Page:A Manual of the Nellore District in the Presidency of Madras.pdf/737

714 NELLORE MANUAL, Chevi Reddi soon after moved to the village of Pillalamarri and seems for some reason to have attracted the notice of the Maharajah of Vorugallu. The family biographer relates that Chevi Reddi’s good qualities secured for him the favor of a deity or demon called Bhetala, who, from his home in a banyan tree, promised to endow the fortunate ryot's descendants with riches and power and strength in war; but it ip perhaps more natural to suppose that the possessor of a fortune of nine lakhs of rupees would attract the attention and envy of all his neighbours without supernataral intervention in his favor.

To whatever influences, however, Chevi Reddi owed his rise, his unfailing good fortune secured for him the favor of the rajah, who made him a grant of land yielding one lakh of revenue and conferred honorific titles upon him and all his family. The cultivator Chevi Reddi was quite lost in the proprietor Pillalamarri Bhetala Nayudu, from whom the 76 divisions of the Velama easte elaim to be descended. In the absence of all data, it is almost impossible to form a connected narrative of the wonderful events which murked the rise of Chevi Reddi and his sons. Of the eldest of the three sons, Dama Nayudu, we are only told that he was affable, charitable, and popular. The second son Prasaditya Nayudu, however, by his extraordinary martial valor and courtly address so won his way to the heart of Kakatiya Ganapate Rayalu, the Rajah of Vorugalley, as to be able, at the rajah’s death, to place his daughter on her father’s throne, himself acting as her regent and proving his qualifications for the post by a succession of brilliant victories. This second son of the founder of the house is said to have engaged and totally defeated some Pandyan Rajah, an exploit which won for him the title of Pandya Gaja Kesari.

The third generation of this successful family was represented by Dama Nayudu’s son Pennama Nayudu, @ warrior, who is said to have “ driven out the Mahomedans and completely conquered those tribes.” Here we have a statement that can be chronologically tested. The firat invasion of the Dekkan by Mahomedans took place in 1298, but they scarcely penetrated as far south-east as the kingdom of Telingana which would have then included Nellore until 1307. In that year Kafur invaded Telingana and defeated the Rajah of Worrangul (pro- bably the place named Vorugallu above), and the whole of Telingana became nominally subject to Mahomedan rule until the united efforts of the Telingana and Carnatic Rejahs freed the country from the role of the Affghan dynasty in 1350. It may be to this revolt that the family chronicle here refers, and this supposition is strengthened by the calculation that, if an average of 80 years (a very liberal allowance) be allowed for each of the 26 generations which the family history enumerates, we may suppose the history of this family to date with tolerable authenticity as far back as that very year 1350, With Yerra �