Rajah, Bahadur, and Appa Rao, which have been used by all the succeeding members of the family. The fort now at Nuzvid owes its existence to Rajah Vijaya Appa Rao Bahadur. There is a legend to the effect that on a certain day as he was going on a hunting excurtion he came to a field of gingelly oil seed, where a goat was defending itself most furiously against the attacks of a wolf. This the Rajah considered to be a good omen inasmuch as a feeble animal successfully resisted a mighty one, and on the spot he built his fort; and hence Nuzvid is derived from Nuvid chetta vidu (the place of the oil seed plant).
Sri Rajah Narasimha Appa Rao Bahadur, the next prominent member of the family, received the title of Teen hazar mansubdar which meant that he held his estates on the feudal tenure of leading three thousand men to the standard of his suzerain or lord. He was a very successful and popular ruler, and many poems were composed in his honor by the prominent poets of those times. The Rajah died childless, and hence the estates passed to a distant relation named Appanna, and on his death, to Ramachandra, also called Narasimha Appa Rao. It was in the time of Ramachandra that Asaf Jah, Subadar of the Dekhan, went to the Krishna District to bring it under the central authority. Ramachandra set himself resolutely to the task of defying the authority of the Subadar, and stood a siege which lasted for three months in the Nuzvid fort, but fell a victim to the sword of Rustum Ali Khan, who kept the estates for twelve years; but his successors were not able to manage them, and so they arranged to rent them out. Under the influence of two members of the Kamadana family who were dependants on the Rajahs of Nuzvid, one Venkatadri a descendant
