Study guides
Prehistory & megalithic cultures
before 300 BCE
This guide organises pages on this site; every fact is on the linked pages with its sources.
In brief
Long before the first inscriptions, people lived in the river valleys and on the rocky hills of the Telugu country. They left two kinds of evidence, stone tools and megalithic burials built of large stones. The era page follows the surveyors and excavators who recorded these remains between the 1860s and the 1930s, when there was no way to date them. Written history begins in the 3rd century BCE, with Asoka's edicts at Erragudi and the Bhattiprolu relic caskets.
Key dates
Each date links to the page it comes from. "About" and "or" are kept where the page gives them.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 3rd century BCE | Written history begins. Asoka's edicts are carved on boulders at Erragudi in Kurnool district. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| about 272–232 BCE | Asoka's reign, as D. C. Sircar dates it. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| no later than about 200 BCE | G. Bühler's date for the inscribed relic caskets from the Bhattiprolu stupa. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1868 | An officer of the Geological Survey takes a chipped stone tool out of solid rock on the Mantralamma pass in Kurnool district. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1882 | Robert Sewell lists the antiquities of the Madras Presidency and sorts the stone graves into dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, stone circles and cairns. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1883 | The Krishna District manual calls stone tools the earliest trace of people in the district. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1886 | The Kurnool district manual lists dolmens in Markapur and Cumbum taluks. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1907 | The Godavari gazetteer describes many stone monuments upstream from Bhadrachalam. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1908 | The Madras gazetteer sums up what is known. Rough stone weapons came first, and later finer tools, cairns and dolmens. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1909 | The Hyderabad State gazetteer notes Palaeolithic and Neolithic tools in the black soil of the large river valleys. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| 1915 | The Cuddapah gazetteer warns that the district's cists have never been examined scientifically. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| February 1916 | The Hyderabad Archaeological Department digs the northern group of cairns at Maula Ali, near Hyderabad. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
| June 1916 | The same officer visits Raigir and notices groups of scratched marks on pots from its cairns. Prehistory & megalithic cultures |
Main points
From the era page: Prehistory & megalithic cultures
- People lived in the river valleys and on the rocky hills of the Telugu country long before the first inscriptions. They left two main kinds of evidence: stone tools and megalithic burials.
- All the sources used were written between the 1860s and the 1930s. They had no way of dating the remains, and their authors admitted that few sites had been examined scientifically.
- Robert Bruce Foote collected stone axes and spearheads along the Gundlakamma river. The 1909 Hyderabad gazetteer noted Palaeolithic and Neolithic tools in the black soil of the large river valleys.
- Sewell grouped the stone graves as dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, stone circles and cairns. He noted that in the Telugu country all of them were called Rakshasa gundlu, rocks of the demons.
- In 1916 the Hyderabad Archaeological Department dug cairns at Maula Ali. It found red and black pottery and iron knives, daggers, hatchets and axes, and judged that the cemetery was used over several centuries.
- Written history begins in the 3rd century BCE with Asoka's edicts at Erragudi and the Bhattiprolu relic caskets. Bühler dated the caskets to no later than about 200 BCE.
From other pages of the period
- Erragudi is a village in Pattikonda taluk of Kurnool district, about eight miles north-west of Gooty. Six large boulders on the Yenakonda hill west of the village carry the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Asoka. Erragudi
- The script is Brahmi and the language Prakrit. Some lines of the Minor Rock Edicts run from right to left, and Sircar suggested that the engraver came from north-western India. He concluded that the two sets of edicts reached Erragudi separately, at different times. Erragudi edicts of Asoka
- Asoka was the third emperor of the Maurya dynasty of Magadha, in the 3rd century BCE. Copies of his edicts at Erragudi and Rajula-Mandagiri in Kurnool district are among the earliest written records found in the region. Asoka
- The script is an unusual form of Brahmi, with several letters unlike those of Asoka's edicts. Bühler dated the texts by their letters to no later than 200 BCE, perhaps somewhat earlier. He used them to argue that writing in India was older than the Mauryas. Bhattiprolu relic-casket inscriptions
- In the 1870s the mound was dug up for materials. Its bricks went into road-making and its marble slabs into a sluice on the Krishna canal. Sewell later found it 'absolutely demolished'. Bhattiprolu stupa
- Inscriptions are the backbone of the early and medieval history of the Telugu country, and most were found by chance. The Erragudi edicts were noticed in 1928 by a geologist looking for minerals. Inscriptions & sources
Key terms
- megalith మెగాలిత్
- great stone
- Palaeolithic పేలియోలిథిక్
- Old Stone Age
- Neolithic నియోలిథిక్
- New Stone Age
- cairn కెయిర్న్
- a mound of earth and loose stones over a grave
- cromlech క్రోమ్లెక్
- a stone circle around a stone coffin
- dolmen డోల్మెన్
- a stone box built on the ground surface
- kistvaen కిస్ట్వేన్
- the stone box of a grave
- capstone పై బండ
- top slab
- Rakshasa gundlu రాక్షస గుండ్లు
- rocks of the demons, the Telugu name for the stone graves
- barrows బారోలు
- burial mounds
- stupa స్తూపం
- relic mound
- Prakrit ప్రాకృతం
- one of the spoken languages related to Sanskrit
People, places, monuments and inscriptions to know
People
Places
Monuments
Inscriptions
Themes
Districts
Maps and the timeline
Swipe sideways to see the whole chart; tap a bar for details.
