Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/339

 VIRAVILLl TALUK.

Srungavarapukóta on the south-west and, like it, lies close under the 3,000 feet plateau and includes the slopes of this up to the main crest. The Minamalúr ghát (p 136) leads up to the plateau from Mádgole. The area on the hills is inhabited almost exclusively by Telugus and contains scarcely any of the real hill tribes. The low country resembles the adjoining tracts and includes only two places of interest:— -

Chódavaram is the head-quarters of the taluk, the station of a district munsif, and a union of 5,705 inhabitants. It contains an old fort where little gold coins are sometimes found and in which lies an ancient cannon, seven feet long.

In the small temple of Késavasvámi are six inscriptions of which five (one of which is dated in Saka 1389, or A.D. 1467) mention 1 Sríman Mahámandalésvara Pratápa Vallabha Rája, who, from his title Mahámandalésvara, must have been some local chief and not a ruling king Perhaps he built the fort.

Hanging from a tree in the deputy tahsildar's compound is one of the old iron cages in which (cf. p. 313) the bodies of notorious criminals used to be gibbeted after execution. It was formerly suspended from a gallows, but this rotted to pieces and it was then brought to its present situation. It was made for the body of one Asi Dora, mokhásadár of Pedda Madina, who was hanged in March 1840 for the murder, on the night of 6th March 1837, of Kastúri Appayya Pantulu, the Collector's sheristadar, as he was returning from office in a palanquin. It appears that after the Vizianagram estate was placed under the management of the Collector in 1827 (p. 339), endeavours, in which the sheristadar was very active, were made (see p. 176) to assess to kattubadi the numerous mokhásas and inams which up to then had escaped rent-free. The murder was a result of the unpopularity which the sheristadar incurred in consequence, and the Government gave his widow a life pension of Rs. 105 a month, being half the salary her husband was drawing at the time of his death.

Mádgole (Mádugula) : A union of 8,952 inhabitants lying eleven miles north-west of Chódavaram, close under the hills near the foot of the Minamalúr ghát. Its position makes it an important mart for the produce of the hills.