board; several private chattrams, two of which are important institutions; two police-stations, a police school and a large Special Police Reserve; a municipal hospital and a mission dispensary; a first-grade college, a training college, two high schools, three English lower secondary schools for boys, one English and three vernacular lower secondary schools for girls, and a Sanskrit school. The choultries are referred to in Chapter VII, the chief medical and educational institutions in Chapters IX and X respectively and the municipal council and its doings in Chapter XIV.
Rajahmundry is not only of interest historically and as an administrative centre, but is also of importance to Hindus from a religious point of view. It is held that all pilgrims going from this district to Benares should also visit Rajahmundry, and most of these people bathe in the river there on their way back from the holy city. They also observe the curious custom of emptying half the contents of the pots of Ganges water they bring back with them into the Gódávari, and fill them up again from the latter river. It is believed that if this is not done, the Ganges water will quickly dry up in the pot. The sanctifying effect of a bath in the Gódávari at Rajahmundry is placed so high that'people come by train all the way from Madras for the purpose, often going back the next day. The bathing place is called the Kótilingam ('crore of lingams') ghat. The name is explained by a story that the Bráhman sages at one time wanted to make the place as sacred as Benares, where there are supposed to be a crore of lingams, and therefore set themselves to found the same number here in a single night. Unfortunately the day dawned before the last one was made. The lingams are supposed to lie buried in the bed of the Gódávari opposite the ghat. The river is held to be particularly sacred at Rajahmundry (and Dowlaishweram) because, like the Cauvery above the delta, it is still undiminished by division into many branches. It is called the Aganda ('entire') Gódávari, just as the other is called the Aganda Cauvery. The Rajahmundry ghat is one of the centres of the great pushkaram festival, which takes place once in thirteen years.1[1]
The place is also noted for the worship of a very widely known village goddess called Chamalamma, whose image reposes under a tree about a mile away. A fortnight's festival in her honour is celebrated in the last month of the Telugu year (March-April), and at this a mud pot which her spirit is supposed to enter is taken round the town every day
- ↑ 1 See Chapter I, p. 6,