Each bar is a ruling power in its region; time runs left to right. Dashed = approximate dates. Select a bar for details.
Show as a list
Mauryas & Satavahanas 300 BCE – 225 CE
Kingdoms and empires
Mauryas
Open page- Telangana: c. 272 BCE – 185 BCE (c. 87 years)
IG Hyderabad says Asoka's dominions covered a considerable part of the eastern tracts of the Nizam's State; no Telangana edict cited. Asoka 272-231 BCE in IG Hyderabad, 268-226 BCE in Sewell
- Rayalaseema: c. 268 BCE – 185 BCE (c. 83 years)
Asokan edicts at Erragudi and Rajula-Mandagiri, Pattikonda taluk, Kurnool; Bindusara (296-268 BCE) is believed to have extended rule south
- Coastal Andhra: c. 260 BCE – 185 BCE (c. 75 years)
Asoka's Kalinga war (260 BCE in the Godavari gazetteer, 256 BCE in Sewell) and a Mauryan-script record at Amaravati; empire ended 185/184 BCE
Rulers
Inscriptions
Sources (5)
Where historians disagree
These questions are still open. Each line links to the section of the page that gives both sides with their sources. They are useful for essay answers.
- Asoka's own dates are worked out by scholars, who put his coronation in 269 or 264 BCE and his death anywhere from 237 to 226 BCE. Mauryas
- Rock Edict XIII names the Andhras, but scholars read it as placing them inside Asoka's empire, under his control, partly independent or conquered. Mauryas
- Hultzsch took Asoka's Andhras to be the Telugu people of the east coast, while Sewell placed them near the Vindhya hills. The Andhras in early texts
Practise
For teachers
Lesson outline
Period 1: Stone tools and stone graves (40 minutes)
Read the opening and the first three sections of the era page together (20 minutes). Draw the four kinds of grave from the page's list on the board, cairn, cromlech, dolmen and kistvaen. Then ask which kinds were reported in or near your own district.
Period 2: Digging at Maula Ali, and the first writing (40 minutes)
Read about the Maula Ali excavation of 1916 and list on the board what was found. Then read the section on old interpretations and discuss why the page calls them opinions, not findings. End with the two records that begin written history.
Read: Prehistory & megalithic cultures → Erragudi → Bhattiprolu relic-casket inscriptions
Activities
- Map work: find Erragudi and Bhattiprolu on these maps. Then use the era page to list the districts where stone graves were reported, and mark them on an outline map. Asoka's empire and edicts in the south · Asokan edicts and early Buddhist sites
- Read a picture: look at this 1915 photograph of stone cist burials in Cuddapah district and read its caption. Match what you see to the era page's description of a kistvaen: four upright slabs, a base and a capstone. "Kistvaens" (stone cist burials, Cuddapah district) (Brackenbury 1915, PDF p. 40)
- Make a timeline from the key dates in this guide. Mark which dates tell us about the people of the past and which tell us about the people who studied them.
- Short debate: the 1916 Hyderabad report compared marks on pots with early Indian letters. Is that enough to call the marks writing? Use the era page's warning about old interpretations. Prehistory & megalithic cultures
- Compare the reports: what did Sewell's source and the Krishna district manual each say about iron in the graves? Explain why the era page says such statements show how little careful digging had been done. Prehistory & megalithic cultures
Discussion questions
Every question can be answered from the page linked after it.
- What two kinds of evidence did the earliest people of the Telugu country leave behind? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- Why did the Krishna district manual think its stone tools might be much younger than the European ones they looked like? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- What did people in the Telugu country call the stone graves, according to Sewell? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- What was found in and around the cists at Maula Ali in 1916? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- Why does the era page report the old explanations of the graves as opinions and not as evidence? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- Which two records begin the written history of the Telugu country? (Answer on: Prehistory & megalithic cultures)
- Who found the Erragudi edicts, and when? (Answer on: Erragudi)