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Erragudi

Village in Pattikonda taluk, Kurnool district, near Gooty. Asoka's fourteen Rock Edicts and Minor Rock Edicts I–II are carved on boulders of the Yenakonda hill nearby.

Close photograph of a large weathered boulder face covered with rows of Brahmi letters, marked B, with bamboo poles lashed along its foot.
Close photograph of a large weathered boulder face covered with rows of Brahmi letters, marked B, with bamboo poles lashed along its foot. · Archaeological Survey of India (Annual Report 1928-29, ed. H. Hargreaves) (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Erragudi is a village in Pattikonda taluk of Kurnool district, near the district’s southern border. D. C. Sircar gives its position as about 15° 12′ N, 77° 39′ E. It lies about eight miles north-west of Gooty (in Anantapur district) on the road from Gooty to Pattikonda. The name is often spelled Yerragudi, following local pronunciation.1 Pattikonda taluk had belonged to Bellary district until 1858, when it was transferred to Kurnool.2

The edict hill

West of the village is a range of low hills. One of them is locally called Yenakonda (“elephant hillock”) or Nallayenakonda (“black elephant hillock”). Six large boulders on this hill carry the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Asoka.1 The geologist who found them reported that the boulders are hornblendic gneiss, which he assigned to the Archaean, the oldest rock series in India.3 He suggested that the hill was named after a carving of an elephant, such as accompanies Asoka’s edicts at Dhauli, Girnar and Kalsi. D. R. Sahni searched and found no such carving, and thought the name was simply a villagers’ fancy. Sircar also found no elephant.31

The largest boulder stands on the summit above a drop of about 20 feet, and the others lie on its eastern slope. The Minor Rock Edicts are on the lowest and most accessible boulder.4 See Erragudi edicts of Asoka for the inscriptions themselves.

Discovery

The edicts were found at the end of 1928 by A. Ghose of Calcutta, an officer of the Geological Survey of India. He had been prospecting in the old diamond-mining country of Guntur, Kurnool and Anantapur districts.51 Sahni and Hirananda Sastri reached Gooty on 8 February 1929 and spent about eight days copying the inscriptions. The discovery was announced in a press communiqué on 11 February 1929.6

In 1953 a second copy of Asoka’s Minor Rock Edicts was found about 20 miles away at Rajula-Mandagiri, also near Pattikonda.7

Footnotes

  1. D. C. Sircar, “Erragudi Edicts of Asoka”, Epigraphia Indica XXXII (1959), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 407 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  3. D. R. Sahni, “The Yerragudi Rock Edicts of Asoka”, Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1928–29 (1933), p. 162 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  4. D. C. Sircar, “Erragudi Edicts of Asoka”, Epigraphia Indica XXXII (1959), pp. 2–3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. H. Hargreaves (ed.), Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1928–29 (1933), Introduction, p. 5 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. D. R. Sahni, “The Yerragudi Rock Edicts of Asoka”, Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1928–29 (1933), p. 161 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. D. C. Sircar, “Rajula-Mandagiri Inscription of Asoka”, Epigraphia Indica XXXI (1960), p. 212 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Photos

People

Asoka

c. 268 BCE – 226 BCE

Third Maurya emperor (3rd century BCE). His edicts at Erragudi and Rajula-Mandagiri in Kurnool district are among the oldest written records found in Andhra Pradesh. His Kalinga war reached the coast north of the Godavari, and his Rock Edict XIII names the Andhras.

Inscriptions

Erragudi edicts of Asoka

c. 250 BCE

Asoka's fourteen Rock Edicts and his Minor Rock Edicts I–II, carved on six boulders of the Yenakonda hill near Erragudi in Kurnool district in the mid-3rd century BCE. They were found in 1928.

References

Sources (4)
  1. D. C. Sircar and B. Ch. Chhabra (eds.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXII (1957–58) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1959, pp. 1-3. [Public domain in India]
  2. H. Hargreaves (ed.), Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1928-29 (opens in a new tab), Government of India, 1933, pp. 5-6, 161-162. [Public domain]
  3. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 407. [Public domain]
  4. N. Lakshminarayan Rao and D. C. Sircar (eds.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXI (1955–56) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1960, pp. 212. [Public domain in India]

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