Guntur

Guntur lies on the eastern plains of Andhra. Its earliest known mention appears in inscriptions of Ammaraja I, the Vengi Chalukya king who ruled in the tenth century. A later inscription at Ramachandra Agraharam records a gift made in 1485 to Mulastha Mallikarjuna Deva by Tirumala Dasa Mahapatra, a local officer of the Gajapati ruler Kapileswara. In 1788 the East India Company took nearby Kondaveedu Fort; early in the nineteenth century it abandoned the fort as an administrative centre and made Guntur the headquarters of a district.