Anantapur: ‘Anantapuram Charitra’, a collection of political history and culture of 2,070 villages in Anantapur district and the transformation of the villagers from then to now, will soon be released.
The history and culture of the villages was originally collected by British survey officer Colonel Colin Mackenzie during his tenure in 1784. Noted writer Dr Vempalli Gangadhar, who is also a Rayalaseema activist, has taken the initiative to release the book with slight modifications.
The British officer collected detailed history from every village during 1784-1790.
He collected scripts from the local experts and historians in all the 2,070 villages as part of his survey.
The compilation consists of in-depth information about the culture of the villages, along with changes in palegars and the local culture, social and political history, dating back to 265 years.
Prior to the work by Mackenzie, there was no such detailed history of villages.Noted writer C.P. Brown, who was posted to Rayalaseema as second assistant to the then Kadapa collector, was attracted with the available detailed history of hundreds of villages.
Later, Mr Brown was transferred as court registrar of Machilipatnam and he returned to Kadapa in 1826. Mr Gangadhar had translated some English scripts to Telugu and tried to protect the information collected by the first Surveyor General of India.
At present, the scripts are available at the Government Oriental Manuscript Library in Chennai. Several incidents involving Sir Thomas Munro, an East India Company Army officer and statesman who succeeded to weed out the Palegars are also found in the book.
