two lines merged

Identification questions of this shape recur through the paper's ancient and medieval block: an ancient place-name is given and the candidate is asked which modern village or town it corresponds to, or the reverse. The option sets are built from real sites in the same region, so nothing can be eliminated on geography alone, and the discriminating question is always what kind of place each option is. Alongside these, the same block asks for the founder of a dynasty, the capital shift that followed a defeat or a marriage, and the author a royal patron is remembered for. Preparing the Eastern Chalukyas therefore means holding four facts together — Vengi is Peddavegi, the founder is Kubja Vishnuvardhana, the later capital is Rajamahendravaram, and the line ends by merging with the Cholas under Kulottunga the First — because a single question can be built on any one of them.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Eastern Chalukya kingdom of Vengi was founded when Pulakeshin II installed which one of the following as viceroy over the conquered Andhra country?

  • (a)Kubja Vishnuvardhana
  • (b)Mangalesha
  • (c)Vikramaditya I
  • (d)Kirtivarman II

  Answer(a) Kubja Vishnuvardhana — the brother of Pulakeshin II, placed in charge of coastal Andhra in about 624 after its conquest; his line soon became independent of Badami and ruled Vengi for roughly five centuries. Mangalesha was Pulakeshin II's uncle and predecessor at Badami, Vikramaditya I his son who restored the Badami kingdom after the Pallava occupation, and Kirtivarman II the last Badami Chalukya, overthrown by the Rashtrakutas.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The relic caskets bearing inscriptions in an early variant of Brahmi, now called the Bhattiprolu script, were found at a Buddhist site in which one of the following present-day States?

  • (a)Odisha
  • (b)Telangana
  • (c)Andhra Pradesh
  • (d)Karnataka

  Answer(c) Andhra Pradesh — Bhattiprolu lies in Guntur district near the mouth of the Krishna, and its stupa yielded relic caskets whose inscriptions of about the third century before the Common Era are written in a distinctive variant of Brahmi named after the site. Coastal Andhra Pradesh holds a dense concentration of such early Buddhist establishments, including Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Guntupalli and Salihundam.