He is neither a historian, nor an archaeologist, but with his passion and hard work alone, this 42-year-old man accomplished an uphill task of discovering 500 villages that don't exist anymore. Manimela Shivashankar despite being a Class V drop out, has written a book Guntur Zilla Adrushya Gramalu on the villages that have gradually disappeared. Native of Ponnur, Shivashankar is a daily wage worker and supports his family by loading and unloading goods at a private transport company in Guntur. Interested in these missing villages since childhood, Shivashankar found his lost passion five years ago while he was visiting Kotappakonda.
"In my childhood, while I was visiting my grandmother's house in Bapatla, I learnt about three villages whose names were known to the villagers but they didn't exist. It piqued my interest and I started asking about the information. I got several answers from various people, but I couldn't find a single proof,'' he told The New Indian Express. In Kotappakonda temple, he saw an inscription on temple walls, on which a few villages which existed during the construction of the temple recreated the interest in Sivashankar. Soon after, he started his research to know more about these villages, he found out that those villages do not exist anymore.
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Which started as a mere interest turned into full-on research. In his spare time, Shivashankar goes through ancient scriptures, historical manuals and literature in libraries, and inscriptions on various temples across the district to search for the villages and hamlets mentioned in there. He tries to find out the actual location of these places and why they have gone into the oblivion of history. He also went through Mackenzie Manuscripts, the records of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, an 18th-century Scottish army officer in the British East India Company who later become the first Surveyor General of India.
Till now he was able to identify nearly 500 such villages and hamlets which don't exist at present, as they disappeared from records over centuries across different parts of the erstwhile Guntur district and mentioned it in his book along with the reasons including where they were originally located, what their historical significance was and why they have disappeared into history over a period of time that has attracted the attention of several universities, historians, and archaeologists.
Some of the villages which he identified as missing have great historical significance. For example, Pingali is a popular village, after which several people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh take their surname, like the ancient poet Pingali Surana during the Vijayanagara empire, Pingali Venkaiah, designer of Indian National Flag, Pingali Nagender Rao, the popular Telugu lyricist, is nowhere to be seen now. Sivashankar in his research found out that Pingali was a village in the Guntur district, which was deserted by the villagers due to floods.
Many such villages, Boddupalli, Nidigallu, Daddanalapadu, Panuganti, Tammadipadu, Kommamuru, Navanidhapatnam, Mulukuta, Shanampudi, Ekalskhanpeta and many others which have an interesting history and once flourished in Guntur do not exist anymore. "While doing research and gathering information was one thing, writing the book was whole different thing as I didn't have much expertise in writing,'' said Sivashankar.
That is when his wife Rajyam stepped up and provided assistance. She helped him to organise his thoughts and give shape to the book. He also says that he has a long way to go in identifying more missing villages. However, sometimes it still feels like a dream that I've written a book which is getting such huge response and appreciation, he added, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
