Vijayawada

Vijayawada is a city on the Krishna River in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, at the foot of Indrakeeladri hill. Known as Bezawada under British rule, it takes its present name from Vijaya, a title of the goddess Kanaka Durga, whose temple stands on the hill.

In the Mahabharata story told in the city, Arjuna did penance on Indrakeeladri and received a divine gift from Shiva. The rock-cut cave temples at Mogalrajapuram, carved around the 5th century, are among the oldest monuments of the city, with Hindu figures cut into the sandstone. A masonry weir, or anicut, crossed the Krishna here in the 1850s, and the Prakasam Barrage replaced it a century later, feeding the canals that water the rice fields of the delta. At the session of the Indian National Congress held in the town in 1921, Pingali Venkayya showed Mahatma Gandhi his design for a national flag, the forerunner of the tricolor of India.

Rice from the Krishna delta is milled and traded in Vijayawada, along with mangoes, chilies and tobacco from the farms of the region. The city grew as a railway junction on the lines from Chennai to Kolkata and Hyderabad, and the trade in vehicles and spare parts settled in Auto Nagar, an industrial quarter laid out for it in the east of the city.

Kondapalli toys, light figures carved from the soft wood of the tella poniki tree in the village of Kondapalli near the city, carry a geographical indication of India. Bhavani Island, in the Krishna upstream of the barrage, was turned into a park with boating and river walks. Kuchipudi, the classical dance of Andhra Pradesh, takes its name from a village of the same Krishna district, where Siddhendra Yogi taught it to young Brahmin men in the 17th century.