Page:Madras District Gazetteers - Anantapur.pdf/35

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POLITICAL HISTORY.
15

CHAP. II. Prehistoric Peoples.

Palæolithic
settlements.

Early History.

Asóka, 258 B.C.

The Nalas, 7th century.

The Nolambas, 8th to 10th centuries.

The Gangas.

chipped into shape. The workers apparently sat together sociably in groups and the polishing places are often situated on high rock terraces commanding wide views of the surrounding country so that a watch could be kept while the work proceeded. Others were placed under the cover of great rock shelters or in small caves shaded from the heat of the day.

Between these remote peoples and the earliest historical facts yawns an unbridged gulf. The first tangible piece of evidence is furnished by the rock edicts of Asóka which Mr. Rice discovered in 1892 in the piece of Mysore territory which lies west of the Rayadrug taluk of Bellary. The date of these is about 258 B.C., but as Asóka sent proselytising missions to foreign countries their existence proves little.

Four hundred years later, a copper plate grant of the Chálukyan king, Vikramáditya I. (A.D. 655-680) describes Ratnagiri in the Madakasíra taluk as being in the Nalavádi vishaya or ' district of theNalas'[1]. So this tribe must at one time have ruled at least that corner of Anantapur. Little is known of them, except that an earlier Chálukyan king is described as "the night of destruction to the Nalas", which clearly implies that he defeated them.

Later on, Hémávati in this same Madakasíra taluk was in Mr. Rice's opinion[2] one of the chief towns of the 'Nolambavádi Thirty-two-thousand,' a province belonging to the Nolambas and so called from the traditional or supposed number of villages it contained. Three inscriptions of the dynasty have been copied there[3]. Gooty was also included in Nolambavádi, so the province apparently comprised the greater part of the Anantapur district.

Not much is known of these Nolambas. They were a branch of the Pallavas and were apparently feudatories of the Ráshtrakútas of Málkhéd (about 90 miles west by south of Haidarabad) who were supreme in the Bellary country roughly from 750 to 950 A.D.

About 973 they were overthrown by Márasimha, a king of the Ganga dynasty, whose capital was at Talakád on the Cauvery in Mysore State and who were also feudatories of the Ráshtrakútas. The Gangas in their turn were conquered by the Chólas from the

  1. ↑ Dr. Fleet, in Bombay Gazetteer, i., Pt. 2, 363.
  2. ↑ Rice's Mysore, i., 307.
  3. ↑ Nos. 124, 125 and 127 of 1899 in the Government Epigraphist's records. I am much indebted to M.R.Ry. V. Venkayya, M.A., Acting Government Epigraphist, for particulars of these and other inscriptions referred to in the present account.
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