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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Rivers of the Telugu country

The Godavari, the Krishna and its tributaries the Tungabhadra and the Musi, the Penna (Pennar) and the Kolleru lake, as the gazetteers of about 1900 describe them: their courses through the Telugu country, their deltas, the holy places and towns on their banks, their floods and their crossings.

The great rivers of the Telugu country rise far to the west, in the Western Ghats, and flow east across the Deccan to the Bay of Bengal.12 The two largest, the Godavari and the Krishna, cut through the Eastern Ghats and spread out into deltas near the sea.2 Their deltas fed the coast, while their upper courses mostly ran too deep and fast to water the land.2

About the sources. This page follows the river articles of the Imperial Gazetteer for Madras (1908) and for Hyderabad State (1909), and the district gazetteers.34 They describe the rivers as they were about 1900. Distances are given in miles, as the sources give them. For the dams and canals on the rivers, see Water works in Telugu history. For the land around them, see Land, rivers and water.

Rivers and water works

Rivers and water worksGodavariKrishnaKurnool–Cuddapah canal (begun 1858)RajahmundryRajahmundryDowleswaramDowleswaramBhadrachalamBhadrachalamVijayawada (Bezwada)Vijayawada (Bezwada)MachilipatnamMachilipatnamSrisailamSrisailamKurnoolKurnoolAlampurAlampurGandikotaGandikotaNelloreNelloreKadapa (Cuddapah)Kadapa (Cuddapah)HyderabadHyderabadPakhal lakePakhal lakeRamappa lakeRamappa lakeLaknavaram lakeLaknavaram lakeBayyaram tankBayyaram tankGhanpur (Mulug)Ghanpur (Mulug)Bukkarayasamudram tankBukkarayasamudram tankKolleru lakePorumamilla tank (1369)Cumbum tankSunkesula damWazirabad (Musi joins the Krishna)DummagudemKotipalliSangam dam (1886)N0100 km
  • 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).

The Godavari

The Madras gazetteer called the Godavari a great river, surpassed in holiness, beauty and use to people only by the Ganges and the Indus.3 It is about 900 miles long.3 It rises on a hill behind the village of Trimbak, in Nasik district, only about 50 miles from the Arabian Sea.3

According to the Hyderabad gazetteer, the river enters the Nizam’s state at Phultamba and flows through it for 500 miles.5 Then it turns south-east and forms the eastern border of the Elgandal (later Karimnagar) and Warangal districts for about 170 miles.5 The Manjra joins it from the right near Kondalwadi, after a course of 387 miles.56 Below Sironcha the Pranhita brings in the waters of the Wardha and the Wainganga.3 Thirty miles lower down, the Indravati joins it.7

Between 1854 and 1871 the government tried to make the upper Godavari a waterway for cotton from Nagpur.7 It planned to cut away three rock barriers in the river beds.7 The work was given up as impossible after large sums had been spent.7 One of its dams, with locks and a canal, still stood at Dummagudem in 1908.7

Lower down, the Sabari joins from the left.7 Then the river forces its way through the Eastern Ghats.7 The banks turn wild and mountainous, and the whole river pours through a narrow, very deep channel known as “the Gorge”.7 Below the hills it opens out into broad reaches with low sandy islands, called lankas, which were famous for tobacco.7

A few miles below Rajahmundry the river splits into two main streams: the Gautami Godavari on the east and the Vasishta Godavari on the west.8 They run to the sea through a wide delta built up from the silt the river carries.8 At Dowleswaram, above the split, the anicut (dam) of 1847–1852 waters the whole delta.89 See the Dowleswaram anicut.

A holy river

According to the gazetteer, Rama himself revealed the holiness of the Godavari to the sage Gautama.8 The river was also called Goda, and a popular legend held that it came from the same source as the Ganges, by an underground passage.8 Hence its name Vriddha-Ganga, “the old Ganges”.8 Every part of its course was holy ground.8

The great bathing festival called the pushkaram was held on its banks at Rajahmundry every twelfth year.8 The places most visited by pilgrims were these:8

  • the source at Trimbak8
  • Bhadrachalam on the left bank, about 100 miles above Rajahmundry, with its old temple of Ramachandra8
  • Rajahmundry itself8
  • the village of Kotipalli, on the left bank of the eastern mouth8

Crossings and ports

According to the gazetteer, Rajahmundry was a fortress of importance from the start because it held the key to the crossing of the Godavari.10 By 1908 the East Coast railway crossed the river there on a bridge more than one and a half miles long.7 Small boats could travel on the river throughout Godavari district, and nearly 500 miles of the delta canals were navigable.8

The Dutch, the French and the English all set up factories on the coast of the delta.8 The river channels that led to them later silted up.8 By 1908 only the French town of Yanam remained, while Bandamurlanka, Injaram, Madapollam and Palakollu had lost their old importance.8

