Dharaṇikoṭa
The Koṭa chiefs held the country around Dharaṇikoṭa, which had been Dhānyakaṭaka, the Sātavāhana city adjoining the Amarāvatī stūpa. By their time the Buddhist establishment was long gone and the site was a Śaiva centre; the Amareśvara temple there, which the Koṭas patronised, stands on the old ground.
They served the Velanāṭis and then the Kākatīyas, and married into both. Their inscriptions record temple endowments and the usual apparatus of a feudatory house.
The great stūpa's sculptured railing, among the supreme achievements of early Indian art, was quarried for lime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; what survived was removed to Madras and to the British Museum. The Koṭas' period is the long interval during which the monument stood forgotten in their territory.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Fritz, John M. Hampi Vijayanagara. Jaico, 2003
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.