Land, rivers and water · Telugu History

The Telugu country runs from the sandy coast of the Bay of Bengal, across the hills of the Eastern Ghats, to the high Deccan plateau.¹² Two great rivers, the Godavari and the Krishna, cross it from west to east and build wide deltas near the sea.³⁴ For most of its history, the land and the rain decided where rice grew, where people dug tanks, and where famine struck hardest.⁴⁵⁶

About the sources. This page rests mainly on two official works: the Imperial Gazetteer volumes for the Madras Presidency (1908) and for Hyderabad State (1909).⁷² Officials wrote them to describe the land as it was about 1900, for the use of the government.⁷² For the Kakatiya tanks the page uses P. V. Parabrahma Sastry’s history of the Kakatiyas (1978), which is cited, not quoted.⁸ The district gazetteers are used on the pages linked below.

Three kinds of country

The Imperial Gazetteer of Madras found “the key” to the climate, rainfall, rivers, irrigation and “much of its history” in the shape of the hill ranges.⁷ It divided the Madras Presidency into natural divisions.¹³ Three of them covered the Telugu districts:¹³

the strip of low country between the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal¹³
the hill tracts of the Eastern Ghats in the north, called the Agencies¹³
the central table-land called the Deccan³

The northern part of the coastal strip was the country of the Telugus.³ The Eastern Ghats were a broken line of low ranges, about 2,000 feet high on average.⁹ In Ganjam and Vizagapatam they ran close to the sea.⁹ Farther south they turned inland and left a stretch of low country 100 to 150 miles wide.¹⁰ West of them lay an upland plain, 1,000 to 2,000 feet high, which included the Deccan.¹⁰

The Nizam’s state, Hyderabad, lay almost in the centre of the Deccan plateau.² The Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 gave its average height as about 1,250 feet.² It split the state into two nearly equal halves along the Manjra and Godavari rivers.² Marathi and Kannada speakers lived in the north-western half, on black soil formed from old lava (the Deccan trap).² Telugu speakers lived in the south-eastern half, on granite.²

The gazetteer put the difference in one line: the black-soil country was “a land of wheat and cotton”, while Telingana was “a land of rice and tanks”.⁵ In Telingana the hills were bare, and boulders and dome-shaped hills gave the country “a gloomy aspect”.⁵ The land sloped from north-west to south-east.⁵ Near Aurangabad it stood about 2,000 feet above the sea, and near Kurnool only 800 to 900 feet.⁵

South of the Krishna and the Tungabhadra lay the four Madras districts that the gazetteer called the “Deccan Districts”: Cuddapah (Kadapa), Kurnool, Bellary and Anantapur.⁶ They are the Ceded Districts of the British period.¹¹¹² For how these districts and regions changed hands, see How the map changed.

Rain from two monsoons

According to the Madras gazetteer, the rain came almost wholly from two currents.¹³ The south-west monsoon blew from the end of May to the end of September.¹³ It carried far more water, but the Western Ghats stopped most of it.¹³ East of that range it gave under 25 inches, except in the northern hill tracts.¹³

The north-east monsoon came from the Bay of Bengal in October, November and December.¹⁴ It gave most rain near the coast and less as the clouds moved inland.¹⁴ The Eastern Ghats held back the clouds, so the Deccan west of them got less than 10 inches from this monsoon.¹⁴ Bellary was one of the two driest places in the Presidency, with 19 inches a year.¹⁴

The table-land therefore had “a moderate and capricious rainfall”.¹⁵ Much of it was known as “the famine zone”.¹⁵ In 1876, large parts of it received only 2.7 to 10 inches of rain.¹⁵

Rivers and deltas

No river crosses the Western Ghats, so almost all the water of the south flows east into the Bay of Bengal.³ The Godavari and the Krishna rise within 50 miles of the Arabian Sea and flow more than 800 miles across the peninsula.³⁴ Both have cut their way through the Eastern Ghats.⁴¹⁶

In their upper courses these rivers drain the land more than they water it, because they run fast in deep beds.⁴ Near the coast the land is flat, and dams have been built across them for irrigation.⁴ The gazetteer wrote that the irrigated deltas of the Godavari and the Krishna “hardly ever fail”, even in the severest droughts.⁴ It described them as “an interminable sea of green or golden rice-fields”.⁴ See Rivers of the Telugu country.

Rivers and water works

Unified Andhra Pradesh (pre-2014)
Present-day state borders, for orientation
Canal

The great rivers of the Telugu country with the holy places, crossings and water works the gazetteers of about 1900 describe: the pushkaram town of Rajahmundry and the pilgrim places of Bhadrachalam and Kotipalli on the Godavari; the anicuts at Dowleswaram (1847–1852) and Vijayawada (1852–1855); the Kakatiya tanks of Pakhal, Ramappa, Laknavaram, Bayyaram and Ghanpur; the Vijayanagara-period tanks of Bukkarayasamudram and Porumamilla; the Cumbum tank; the Kurnool–Cuddapah canal; and Kolleru lake. The canal's course is approximate.

Base map: Natural Earth (opens in a new tab) (public domain).