Floods

The gazetteer warned that the Godavari brought down “an enormous volume of water” in flood.7 Embankments on both banks were needed to stop it flooding the country.7 The Godavari district gazetteer of 1907 lists the floods it knew of:111213

  • August 1614, at Narasapur, when an English merchant wrote that “many thousand men and cattle were drowned”11
  • 1862 and 1863, remembered as extraordinary floods11
  • August 1886, the highest flood on record, which carried away the outer wall of the Dowleswaram lock1112
  • 3 October 1891, when the river reached 16.9 feet above the anicut without breaking its banks12
  • August and September 1900, when the river flooded Dummagudem and drowned a few women and children13

In 1900 the damage to the delta and Dummagudem works was put at 10 lakhs of rupees.13 In Amalapuram taluk alone, 4,000 houses were destroyed.13 See Famines, floods and cyclones.

The Krishna

The Krishna (Kistna in the old records) is about 800 miles long.14 It is shorter than the Godavari.14 But with its two great tributaries, the Bhima and the Tungabhadra, it drains the largest area of the three great rivers of the south.14 It rises just north of Mahabaleshwar, about 40 miles from the Arabian Sea.14

Where it enters the Nizam’s state, at Echampet in Raichur district, the river drops 408 feet in about 3 miles.14 In flood, the gazetteer wrote, a huge volume of water rushed “with a great roar” over ledges of granite.14 After the Tungabhadra joins it, the Krishna forms the border between Hyderabad and the Kurnool and Guntur districts for a long way.14 Here it winds north-east in a deep, rocky channel through the spurs of the Nallamalai hills.14

Two famous places stand above this gorge. Srisailam stands on the northernmost plateau of the Nallamalais, above the gorge of the Krishna.15 The hill of Nagarjunakonda overhangs the right bank of the river in the Palnad taluk of Guntur district.16

At Wazirabad in Nalgonda district the Krishna receives its last important tributary, the Musi.17 Then it turns south-east and runs for about 100 miles to the sea, which it enters by two main mouths.17 At Vijayawada, at the head of its delta, it passes through a gap 1,300 yards wide in a low range of hills.17 A masonry dam across this gap feeds the canals of the delta; see the Krishna anicut.17

The gazetteer estimated that in flood the river carried enough silt each day to cover 5 square miles a foot deep.17 Over the ages this silt built a wide delta far out into the sea.17 Above the dam the river was too fast for boats.17 Below Vijayawada, sea-going country boats used it for about six months a year.17

The gazetteer counted the Krishna among the rivers most liable to heavy floods.18 In July 1853, while the anicut was being built, the river rose 39 feet, topped its banks and flooded the whole delta.19 During the Guntur famine of 1832–1833, the Kistna manual notes, the river was often full while the crops failed.20 That contrast led the government to plan the anicut.20

In 1883 the Kistna manual noted that road traffic still crossed the river at Vijayawada by ferry.21 By 1908 the East Coast railway crossed just below the dam on a girder bridge of twelve spans.17

The Tungabhadra

The Tungabhadra, the chief tributary of the Krishna, is formed where the Tunga and the Bhadra meet, at Kudali in Mysore.22 Lower down it forms the border between Madras and the Nizam’s state.22 It bends east north of Bellary district and joins the Krishna beyond Kurnool, after about 400 miles.22 Kurnool itself stands where the Handri river meets the Tungabhadra.23 The Hyderabad gazetteer places the meeting of the Tungabhadra and the Krishna in the Alampur taluk.24 See Alampur.

The land rises steeply on both banks, so in 1908 the river was still little used for irrigation.25 The kings of Vijayanagara had built dams of huge uncut stone blocks across it, above and below their capital.25 Ten of these were still watering narrow strips of land.25 A dam near Kurnool fed the Kurnool–Cuddapah canal.25

A local legend explains the river’s name.26 Vishnu, as the boar Varaha, rested on a mountain after lifting the earth out of the ocean.26 The sweat from his left tusk became the Tunga, and that from his right tusk the Bhadra.26

The Musi

The Musi rises in the Anantagiri hills, west of Hyderabad.4 It flows almost due east for 112 miles, receives the Aler near Chittur, and then runs south-east to the Krishna.4 Its whole course is about 150 miles.4 Channels taken from it fed large tanks or watered fields directly.427 The city of Hyderabad stands on its right bank.27

Its water was used much earlier. Parabrahma Sastry lists a Museti-kaluva, a canal fed by the Musi, among the canals named in Kakatiya inscriptions.28 In 1909 the Purana Pul was the westernmost of four bridges over the Musi at Hyderabad.29 At the end of September 1908, after days of rain, the river rose suddenly in flood and carried away arches of three of these bridges.30 After that flood the government planned two reservoirs above the city to hold back its floods.31 They became Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar.

