VIjayawada: Historians and archaeologists raised their eyebrows on the news that a 1000-year-old Dwarapala idol at the Radham Centre in One Town was reduced to pieces during the recent Vijayawada city beautification works. According to CEO, the Cultural Centre Of Vijayawada & Amaravati, Dr E. Sivanagi Reddy, the idol was recovered from the excavation of Eluru canal in 1844. At the request of the local people, the then British engineers installed the sculpture on a pedestal at Radham Centre near the Brahmin Street in One Town, Vijayawada.
Dr Reddy said that the image served as a piece of attraction for the visitors and as a signature sculpture of Vijayawada. Against this background, Dr Reddy, who probed further to locate such historical sculptures, said that his researches revealed that two life-size granite images of Dwara-palas were shifted to Madras from Vijayawada by C. Sivarama Murthy, the then curator of Gov-ernment Museum, Madras in 1938, which are now on display at the entrance of the museum under the scheme Preserve Heritage for Posterity launched by the Cultural Centre of Vijayawada and Amara-vati during his recent visit to Chennai Museum.
After close examination of the two sculptures, he said that they belonged to the period of Kubja Vis-hnu Vandhana, the foun-der of the Vengi Chalukyan dynasty. On the backside of one of the two sculptures, bears an inscription of 7th century AD, in Telugu script reading Venginattu Vela-nadu, probably the chief of the area. Since these sculptures reflect the contemporary art tradition, dress and ornaments beside the script of the century 7 AD, the CEO requested the director, Department of Archaeology, AP to initiate action to shift these priceless icons either to the Victoria Jubilee Museum, Vijaya-wada or to the new capital region to showcase them.
