The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c15.s3.t5.1

v2.c15.s3.t5.1

The Kākatīyas like the rulers of Āndhra in all ages paid much attention to the storage of water for the purposes of agriculture, which was of course the main source of the country’s prosperity. They inherited a system of irrigation which had been in use in the land from times immemorial. The main feature of the system was the existence of a network of tanks or reservoirs in which rain-water was caught and stored for utilization in the cultivation of the soil. Excepting perhaps in the valleys and the deltas of large rivers like the Tuṅgabhadrā, the Pennār, the Kṛṣṇā, and the Gōdāvarī, where the fields derived their water supply from the channels dug from these streams, the rest of the country depended on storage tanks and on wells sunk deep in the earth. Every village in the country had one or more tanks, according to the extent of its arable land and the condition of the crops raised thereon. The village tank was usually called *cheruvu*, though its Kannaḍa equivalent ‘*kere*’ was not altogether unknown. In the case, however, of tanks constructed by persons on their own behalf or in honour of an individual or a deity, it was customary to call them after the name of the builder or donor himself, or of the individual or the deity in whose honour they had been constructed, with the suffixes ‘*samudra*’, ‘*cheruvu*’ or ‘*kere*’ attached to them.