A compact version of AP’s medieval history ready to hit stands

The book ‘Late Medieval Andhra Pradesh’ is due for release on Friday. The 763-page book gives a comprehensive account of the events from 1324 to 1724 in just 52 chapters.

To some it’s a set of lies agreed upon. And to some just a confused heap of facts. Whatever, history is a pact between the dead, the living and the unborn. If you want to understand today, you have to necessarily search yesterday.

For the Telugu-speaking people, the job is made easy by the Andhra Pradesh History Congress (APHC). They can know all about their culture, art, architecture, language, trade, agriculture and statecraft by flicking through the voluminous work done by it. The fifth book in the series titled ‘Late Medieval Andhra Pradesh’ is due for release at the hands of the Governor, E.S.L. Narasimhan, on Friday.

The 763-page book gives a comprehensive account of the events from 1324 to 1724 in just 52 chapters. History books, they say, are tedious if they contain no lies. This book surely falls into this category. “It is a scientific and unbiased history,” says V. Ramakrishna, who edited the book.

The APHC took up the job of chronicling the history of the region 15 years ago. The first volume covered the history from 5000 BC to 500 BC, the second one from 500 BC to 624 AD, third volume from 624 to 1000 AD and the fourth one covered the Kakatiyan period from 1000 to 1324 AD. The fifth volume captures the history of Musunuri Naiks, Reddy kingdom, Bahamanis, Vijanagaram kingdom and the Qutb Shahi era.

“It is the Kakatiyas who united the Telugu-speaking people for the first time. Credit for what we call the united AP goes to them,” says Prof. Ramakrishna.

As many as 300 history scholars have chipped in to produce the volumes. The APHC has teamed up with the Potti Sriramulu Telugu University to accomplish this gigantic task, something no other university in the country has attempted. And all the volumes have been translated to Telugu language. There are three more volumes to be written covering the periods right up to 1990. “We hope to finish the project by December 2015,” says Prof. Ramakrishna, who taught history at the University of Hyderabad.

He is keen on bringing out the 9 volume also giving an exhaustive list of reference to the sources of history. “But I feel tired. Let somebody take up the responsibility,” says the 77-year-old historian.

Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it. Why not catch up with these books?