Journey

Krishna–Godavari & eastern Andhra

Two great rivers, the densest concentration of early Buddhist sites in India outside Bihar, five Shaiva temples counted as one network, and a belt of Eastern Ghats hill country with its own languages and its own rebellions. This runs the delta, the plateau and the hills together rather than separately.

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Stops (27)

Nāgārjunakonda · 2nd–4th century
A whole monastic valley on the Krishna — some thirty viharas, a stadium, a university and Ikshvaku royal inscriptions — excavated ahead of the Nagarjuna Sagar dam in the 1950s and reassembled on an island in the reservoir. It is the largest archaeological relocation ever carried out in India. Thirty thousand cubic metres of stone were dismantled, numbered and rebuilt.
Jaggayyapeta · 2nd century BCE onward
Jaggayyapeta's stupa in the Krishna valley produced limestone drum slabs carved with a chakravartin and the seven jewels of sovereignty, now in Chennai. The Amaravati school's sculptural style is worked out at sites like this, and most of it left the ground in the nineteenth century. Most of the site's sculpture left the ground in the nineteenth century and is now in Chennai.
Phanigiri · 2nd–4th century
Phanigiri in Telangana yielded a limestone torana with narrative panels and an inscription naming an Ikshvaku king, and it is one of the few Andhra Buddhist sites excavated with modern method and published. The finds are still in the state rather than in London or Chennai. Its torana is the only complete example of the type from the Andhra country.
Dhulikatta · 2nd century BCE onward
Dhulikatta is a fortified early historic town with a moat and a Buddhist stupa beside it — the clearest Telangana example of the pairing that runs right through this region: a trading town on a route with a monastery living off it, both dated by the same Satavahana coins. The moat is still traceable and the stupa's drum slabs carried lotus medallions.
Guntupalli caves, Eluru · 1st century BCE
The rock-cut chaityagriha at Guntupalli has a vaulted roof with ribs imitating the timber construction it copies, which places it among the earliest of the Andhra series and close in date to the western Deccan caves. A monolithic apsidal hall cut to look like a wooden building. It is among the earliest of the Andhra rock-cut series, close in date to Bhaja in the west.
Guntupalli · 1st century BCE onward
The Guntupalli complex above the Eluru plain, with rock-cut cells, a brick monastery and a group of stupas on the hilltop. It is one of the few Andhra sites where rock-cut and structural monastic architecture stand in the same enclosure and can be compared directly. Rock-cut and structural monastic architecture stand in the same enclosure, which is rare anywhere.
Salihundam · 2nd century BCE – 12th century CE
Salihundam's stupas and monasteries sit on a hill above the Vamsadhara near the northern Andhra coast, and the site was occupied long enough to carry Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana remains in sequence. Its position above a river mouth links the monastic network to the Bay of Bengal trade. Its position above a river mouth ties the monastic network to the Bay of Bengal trade.
Bojjanakonda / Sankaram · 4th–9th century
Bojjanakonda and Lingalakonda at Sankaram, two hills near Anakapalle honeycombed with rock-cut stupas, monolithic votive stupas and cells. The main stupa is cut from the hill itself rather than built, and the density of votive stupas on the slope is unmatched in the region. The main stupa is cut from the hill itself rather than built up from courses of brick.
Thotlakonda, Visakhapatnam · 2nd century BCE – 3rd century CE
Thotlakonda sits on a hill facing the sea outside Visakhapatnam, with a stupa, a chaitya, refectories and rock-cut cisterns. Roman and Satavahana coins from the site tie a sea-facing monastery directly to the Bay of Bengal trade it was supported by. Its cisterns are cut into the rock to hold the monsoon, which is what made a hilltop site habitable, and Roman and Satavahana coins from the levels tie it directly to the trade passing below.
Bavikonda, Visakhapatnam · 2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE
Bavikonda, the hill of wells, a few kilometres from Thotlakonda, with a stupa that yielded a reliquary containing bone ash. The two coastal monasteries together show a monastic coast rather than isolated foundations, watered by cisterns cut into the rock. The reliquary from its stupa held bone ash, and the two coastal monasteries a few kilometres apart show that this was a monastic coast rather than a pair of isolated foundations.
Kanaka Durgā, Vijayawāda · the Krishna gorge
Kanaka Durga on Indrakeeladri above the Krishna at Vijayawada, one of the major goddess seats of the south, with the barrage that irrigates the whole delta immediately below it. The temple hill and the nineteenth-century anicut are the two things that made the modern delta what it is. Arthur Cotton's anicut of the 1850s is what turned the delta below into irrigated land.
Undavalli caves · 4th–7th century
A four-storey rock-cut complex in the hillside across the Krishna from Vijayawada, with a monolithic reclining Vishnu on the second floor cut from the living rock. The lowest level is Buddhist in plan and the upper levels Brahmanical, in one excavation — the regional transition made visible. The regional transition from Buddhist to Brahmanical is visible in one excavation.
Bhīmeśvara, Drākshārāmam · Pancharama & Shakta pitha
Draksharamam is both a Maha Shakta Pitha and one of the five Pancharama Kshetras, so two pan-Indian enumerations meet at one Godavari-delta temple. Its eleventh-century Eastern Chalukya structure carries several hundred inscriptions, which makes it one of the richest epigraphic sites in Andhra. Its eleventh-century Eastern Chalukya structure carries several hundred inscriptions, which makes it one of the richest epigraphic sites in the Andhra country.
