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information about the earlier period, contained in these records is of little use for the reconstruction of the history of that period. In any case, one must be very cautious in making use of these records.
There are 291 Kaifiyats in all taluks of the present Guntur District. Parts of I and II of Guntur taluka consist of 23 Kaifiyats each.
The region under review, that is the present Guntur district was called in the early medieval period as Velanādu in the east, Pallinādu in the west and Kammanādu in the south, which extended into the Prakasam district also. After the fall of the Kākatiyas in A.D. 1323, the Reddi kings succeeded to power in this region and made Kondavidu near Guntur, their capital where they built a strong hill fort. Subsequently the old three nädus merged into single administrative unit called Kondaviti-rājya which continued with the same set up till the British authorities made first Machilipatnam and then Guntur as the district headquarters Thus these Kaifiyats are mostly concerned with the local history of the old Kondavidu-rājya. Later it was called Kondavidu-sarkar or Murtujānnagar-sarkar after its Muslim Governor, Murtujāmkhān, the Faujdār of Kondavidu khilla. It is a coincidence that these Kaifiyats of the Guntur district form the local records of the Kondaviti-rājya itself.
The subject matter contained in the Kaifiyats can be conveniently divided into three parts.
I. Mythical narrations with traditional sthala-purānas and superstitious myths. This part is somewhat useful for the study of place names and for locating some ancient Buddhist and Jaina sites.
II. Semi-historical part from A D. 1134 to 1514. There is much confusion in the narration of the historical points in this part. As said before, it begins with the Himalayan blunder, namely, the unanimous statement that certain Ganapatideva of the Gajapati throne conquered the country in saka 1056(A.D.1134) and his minister Goparaju Ramanna, having obtained the King's permission on the occasion of a solar eclipse that occurred on the new moon day of the Bhādrapada month in saka 1067, Raktakshi (A.D. 1145), appointed the village Karanams with hereditary right (mirāsi). The former part of this statement about the conquest of the region by the Gajapati king Ganapatideva in saka 1056 (A.D. 1134) is nowhere traceable in the known history of the Andhra country. But the unanimity in this regard in a large number of records forces us to connect the event with the known history. Kulottunga I (Rajendra Choda II), son of the Eastern Chalukya king Rājarājanarendra by his queen Ammangādevi, a Chola princess, ruled the Andhra country from A.D. 1070 to A.D. 1118, appointing his sons as viceroys in the Vengi kingdom, himself being on the Chola throne in the South. Thus he made the Vengi
