Uttarandhra · Eastern Coastal Plains
This coast's periodisation is Kalinga's before it is the Telugu country's, and it runs on two clocks at once. On the plain, the ancient period belongs to the Eastern Gangas ruling from Kalinganagara, identified with Mukhalingam on the Vamsadhara, and the medieval period effectively begins in 1122, when that capital moved north to Cuttack and this stretch became a frontier fought over from both directions — Gangas and Gajapatis from the north, Kakatiya, Reddi and Vijayanagara power from the south. The modern period on the plain begins in 1765 with the grant of the Northern Circars and hardens with the permanent settlement of 1802, which turned the estates of Vizianagaram, Bobbili and their neighbours into zamindaris. Above the scarp the dates are different: the hill tracts were placed under a separate administration in 1874 and given a separate land law in 1917, and their modern history is one of forest rules, moneylending and land transfer rather than of provincial politics. That divergence, not the coastline, is the region's real structure. This entry ends in 1947.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The narrow apron of plain between the Eastern Ghats and the sea was the southern end of Kalinga, and its early record is coastal and monastic. Buddhist establishments were built on the headlands and hilltops within sight of the water — Bavikonda, Thotlakonda and Pavurallakonda above Visakhapatnam, Sankaram behind Anakapalle, Salihundam above the Vamsadhara — sited for the sea trade that passed below them rather than for any agricultural hinterland, of which there is very little. From about the sixth century the Eastern Gangas held the country from Kalinganagara, and the group of Saiva temples at Mukhalingam, built between the late eighth and the early eleventh centuries, is the finest surviving work of that phase anywhere. The temples face north in their architecture even where their inscriptions are in Telugu, which is the region in one sentence.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3rd century BCE – 3rd century CE | Buddhist monasteries are built and occupied at Bavikonda, Thotlakonda, Pavurallakonda, Sankaram and Salihundam, on hills overlooking the coastal sea route. |
| early centuries CE | Early texts place Kalinga's ports, among them Pithunda and Dantapura, on this stretch of coast; the identifications with particular modern sites are traditional and disputed. |
| from the 6th century | The Eastern Gangas rule from Kalinganagara, identified with Mukhalingam on the Vamsadhara in the Srikakulam country. |
| late 8th – early 11th centuries | The Madhukeshwara, Someswara and Bhimeswara temples are built at Mukhalingam in the Kalinga manner. |
| 1087 | The earliest dated inscription at the Simhachalam hill temple records a private endowment; an inscription of the Chola king Kulottunga I follows. |
| 1122 | Anantavarman Chodaganga moves the Eastern Ganga capital from Kalinganagara to Cuttack, and this coast becomes the southern edge of a northern kingdom. |
Once the Ganga court left, this coast spent six centuries as a border. Its great temples were rebuilt by northern patrons — Simhachalam in the Kalinga manner under Narasimha Deva I, consecrated in 1268 — while its inscriptions accumulated grants from every southern power that reached it, including a victory pillar set up at Simhachalam by Krishnadevaraya during his Kalinga campaign. Below the level of empires the country was held by estates: Pusapati chiefs at Vizianagaram from the early eighteenth century, Ranga Rao's house at Bobbili, and smaller holdings at Salur, Kurupam and Bobbili's neighbours, whose quarrels with one another were as consequential locally as any imperial campaign. The clearest instance is January 1757, when a French force under Bussy, allied with Vizianagaram, destroyed the fort at Bobbili in a single day, and the Vizianagaram raja was killed the same night. Two years later the Company took Masulipatnam and the coastal provinces changed hands.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1268 | The Simhachalam temple is rebuilt under Narasimha Deva I of the Eastern Gangas and consecrated by his successor Bhanudeva I, in the Kalinga architectural manner. |
| 13th–15th centuries | The coast is contested between the Gangas and then the Gajapatis of Kalinga from the north and Kakatiya, Reddi and Vijayanagara power from the south. |
| 1435–1466 | Kapilendra Deva extends Gajapati authority south along this coast and into the Godavari country. |
| 1516 | Krishnadevaraya erects a victory pillar at Simhachalam in the course of his Kalinga campaign and endows the temple. |
| 1687 | The coast passes to the Mughals after the fall of Golconda; it is administered as the Chicacole circar. |
| c. 1713 | Vizianagaram is founded as the seat of the Pusapati family; the date rests on estate tradition rather than on an independent record. |
| 24 January 1757 | A French force under Bussy, allied with the Vizianagaram raja, storms the fort at Bobbili. The Vizianagaram raja Vijayarama Raju I was killed the following night; the fullest account of the episode is the sung Bobbili ballad rather than a contemporary record. |
| 1759 | The Company takes Masulipatnam, and the coastal provinces from the Gundlakamma to the Chilka pass from French to British influence. |
