Nellore
This branch of the Telugu Chodas held the Nellore country on the frontier between the Tamil and Telugu spheres, subordinate at various points to the Cholas, the Kākatīyas and the Pāṇḍyas, and independent in the intervals. Their inscriptions are in both Tamil and Telugu.
Manuma Siddhi II, in the thirteenth century, is the best remembered of the line — not for his politics, which involved losing and regaining his throne with Kākatīya assistance, but for his minister and poet Tikkana Somayāji.
Tikkana took up the Telugu Mahābhārata that Nannaya had left unfinished two centuries earlier and translated fifteen of its eighteen books. With Nannaya and Errana he is one of the kavitraya, the three poets, on whom the Telugu literary tradition is founded, and the work was done under Nellore Choda patronage.
The dynasty ended in the fourteenth century amid the Sultanate campaigns in the peninsula.
Further reading
- Bakker, Hans T. The World of the Skandapurana. Brill, 2014
- Fritz, John M. Hampi Vijayanagara. Jaico, 2003
- Nath, Vijay. Puranas and Acculturation. Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001
- Rocher, Ludo. The Puranas. Harrassowitz, 1986
- Stein, Burton. Vijayanagara. Cambridge University Press, 1989
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.