River bed land not suitable

“The fertile lands along River Krishna are not suitable for heavy structures and it is not advisable to have a capital there. There will always be a threat of floods and possible earthquake,” says noted historian and retired head of the department of Telugu at Acharya Nagarjuna University, Prof. Yarlagadda Balagangadhara Rao.

The man, who studied the old Mangalagiri taluq and had done extensive research on the historical names of the villages, suggests that the capital could come up on the left side of the Mangalagiri-Amaravathi Road, which was the original river bank.

“River Krishna has changed its course over a period of time. Earlier it treaded a different path and flowed up to Mangalagiri. The villages proposed for the capital were a part of the original river bed where the soil is a mixture of wet sand and gum black soil. The soil is not advisable for construction,” he says.

He adds that several villages were washed away in a major devastation that occurred in 1503 CE, which was a combination of floods and earthquake.

“The Kakatiya king Ganapathi Deva, who ruled between 1199 to 1262 CE, had built Sri Rudradeva Puram village after his daughter’s name. This village was totally destroyed in the earthquake,” the professor says, quoting scriptures available at Penumaka and Mandadam and other villages of the area. The Sri Rudradeva Puram also had a huge Vedic University, which was also buried in the earthquake.

“The land deep inside had several breaches. Whenever there is a heavy inflow to River Krishna in the upstream of Prakasam Barrage, the huge village tank of Kuchipudi near Tenali would overflow, which shows that the river flows through these breaches deeper inside,” he elucidates.

The hills located on the banks of River Krishna on the Guntur side are not rocky. “The hills are formed with lime stone and there is a possibility of the limestone melting if there is a heavy rush of water in River Krishna. The melted limestone would slowly reduce the hills and thus the river would change its course to its original area that covers Vaikuntapuram and Mangalagiri,” he says.

He fears that if the river changes its course to the original position, the capital would be in waters.

Moreover, the Thulluru area had several streams flowing into the river. “Today we have only Kondaveeti Vaagu, which was originally called as Pulleru Rivulet. But there were several streams like Kanteru Vaagu, Anantavaram Vaagu and Madduru Vaagu. The very name of the villages that have the word ‘Pudi’, such as Rayapudi, Velagapudi and other villages, denote the presence of flow of water. Even ‘Parru’ or ‘Marru’ in Nidamarru and Kalaparru villages denotes that the habitations are located by the side of the flow of water,” he adds.

Prof. Balagangadhara Rao, a known epigraphist and former vice-chariman of the Place Names Society of India, advises the government to consult historians and geologists before zeroing in on the area for capital location.

By: D Gopi