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Anantapur

Town in Rayalaseema below a great tank that, by tradition, was built under the Vijayanagara king Bukka I. It was the seat of the Hande poligars (local chiefs). Later it was the seat of Thomas Munro as Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts (1800–07), and of the Bellary Collectorate until 1840. It became a municipality in 1869. In 1882 it became the headquarters of the new Anantapur District, formed from the southern taluks of Bellary.

Francis’s Anantapur gazetteer (1905) summarises the Mackenzie manuscripts on the name.1 According to them, Anantapur takes its name from Anantasagaram, “Ananta’s ocean”.1 This was a village built at the western end of the great tank that Chikkappa Udaiyar, minister of the Vijayanagara king Bukka I, is said to have made.1 The village at the eastern end was named Bukkarayasamudram, after the king.1

The country round it was later held by the Hande family of poligars (local chiefs), so the place was long known as Hande Anantapur.2 See Bukkarayasamudram and Vijayanagara.

Munro’s headquarters

The Ceded Districts passed to the East India Company in 1800.3 Thomas Munro, their first Principal Collector, “selected Anantapur as his own place of residence, and he lived there until he went Home on leave in 1807”.3 The “Munro Hall” in the Deputy Collector’s office was his court-room, and his bungalow, gardens and wells could still be traced in 1905.3

After 1807 Anantapur was the headquarters of the Bellary Collectorate until 1840.3 In that year the Collector moved to Bellary, and a Sub-Collector was left at Anantapur.3 In 1869 he too was moved, to Gooty.4 See Thomas Munro and East India Company.

A district headquarters

Early in 1882 the southern taluks of Bellary “were constituted a separate district”, and Anantapur “again became the head-quarters of a Collector”.54 It had been made a municipality in 1869.6

In 1905 the town held the offices of the Collector, the Superintendent of Police and the other district officers, and it had 7,938 people.3 Francis found it “neither a trading nor an industrial centre”.1 It lived “chiefly upon the offices which are established within it”, though its population had grown by half in twenty years.1 Its tank, one of the largest in the district, irrigated some 2,100 acres.4 See British Crown (Madras Presidency).

Footnotes

  1. Francis, Anantapur (1905), p. 143 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Francis, Anantapur (1905), p. 144 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  3. Francis, Anantapur (1905), p. 141, s.v. Anantapur (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. Francis, Anantapur (1905), p. 142 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: Anantapur (1905), p. 101 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 488, s.v. Anantapur Town (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Photos

References

Sources (2)
  1. W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: Anantapur (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Addison & Co.), 1905, pp. 101, 141–144. [Public domain]
  2. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 488. [Public domain]

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