that suppliants do not clasp their hands before the deities in the conventional Hindu form of reverence, but salaam to them as in the Muhammadan fashion of greeting. Nor do they address the usual praises to them, but actually insult them with the most vulgar abuse. No reasons are forthcoming for these customs.
Pithápuram: A union of 13,220 inhabitants. The headquarters of the great Pithápuram zamindari, of a deputy tahsildar and of a sub-registrar. It contains a police-station, a large choultry maintained by the Rája, another kept up from local funds, a local fund hospital (founded 1879), an upper secondary school for boys, an English lower secondary school for boys, a Government lower secondary school for girls and a large cattle market. The Rája owns a bungalow near the station which is generally placed at the disposal of travellers. Close by are his experimental farm and veterinary dispensary,
Pithápuram is mentioned as a sovereign city in very early times. In the Allahabad pillar inscription of the Gupta king Samudragupta, which belongs to the middle of the fourth century A.D., the chieftain Mahéndra of Pistápuram is mentioned along with the kings of Conjeeveram and Vengi. He was almost undoubtedly a Pallava chief and a semi-independent feudatory of the Pallava king Vishnugópa of Conjeeveram. Again 'the strong fortress of Pishtápura' is one of the places mentioned in the Aihole inscription of the Eastern Chálukya emperor Pulakésin II as having been subdued by him when he conquered the Vengi country. But from this period onwards a wide gap occurs in the history of the place. Inscriptions ranging from 1186 to 1391 A.D. and belonging to the Vélanándu chiefs, the Kónas, Mallapa's Eastern Chálukya line, and Reddi kings are found in it; but they throw no light on its history.
In comparatively modern times Pithápuram reappears as the head-quarters of an important zamindari. Mr. Grant, in his Political Survey of the Nortliern Circars already quoted, states that the ancestors of the Rája of this estate were established as renters of part of it as early as 1 571, but that the family was involved in the general proscription of Indian landholders under the rule of Rustum Khán until in 1749 one of its members obtained a sanad for the zamindari from the amildar Nimat Ali.
A detailed history of the estate has recently been published at Cocanada by order of the Rája. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, this consists entirely of a translation of one of the Mackenzie MSS. The dates and names (especially the former) in this are evidently confused, but it may be relied on