The Penna (Pennar)

The Penna, called the Penner in the old records, rises on Channarayan-betta in the Kolar district of Mysore.26 It enters Anantapur district and later turns east through Cuddapah and Nellore districts to the sea below Nellore.26 Its tributaries include the Chitravati and the Papaghni.26

In Anantapur district it runs in a wide, sandy bed.26 It comes down in sudden freshes, usually in October and November, for two or three days at a time, and then dries up again.26 With the Chitravati it has cut a passage through the gorge of Gandikota.26 The name Gandikota joins two Telugu words, gandi (gorge) and kota (fort).32

The river enters Nellore district through a narrow gap in the Ghats near Somasila.26 Only there is it first used for irrigation.26 A dam at Nellore, built in 1855, was repaired and given its present shape by Arthur Cotton in 1858.33 Another, at Sangam, was built in 1886 and filled the large Kanigiri reservoir.33 Altogether the river watered 155,000 acres in Nellore district.33 Nellore stands just south of the river.34 The gazetteer says the town commanded “the northern high road and the passage of the Penner”.35

The Kolleru lake

Kolleru (Colair) was the only large natural fresh-water lake in the Madras Presidency.36 It lies between the deltas of the Godavari and the Krishna.36 The gazetteer thought it was once part of the sea, cut off when the two deltas grew until they met.36 In the monsoon it covered over 100 square miles.36 In the drought of 1900 it dried up completely.36

Three hill streams, which the gazetteer calls the Budimeru, the Tamileru and the Weyyeru, drain into it from about 2,000 square miles of the Eastern Ghats.3637 Its water leaves by the tidal Upputeru, “salt river”, to the sea.37 A local legend says an army cut the Upputeru to drain the lake while besieging the fort of Kolleti Kota on one of its islands.37 In 1908, 26 villages farmed over 10,000 acres on the islands of the lake.37

Where the sources disagree

  • The Godavari in the Nizam’s state. The Hyderabad gazetteer says in one place that the river flows through the state for 500 miles and then along its border for about 170.5 In its river article it says the river runs “about 176 miles right across the Hyderabad State”.38 The Madras gazetteer gives the same 176 miles.3
  • The Gandikota gorge. The Madras gazetteer gives the gorge as about a mile long and 300 feet deep.26 The Cuddapah gazetteer of 1915 makes it four miles long, between cliffs 200 to 300 feet high.32

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  2. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 4 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 162, “Godavari River” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 99, “Musi” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 94, “Manjra” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 163 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  8. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 164 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17

  9. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 165, “Godavari Canals” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  10. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 296, “Rajahmundry Town” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  11. F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (1907), p. 145 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  12. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 146 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 147 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  14. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 166, “Kistna River” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  15. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 428, “Srisailam” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  16. A. H. Longhurst, The Buddhist Antiquities of Nagarjunakonda (1938), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  17. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 167 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  18. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  19. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 256 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  20. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 253 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  21. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 258 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  22. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 168, “Tungabhadra” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  23. Narahari Gopalakristnamah Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District (1886), p. 223 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  24. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 271 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  25. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 169 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  26. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 170, “Tungabhadra” and “Penner” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  27. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 100 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  28. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 206 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  29. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 115 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  30. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 119, note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  31. Modern Hyderabad (Deccan) (1914), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  32. C. F. Brackenbury, Madras District Gazetteers: Cuddapah, Vol. I (1915), p. 191 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  33. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 171 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  34. John A. C. Boswell, A Manual of the Nellore District (1873), p. 452 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  35. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 366 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  36. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 159, “Colair Lake” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  37. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 160 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  38. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 91, “Godavari” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

References

Sources (10)
  1. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 3–4, 14, 159–171, 296, 366, 428. [Public domain]
  2. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1909, pp. 3, 91, 93–94, 99–100, 115, 119, 271. [Public domain]
  3. Modern Hyderabad (deccan) (opens in a new tab), 1914, pp. 84. [Public domain]
  4. F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1907, pp. 144–147. [Public domain]
  5. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 253, 256, 258. [Public domain]
  6. C. F. Brackenbury, Madras District Gazetteers: Cuddapah, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1915, pp. 191. [Public domain]
  7. Narahari Gopalakristnamah Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1886, pp. 223. [Public domain]
  8. John A. C. Boswell, A Manual of the Nellore District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras, 1873, pp. 452. [Public domain]
  9. A. H. Longhurst, The Buddhist Antiquities of Nagarjunakonda, Madras Presidency (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India No. 54) (opens in a new tab), Manager of Publications, Delhi, 1938, pp. 1. [Public domain in India]
  10. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1978, pp. 206. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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