Andhra is an ethnonym used for Telugu people since antiquity.[20] The earliest mention of the Andhras occurs in Aitareya Brahmana (c. 800 BCE) of the Rigveda.[21][22][23] They were also mentioned in the Mahabharata and Buddhist Jataka tales.[24] In the Mahabharata the infantry of Satyaki was composed by a tribe called Andhras, known for their long hair, tall stature, sweet language, and mighty prowess. Megasthenes reported in his Indica (c. 310 BCE) that Andhras were living in the Godavari and Krishnariver deltas and were famous for their military strength which was second only to Mauryans in all of India.[25] The first major Andhra polity was the Satavahana dynasty (2nd century BCE–2nd century CE) which ruled over the entire Deccan plateau and even distant areas of western and central India.[26][27][28] They established trade relations with the Roman Empire and their capital city, Amaravati was the most prosperous city in India in 2nd century CE.[29] Inscriptions in Old Telugu script (Vengi script) were found as far away as Indonesia and Myanmar.[30]
In the 13th century, Kakatiyas unified various Telugu-speaking areas under one realm.[31] Later, Telugu culture and literature flourished and reached its zenith during the late Vijayanagara Empire.[32] After the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire, various Telugu rulers called Nayakas established independent kingdoms across South India serving the same function as Rajput warriors clans of northern India.[33][34]Kandyan Nayaks, the last dynasty to rule Sri Lanka were of Telugu descent.[35][36] In this era, Telugu became the language of high culture across Southern India.[37][38][39] Vijaya Ramaswamy compared it to the overwhelming dominance of French as the cultural language of modern Europe during roughly the same era.[39] Telugu also predominates in the evolution of Carnatic music, one of two main subgenres of Indian classical music.[39][40][41][42]
^Wolpert, Stanley A. (1989). A New History of India. Oxford University Press. pp. 75, 76. ISBN978-0-19-505636-5. Apparently originating somewhere between the peninsular rivers Godavari and Krishna, homeland of the Dravidian Telugu-speaking peoples whose descendants now live in a state called Andhra, the great Andhra dynasty spread across much of south and central India from the second century BC till the second century AD.
^Wolpert, Stanley A. (1989). A New History of India. Oxford University Press. pp. 75, 76. ISBN978-0-19-505636-5. Amaravati on the banks of the Krishna, which was later the southeast capital of the Satavahanas, flourished in its trade with Rome, Ceylon, and Southeast Asia, and may well have been the most prosperous city of India during the second century of the Christian era.
^ Miśra, Bhāskaranātha; Rao, Manjushri; Pande, Susmita, eds. (1996). India's Cultural Relations with South-east Asia. Sharada Publishing House. pp. 70, 71. ISBN 978-81-85616-39-1.
^Muthiah, S. (27 March 2017). "The Nayaka kings of Kandy". The Hindu. ISSN0971-751X. Retrieved 23 October 2020. All four worshipped at Buddhist and Hindu shrines, used Sinhala and Tamil as court languages (though they spoke Telugu), and encouraged their courtiers to take wives from Madurai and Thanjavur.
^ abcRamaswamy, Vijaya (25 August 2017). Historical Dictionary of the Tamils. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 88. ISBN978-1-5381-0686-0. In precolonial or early-modern South India, Telugu became the cultural language of the south, including the Tamil country, somewhat similar to the overwhelming dominance of French as the cultural language of modern Europe during roughly the same era. Therefore, Telugu predominates in the evolution of Carnatic music, and it is the practice to teach Telugu language in music colleges to those aspiring to become singers.
^Warder, Anthony Kennedy (2004). Indian Buddhism. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 336, 355, 402, 464. ISBN978-81-208-1741-8. Those of us who have studied the evidence above will prefer to locate this source of most of the Mahāyāna sutras in Andhra. (p. 355) From the internal evidence it appears that this sutra was written in South India, very likely in Andhra, in which case the country of origin of the Mahāyāna continued in the lead in the development of new ideas in India. (p. 402)
^Williams, Paul. Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations 2nd edition. Routledge, 2009, p. 47.
^(20 December 2007) Telugu is 2,400 years old, says ASIThe Hindu. Archived 3 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine "The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has joined the Andhra Pradesh Official Languages Commission to say that early forms of the Telugu language and its script indeed existed 2,400 years ago"
^"Wayang | Indonesian theatre". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 3 April 2023. Developed before the 10th century, the form had origins in the tholu bommalata, the leather puppets of southern India. The art of shadow puppetry probably spread to Java with the spread of Hinduism.
^Keith, Rawlings (November 1999). "Observations on the historical development of puppetry - Chapter Two". Retrieved 3 April 2023. Perhaps the most interesting of the south-Indian puppet types for me, however, were the tholu bommalata -- the articulated, leather, shadow puppets -- which are the probable ancestors of Indonesia's wayang.
^Currell, David (1974). The Complete Book of Puppetry. Pitman. p. 25. ISBN978-0-273-36118-3. The tolu bommalata shadow puppets are found in the Andhra region and may be the origin of the Javanese wayang kulit puppets.