Gudimallam linga, a 19th-century replica from the temple; Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India. Photograph: Sarah Welch (2019), Wikimedia Commons

TA Gopinatha Rao (b.1872, d.1919) was an Indian archaeologist and epigraphist with the Archaeological Survey of India. In 1908, he became the first Superintendent of the Travancore Archaeology Department. The author of Elements of Hindu Iconography (1914), he was the first to recover and write about Gudimallam Lingam.