Tanks: storing the rain

In Telingana the soil, formed from granite, is sandy and does not hold moisture.⁵ The rivers there run dry in the hot season.⁵ So water had to be stored in artificial reservoirs, called tanks, “with which the whole of the Telingana tract is studded”.⁵ They were made by throwing dams across the valleys of small streams to catch the rain.¹⁷ The 1909 gazetteer said they numbered thousands in Telingana.¹⁷

In 1909 the whole of Hyderabad State had 370 large tanks and 11,015 small ones, called kuntas (ponds).¹⁸ A Telugu school geography of the Nizam’s state, from about 1934, put the number of tanks, large and small, at about 17,000.¹⁹ Both figures cover the whole state, not only its Telugu districts.¹⁸¹⁹

Parabrahma Sastry traced the great tanks of Telangana to the Kakatiya kings and their chiefs.⁸²⁰ He wrote that hardly a village in the Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Nalgonda districts was without a tank.²¹ Many villages had more than one.²¹ The Madras districts east of the Ghats had about 33,000 tanks in the early 1900s, with 6,000 dams across rivers.²² See Water works in Telugu history.

Forests and hill tracts

The Eastern Ghats ran through the western parts of the Ganjam, Vizagapatam and Godavari districts.¹ The gazetteer called these hills “a confused tangle of low and very feverish hills”, with 50 to 80 inches of rain a year.¹⁰ Their forests held valuable sal and teak.¹⁰ People who differed in religion, language and customs from those of the plains lived there.¹

The ordinary law applied in these hills only in part.¹ The Collectors governed them with special powers, as Agents to the Governor.¹ For that reason the hills were known as “the Agencies or Agency tracts”.¹³ One of them was Rampa, about 800 square miles of hills north of the Godavari.²³ It saw risings in 1858–1862 and again in 1879–1881.²³ The gazetteer names Chendrayya as the leader of the second rising.²³ See Chandrayya of Rampa.

The Godavari gazetteer of 1907 describes the Koyas, who lived on both sides of the river from the mouth of the Indravati down to the head of the delta.²⁴ They lived as far south as Khammam in the Nizam’s state.²⁴ People of the plains called them Koya Doralu, “Koya lords”, and their own language, Koya, is Dravidian.²⁵ The Konda Reddis of the same hills lived by podu (shifting cultivation).²⁶

Farther south, in Kurnool district, the Ghats widen into the Nallamalai hills.¹⁰ Their rain was only 30 to 40 inches, and their peaks seldom passed 3,000 feet.¹⁰ The Chenchus were the only people living on the range in 1908.²⁷ They had once lived largely on fees from nearby villages for guarding the paths across the hills.²⁷ Later they kept cattle and sheep, gathered honey and forest produce, or worked as forest watchmen.²⁷

Passes, ports and roads

The hills also decided the roads. The railway from Guntakal to Vijayawada (then Bezwada) crossed the Nallamalais by the Nandikanama, or “bull pass”.²⁷ It followed the line of the chief of the two cart-roads over the range.²⁷ The Kurnool and Cuddapah rocks were long known as the diamond-bearing sandstones of South India.²⁸ The old diamond mines lay in them, along the Krishna; see Kollur and Trade and economy.

The coast of the Godavari delta saw some of the first European settlements in India.²⁹ The Dutch, the French and the English all set up factories (trading posts) there.²⁹ By 1908 the river channels that led to them had silted up, and only the French town of Yanam remained.²⁹ Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam) was the chief town of the five Circars under Muslim rule.¹² See Machilipatnam and Motupalli.

How the land shaped history

Some old names of regions are tied to rivers and holy places. The Imperial Gazetteer derives “Telingana” from the three lingas of Siva at Kalahasti, Srisailam and Draksharama.³⁰ At first, it says, the name meant the country where these three temples stood.³⁰ It places the old kingdom of Vengi between the mouths of the Krishna and the Godavari.³¹ Its capital seems to have been at Pedavegi, 8 miles north of Eluru (then Ellore).³¹ For Vengi, Kammanadu, Pakanadu and the other old country names, see Old names of regions.

The hills also held old settlements. On the low plateau of Srisailam in the Nallamalais, ruined towns, forts, temples, reservoirs and wells showed that people had once lived there well.³² Parabrahma Sastry argued that the Kakatiya tanks raised farming and so the wealth of their kingdom.²¹

The difference between the deltas and the dry uplands shows most clearly in the famines. The gazetteer wrote that the four Deccan districts had suffered famine more steadily than any others, with Nellore not far behind.⁶ It blamed light rain, poor soil and few large irrigation works.⁶ After the Godavari anicut was built, the Godavari gazetteer claimed that the delta had no general distress again.³³ See Famines, floods and cyclones.

Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 2 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 4 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 2 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 80 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 203 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 145, “Ghats, Eastern” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 146 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 184, “Ceded Districts” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 185, “Ceded Districts” and “Circars, Northern” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 13 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 147 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 4 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 34 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Nizam Rajya Bhugolamu (Telugu, about 1934), p. 28 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 204 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 206 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 44 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 297, “Rampa” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (1907), p. 60 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 61 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 67 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 152 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 5 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 164, “Godavari River” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 192, “Telingana” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 193, “Vengi” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 151, “Nallamalais” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 140 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