Vizagapatam/Gazetteer/Padwa Taluk
PADWA TALUK.
Pádwa lies on the 3,000 feet plateau next north of Golgonda and is made up of parts of the estates of Mádgole (in the south) and Jeypore and Páchipenta (in the north and north-east). It is drained by the Machéru, which runs nearly north and south across it. In places (as between Wondragedda and Hukumpet, and from Pádéru to Gangaráz Mádgole) the jungle is thick; but most of the country consists of exceedingly bare red hills, covered with dry cultivation, coarse grass or dwarf dates, and boasting hardly a tree. The taluk contains two notable valleys, those of Aruku and Pádwa, and in these the cultivation is careful and the crops, owing to the excellent rainfall, most flourishing. Ragi four feet high is no uncommon sight; cattle are plentiful, and manure is carefully conserved. But the taluk as a whole is more sparsely peopled than any other in the district except Malkanagiri. The history of the attempts to give it an outlet to the coast through Anantagiri has been sketched on pp. 137-9 above.
The taluk was constituted in 1893, on the motion of Mr. Willock, by taking the Aruku and Pádwa country from the Pottangi taluk and adding it to the old Pádéru taluk, and then transferring the head-quarters from malarious Pádéru to Pádwa. Mr. H. G. Turner wished this country to be placed under the Narasapatam Divisional Officer, but Government did not approve.
The people somewhat resemble those of the Golgonda hills, half of them speaking Telugu and the Bagatas being numerous and influential. In the interior of the Mádgole part of the taluk 'nearly every village has its rival claimants for headship, and every village in a mutta disputes about its superiority. These disputes are often very absurd, as about the right to have the hind legs of game killed, to be carried in a palanquin, to wear anklets, etc. The people are also extremely litigious. They are not adverse to education except at Sujanakóta, where, notwithstanding frequent warnings, the Dombus have put devils into two consecutive school-masters 1[1]
The only two places of interest in the taluk are the Borra Cave and the pool called Matsya gundam. Borra Cave: Borra village lies about six miles north of Anantagiri, from which it is l)est reached, near the eastern edge of the bills upholding the 3,000 feet plateau. A stream there (which eventually falls into the Peddagunda, an affluent of the Chittivalasa river) disappears suddenly into a low limestone hill, works its way through it along a chain of most interesting limestone caves, full of excellent specimens of stalagmites and stalactites, and eventually reappears again 300 feet lower down in a deep gorge. Like the somewhat similar Guptésvara cave above referred to, the place is accounted holy and a festival is held there at Sivarátri. At one spot on the hill an opening leads abruptly downwards into the top of the largest of the chain of caves below, and one looks down into dim depths from which issues the murmur of running water, as in the place where —
'Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.'
About fifty feet below the northern brow of the hill 1[2] a wide but low entrance leads into this cave. The roof of it, in which is the orifice above mentioned, is crossed or irregularly ribbed with thick, short, curtain-like masses of stalactitic deposit, beautifully fluted and wrinkled, one or two of which, at the sides of the cavern, are connected with the thickly-grouped mounds of stalagmite forming on the floor. The whole interior is covered with dull cream-white travertine, the surface of which sparkles a little owing to minute sparry facets. The stream descends from a series of cavernous recesses above, passes along the eastern side of the cave through a deep rift, and runs down through other caverns to the gorge of the Peddagunda.
This latter stream, further up its course, itself encounters this same limestone; and in one place has cut two channels for itself through a wall of the rock, 20 or 30 yards wide, which bars its passage. These two channels run through the wall one above the other, the upper one having apparently been the outlet before the river wore its way down and made the lower.
Matsya gundam ('fish pool') is a curious pool on the Machéru ('fish river') near the village of Matam, sir miles north-north-west of Pádéru and close under the great Yendrika hill, 5,188 feet above the sea. A barrier of rocks runs right across the river there, and the stream plunges into a great hole and vanishes beneath this, reappearing again about a hundred yards lower down. Just where it emerges from under the barrier it forms a pool which is crowded with mahseer of all sizes. These are wonderfully tame, the bigger ones feeding fearlessly from one's hand and even allowing their backs to be stroked.1[3] They are protected by the Mádgole zamindars — who (see p. 320) on several grounds venerate all fish — and by superstitious fears. Once, goes the story, a Brinjári caught one and turned it into curry, whereon the king of the fish solemnly cursed him and he and all his pack-bullocks were turned into rocks which may be seen there till this day. At Sivarátri a festival occurs at the little thatched shrine near by (the pújári at which is a Bagata) and part of the ritual consists in feeding the sacred fish.