(Written By Meghna Desai)
History loiters all around us. Andhra is filled with such tales of ancient people, kings and brave men. In our History classes we have learnt about the big wars and big empires. Were those all the wars that were fought? The answer is no. In medieval Andhra the wars were fought not only for Kingdoms, they were fought for a lot of other things as well.
But then, who would fight these wars if not the kings? How the villages at the far end of the empire would be protected? Will the King get into the war for petty issues? No, Right? The smaller areas would have chiefs and a local chieftain would have his own mercenaries. This little army of brave men will defend the cattle, the women of the locality and land. Sounds small, right? Well it wasn’t to them. There are evidences of these wars lying all across Andhra embedded in stones.
Often in some villages of Andhra, one would come across a lot many of these stones called Virakals. They will be erected and worshipped or in worst cases neglected. The stone will usually have a carving of hero or the man who fought on his horse with a raised arm carrying a sword. These are the very own Andhra hero stones. On some, the story of the hero would be etched, while many will be empty. A small sun and moon will be carved on top of the stone expressing the glory of the hero to live as long as the sun and moon. And then there will be songs or the Viragathalus.
These traditions of glorifying the hero after his death have been going around since the time of Mahabharata and these traditions have helped us date our past. Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra are flourished by the depictions of heroes who may have just retrieved the cattle or saved the modesty of a woman.
Historians and Archaeologists have been hunting these stones for a while. The museums at Amravati, Hyderabad and Chennai have collected such stones and preserved them well.
Next time you see such a stone, you know you are looking at someone who did something very brave!
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