Gudivada (Sarvasiddhi)

Gudivada is a village of what was the Sarvasiddhi taluk of Visakhapatnam district.¹ M. Somasekhara Sarma, writing in 1960, described it as the home of a landholder, Pericherla Peddiraju.¹ Three sets of copper plates of the Eastern Chalukya king Jayasimha I had long been kept in his house.¹ Where and when they were first found was not known.¹ It is a different place from the better-known Gudivada in the Krishna delta.

The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 described Sarvasiddhi as a coastal taluk in the south of Visakhapatnam district, of 341 square miles and 152 villages.² It lay between 17° 15′ and 17° 40′ N and 82° 31′ and 83° 1′ E.² Its headquarters were at Yellamanchili.² The pleader who borrowed the plates for their editor lived in that town.¹

The village in the grants

Somasekhara Sarma identified Gudivada with the Kulivataka of the first grant, the Kudivada of the second and the Kudivata of the third.³ All three grants concern land in or next to it.³ He thought it must have adjoined the unidentified villages of Adivasa and Kunduru.³⁴ He noted that some families in the village still bore the name Kunduru.³⁴

He placed the Plakki district of the grants in the Sarvasiddhi and Anakapalli taluks.⁵ He suggested that the name of the taluk itself goes back to Jayasimha I, who bore the surname Sarvasiddhi.⁵ See the Gudivada plates of Jayasimha I.

Footnotes

1. M. Somasekhara Sarma, “Three Grants of Chalukya Jayasimha I”, Epigraphia Indica XXXI (1955–56, publ. 1960), p. 129 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 260 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Somasekhara Sarma, “Three Grants of Chalukya Jayasimha I” (1960), p. 131 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Somasekhara Sarma, “Three Grants of Chalukya Jayasimha I” (1960), p. 134 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

5. Somasekhara Sarma, “Three Grants of Chalukya Jayasimha I” (1960), p. 132 and note 1 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²