POTTANGI TALUK.
Pottangi taluk stands in the centre of the 3,000 feet plateau. In general appearance it much resembles its next neighbour Koraput, already referred to above, consisting (except along the edge of the plateau, which is fairly wooded and comprises a line of fine hills running up to 5,000 feet) of an almost totally bare, red soil, table-land dotted with small, bare, red hills, both of which are cultivated with dry crops and a little paddy in their damper hollows. It is traversed from east to west by the important road which runs from Salur on the plains, up the 'Pottangi ghat' (see p. 139), past Pottangi, the taluk head-quarters, to Koraput, and thence down to Jeypore. Two places in it may be mentioned : —
Nandapuram, once (see p. 280) the head-quarters of a taluk, about 15 miles west of Pottangi as the crow flies and is reached by a track taking off at Sembliguda from the Pottangi-Koraput road. As has been stated above (p. 264), this village, which now contains only 1,051 inhabitants, was formerly the capital of the Jeypore estate. In old records the property is always called the Nandapuram zamindari. It still contains relics of its former importance. Remains may be seen of a mud fort which apparently surrounded the whole place; in the northern part of the village are two boulders on one of which are sculptured two figures in relief while the other has been fashioned into an elephant; near the cutcherry of the amin of the Jeypore estate is a stone bearing an inscription; about a mile to the south-east is a stone Ganapati some six feet high; the same distance to the north is the shrine of Sarvesvara, in which are more inscriptions (inscriptions are rarities in the hills); and in the village itself are the ruins of the famous 'throne of thirty-two steps' — a flight of this number of stone steps which leads to a roughly circular granite slab on which, it is said, the early chiefs of Jeypore were always installed. About three miles along the track to Sembliguda is a still more ancient and curious relic, namely, a small shrine in which are three stone images of nude individuals sitting cross-legged, which appear to belong either to Buddhist or Jain times.
Pottangi, the head-quarters of the taluk, is a small village of 726 inhabitants built at the foot of the great Damuku hill and containing the deputy tahsildar's office and a pleasant travellers' bungalow surrounded with good trees. It gives its name to the ghat road from Salur at the head of which it stands, and the Tadivalasa (or Turner's) ghat from the plains also ends there.
