India has a rich heritage of inscriptions available at almost every village with dates ranging from 2nd century BC to the 19th century AD. We have studied about 40000 inscriptions distributed in South India and searched for astronomical records. It has been possible to identify solar and lunar eclipses very distinctly mentioned and verifiable from modern calculations. Some interesting cases show the geographical limit of the visibility of eclipses. The records of winter and summer solstices are abundant. A smaller number of records indicating planetary conjunctions also have been traced. This study throws light on a hitherto unknown parameter called vyatipatha, which can be defined as the event when the magnitudes of the declinations of the sun and moon are equal. Many Sanskrit texts describe the event in great detail but the actual need for observation remained unnoticed. A detailed study of the vyatipatha records give a hint on the possible observational technique which was used for predicting eclipses. The sudden absence of this term in inscriptions later than 18th century possibly hints on the success of a mathematical formula.