JAGGAYYAPET

About 180 years ago, the region surrounding Jaggaiahpeta was governed by a ruler, by name Sri Rajah Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu, who was famous for his piety and devotion and for the construction of many a temples in honour of Lord Siva and Lord Vishnu. It is said that he founded two towns, namely, Jaggaiahpeta, named after his father, and Achampeta, named after his mother. The founding of the towns by Venkatadri Nayudu find mention in a Telugu verse of a certain well-known poet, too.

But from the old records of the Government, we get the information that, even prior to the founding of the towns by Venkatadri Nayudu, there existed on this site a village named Betavolu and that the Rajah developed it into a town and changed the name to Jaggaiahpeta . The region was then infested with robbers and hence the old village was called Dongala Betavolu (Robbers' Betavolu). For some time, Jaggaiahpeta was mentioned in Government records with Betavolu written in brackets. Even now, in some old documents in the houses of some indigenous bankers of the town, we find only ' Betavolu ' mentioned as the name of the village.

All this is recent history and is self-evident. But apart from it, this region has an ancient and splendid history behind it. Though it is so, only a few know that the innocent-looking mound 'Dhanam Bodu', lying east of Jaggaiahpeta, has in it the remains of an ancient stupa, which has been lying there for 2,000 years.

Monuments & Antiquities

Jaggayyapeta StupaDuring the excavations in 1818, a few carved slabs from one of the brick mounds revealed the existence of a group of ancient stupas. After excavation, the stupa was found to be 9 meters in diameter and was decorated with slabs of the same material used in Amaravati. Inside the casing the stupa is made completely out of bricks and earth. About a kilometre from the town is a hill known as Dhanabodu or Hill of wealth on which once stood a great Stupa or Mahachaitya. Around the hillock are traces of monastic buildings.

A Mahachaitya filled with layers of rubble & gravel two feet thick. The slabs surrounding the base of the stupa were plain very few of them having any carving except a small pilaster up the edge. Some of the sculptures on the pilasters closely resemble in style of Bharhut sculptures. The capitals are heavy and roughly bell-shaped and show addorsed double-winged animals like that at Patalkhora. Some of the slabs were inscribed in characters of Mauryan type ascribable to the beginning of the 2nd century BC.

Fourteen sculptures recovered from here (All of them either broken or mere fragments, the only exception being a standing Buddha) and are in the Madras Museum. This standing Buddha is exceptional, not merely because it was found undamaged, but also because it differs both in age and style from the rest of finds. It has an inscription on its lotus base in characters of the sixth century. The gist of the inscription being that the image was made under instructions from Jayaprabhacharya, a disciple of Nagarjunacharya. It is concluded that it belongs to a much later age than the rest of the sculptures which are akin to those of the first face of the Amaravati stupa, and hence are dated as early as 200 B.C.

The most interesting as well as important of the marbles here is a slab representing a Chakravarti. The seven jewels which surround him – the queen, the prince, the minister, the elephant, the horse, the wheel, and the gems – proclaim him to the world as a king of kings. Noteworthy features of this sculpture are not only the square coins that are showered on the emperor from the sky and the jewels worn by the human figures, but also the elongated structure of those figures which constitute a marked departure from the stunted representations of the Gandhara School. It is this elegant attenuation of the figures the subsequently led to the “towering and graceful forms” in the sculptures of the middle phase of Andhra sculpture at Amaravati. Another interesting find in this area is the “punyasala,” a beautiful sculpture showing a two-storied shrine.