Somārāma, Bhīmavaram · Pancharama
Somarama at Bhimavaram, where the lingam is said to change colour with the lunar month and the temple stands in a tank. The five Pancharama shrines are held in tradition to be fragments of one lingam broken by Tarakasura, which is how a delta of separate towns is read as a single ritual field.
Amarārāma, Amarāvatī · Pancharama
Amararama at Amaravati, beside the Krishna and a few hundred metres from the great Buddhist stupa site of the same name. A Shaiva network node and the most famous early Buddhist sculpture school in India occupy the same riverbank, roughly a thousand years apart. A Shaiva network node and the most famous early Buddhist sculpture school in India occupy the same riverbank, about a thousand years apart.
Kakinada · the Godavari mouth
Kakinada, the delta's port and the town where the Andhra movement for a separate linguistic state did much of its early organising. The delta's canal system, built on the Godavari anicut from the 1850s, is what made this one of the most densely populated agricultural landscapes in India. The Godavari anicut and its canals made this one of the most densely populated farmed landscapes in India.
Gudivāda / Vidarbhapuri · Krishna district
Gudivada, with a large brick stupa mound in the town and a long history as a market centre in the Krishna delta. It is a useful reminder that the Buddhist sites of this region are not all on hills and in forests; several are under working towns. Several of the region's Buddhist sites are under working towns rather than on empty hills.
Bapatla · coastal Andhra
Bapatla, on the coast south of the Krishna mouth, with an old Bhavanarayana temple and a nineteenth-century educational and nationalist history. The stretch of coast between the two deltas is flat, densely settled and largely written out of accounts that go straight from Amaravati to Madras. This flat, densely settled stretch between the two deltas is usually left out entirely.
Srikakulam · the Vamsadhara
Srikakulam anchors the northernmost Andhra coast and the Vamsadhara valley, a region with its own dialect, its own temple styles and, in the late 1960s, the Srikakulam Girijan uprising in the hills behind it. The district is the transition between the Andhra coast and Odisha. The district is the transition between the Andhra coast and the Odia one, in language as well as in temple style.
Araku Valley · the Eastern Ghats
The Araku valley, a high basin in the Eastern Ghats settled by Adivasi communities whose languages are neither Telugu nor Odia. Coffee was introduced here in the colonial period and is now grown co-operatively; the valley is also the centre of the agency tracts the Rampa risings took place in.
Paderu · the agency tracts
Paderu, administrative centre of the hill country where the Rampa rebellions of 1879 and 1922 happened. The Scheduled Areas regime, under which these hills are governed differently from the plains below them, is the long institutional consequence of those risings. The Scheduled Areas regime under which these hills are governed differently from the plains below them is the long institutional consequence of the Rampa risings of 1879 and 1922.
Borra Caves · the Ananthagiri hills
The Borra limestone caves, formed by the Gosthani cutting through karst in the Eastern Ghats, with a Shiva lingam among the formations that is worshipped by the villages around them. A geological landform that is also a working shrine. A geological landform that is also a working shrine, with the Gosthani flowing out of the cave mouth and villages from the hills around coming to it. The limestone here is among the oldest exposed karst in peninsular India.
Lambasingi · the Ghats highland
Lambasingi, high enough in the Eastern Ghats to record frost, which in coastal Andhra is unusual enough to have made the village a name. It stands for the vertical range of this region: from mangrove delta to frost-prone highland within a hundred and fifty kilometres. It stands for the vertical range of this region: mangrove delta to frost-prone highland within a hundred and fifty kilometres.
Vemulawāda · the Telangana plateau
Vemulawada's Raja Rajeswara temple, a Chalukyan foundation where pilgrims still offer live bullocks as vows and a mosque in the complex is visited by the same pilgrims. The plateau half of this region has its own devotional practice, distinct from both the delta and the coast. The plateau half of this region has its own devotional practice, distinct from both the delta and the coast.
Kaleshwaram · Godavari–Pranahita
Kaleshwaram, at the confluence of the Godavari and the Pranahita, with a temple in which two lingams share one platform and, since 2019, the largest lift-irrigation project in the world immediately beside it. A confluence tirtha and a pumping scheme at the same coordinates. A confluence tirtha and the largest pumping scheme in the world at the same coordinates.
Nizamabad · northern Telangana
Nizamabad, with a fort above it and a position on the route between the Deccan and the Godavari that made it a district town under the Nizams and a rail junction after. It is one of the hinges between the Marathi Deccan, the Telangana plateau and the Godavari valley. It is one of the hinges between the Marathi Deccan, the Telangana plateau and the Godavari valley.
Medak · the Medak church
Medak, a Kakatiya-era fort town whose other landmark is a Gothic cathedral built between 1914 and 1924 by the Wesleyan mission during a famine, as relief employment. It is one of the largest churches in Asia, in a Telangana market town, and both facts are the same fact. One of the largest churches in Asia, in a Telangana market town, and both facts are the same fact.