VIZAGAPATAM TALUK.
Vizagapatam is the smallest taluk in the district and, next to the ordinary tracts in Pálkonda, the most densely populated. Its inhabitants increased at a relatively higher rate than those of any other taluk both in the decade 1891-1901 and in the thirty years ending with 1901. It contains more Musalmans and Christians than any other taluk, and its people are also better educated than those of any other. It is a picturesque tract. The coast line is broken by the bold headland called the Dolphin's Nose (1,174 feet above the sea), the hills which run down to the shore by Lawson's Bay, just north of Waltair, and the Sugar-loaf hill which separates this from the bay just beyond it; and inland stands the Simháchalam range of rounded red hills and its continuation northward towards Bimlipatam. The Simháchalam temple and the head-quarters are the chief places of interest within the taluk.
Simháchalam ('the lion hill'), which rises to about 800 feet above the sea, stands just north of Vizagapatam. Near the top of the north side of it, in a wooded hollow surrounded by a wide circle of higher ground, is the temple to Narasimha, the man-lion incarnation of Vishnu, which gives the hill its name. This is the most famous, richest, and best sculptured shrine in Vizagapatam, and in its honour numbers of the people of the district are named Simháchalam, Simhádri, Narasimha and so on. From the hollow in which it stands, a deep glen, watered by a rivulet and clothed with many trees in striking contrast to the bare flanks of the rest of the hill, runs down to the foot of the northern slope, where, about ten miles by road from Vizagapatam, is a rose-garden which h traditionally declared 1[1] to have been planted by the well-known Sitaráma Rázu of Vizianagram and is watered from the rivulet. The Rájas of Vizianagram have been wardens of the shrine for over two centuries and have endowed it with land worth some Rs. 30,000 per annum.
The way up to the temple runs along the glen from near the rose-garden, through terraced fields of pine-apples dotted with mango, jack and other trees. It passes up a broad flight of wellkept stone steps, over a thousand in number, on either side of which trees have been planted to give shade and a rill runs in a
- ↑ 1 Mackenzie MSS., Local Records, iv, 265-9,