The Company obtained the five Northern Circars by grant in 1765 and settled the claim by treaty in 1768, and the estates of this coast spent the next thirty years testing what that meant. Vizianagaram's raja refused a demand for arrears and an order of exile and was killed with his men at Padmanabham in July 1794; the estate was restored to his son, and after the permanent settlement of 1802 it and its neighbours became zamindaris paying a fixed revenue. Above the scarp a different history ran. The hill tracts were placed under separate administration in 1874, the Madras Forest Act of 1882 restricted podu clearing and forest use, and the muttadars, hereditary holders of clusters of hill villages, were reduced to salaried collectors without a guaranteed right of succession. The result was a recurring series of local risings, called fituris, of which the best documented are the Rampa rising of 1879 and the rebellion of 1922 to 1924. The Agency Tracts Interest and Land Transfer Act of 1917 restricted the sale of Agency land to outsiders, an admission of what the risings were about. On the coast the twentieth century brought institutions rather than politics: a university in 1926, a harbour in 1933 and a shipyard begun in 1941 gave the region an industrial city it had never had.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1765–1768 | The five Northern Circars are granted to the Company by Shah Alam II and confirmed by the Treaty of Masulipatnam with Nizam Ali. |
| 10 July 1794 | Vijayarama Raju II of Vizianagaram, refusing a demand for arrears and an order of exile, is killed with his men at Padmanabham near Bheemunipatnam in a short engagement with Company troops. |
| 1802 | The permanent settlement fixes Vizianagaram, Bobbili, Salur, Kurupam and their neighbours as zamindaris paying a fixed revenue. |
| 1874 | The hill tracts above the scarp are placed under a separate administration, outside the ordinary law of the presidency. |
| 1879–1880 | The Rampa rising against the mansabdar's exactions and a new toddy tax spreads from Chodavaram through the Golconda hills; six regiments are used to suppress it. |
| 1882 | The Madras Forest Act restricts podu cultivation and customary forest use across the Agency tracts. |
| 1917 | The Agency Tracts Interest and Land Transfer Act restricts the transfer of Agency land to people from outside the hills. |
| 1922–1924 | The Rampa rebellion in the Godavari and Visakhapatnam agencies, ending with the death of Alluri Sitarama Raju on 7 May 1924. |
| 1926 | Andhra University is established under the Andhra University Act, its campus laid out at Waltair in Visakhapatnam. |
| 1933 | The harbour behind Dolphin's Nose at Visakhapatnam is opened to ocean-going shipping. |
| 1941 | The Scindia Steam Navigation Company begins building a shipyard at Visakhapatnam, the first in the country. |
Rulers and commanders
Extended Ganga authority north over Utkala and moved the capital from Kalinganagara to Cuttack in 1122, turning this coast from the centre of a kingdom into its southern march. The great temple programme in Kalinga, including the work at Puri, begins in his reign.
Dynasty: Eastern Ganga. Seat: Kalinganagara (Mukhalingam), later Cuttack
Rebuilt the Simhachalam hill temple in the Kalinga manner; it was consecrated by his successor in 1268. The same reign built at Konark, which is why the sculpture of a temple outside Visakhapatnam reads as Odishan to anyone who has seen both.
Dynasty: Eastern Ganga. Seat: Cuttack
Pushed Gajapati authority south past this coast into the Godavari country and took Rajahmundry from the Reddis, making the Vamsadhara and Nagavali plains an interior tract of a northern kingdom for a generation.
Dynasty: Gajapati (Suryavamsi). Seat: Cuttack
Above the scarp authority was never dynastic. A muttadar held a mutta — a cluster of hill villages — on a revenue-farming tenure recognised in turn by Gajapati, Golconda, Hyderabad and Company administrations, and answered for the tribute of the Konda Dora, Bagata, Koya and Valmiki villages under him. The Company reduced the office to a salaried collector's post without an automatic hereditary right, and that change is named among the causes of both the 1879 rising and the rebellion of 1922.
Dynasty: An office, not a lineage. Seat: The Agency hill tracts above the scarp
Founded Vizianagaram as the seat of the family's estate, by tradition in 1713. The estate became the largest on this coast and the patron of most of its music, its Telugu letters and its schools.
Dynasty: Pusapati of Vizianagaram. Seat: Vizianagaram
Held the fort at Bobbili when it was stormed on 24 January 1757 by a French force under Bussy allied with Vizianagaram, in a quarrel between two neighbouring estates rather than a war between powers. He was killed in the assault.
Dynasty: Rajas of Bobbili. Seat: Bobbili
Bobbili commander who killed the Vizianagaram raja Vijayarama Raju I in his camp the night after the fort fell, and died in the attempt. Almost everything told about him comes from the Bobbili ballad, a sung narrative tradition, and should be read as such.
Dynasty: Bobbili estate. Seat: Bobbili
Refused the Company's demand for arrears and its order that he retire on a pension, and took the field at Padmanabham with about a thousand men on 10 July 1794. He was killed in an engagement that lasted about ninety minutes; the estate was afterwards restored to his son on terms.
Dynasty: Pusapati of Vizianagaram. Seat: Vizianagaram
Ran the largest estate on the coast as a patron of institutions rather than of display: schools and a college at Vizianagaram, and a court that supported Telugu letters and Carnatic music. Gurajada Apparao and the harikatha performer Adibhatla Narayana Das were both attached to it.
Dynasty: Pusapati of Vizianagaram. Seat: Vizianagaram
The history of Uttarandhra from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (9)