इतिहास
Kongu's periodisation is a frontier's, not a capital's. For most of two thousand years this upland was a march — a country administered from somewhere else, and usually from two directions at once, because the gap in the mountain wall that makes it valuable also makes it a corridor. Its medieval period begins in the ninth century with the Chola annexation, not in 1200; its modern period begins in 1799, with the transfer to the Madras Presidency after the fall of Srirangapatna, and not in 1857 — because until then this was as often Mysore's country as the Tamil plains'. Authority here was correspondingly distributed rather than dynastic. The working units were the nadu, an assessment and assembly district of which Kongu had twenty-four, and later the palayam, a tract held on military tenure. Both outlasted every dynasty that claimed the region, and both are better attested than any local king list.
कालक्रम यहाँ क्षेत्रीय है, राष्ट्रीय नहीं — मध्यकाल हर क्षेत्र में एक ही सदी से शुरू नहीं होता।
प्राचीनc. 500 BCE – 850 CE
The gap made this country an industrial and trading zone long before it was a political one. At Kodumanal on the Noyyal, excavation has found iron and steel furnaces, a bead and gemstone industry working carnelian, garnet, quartz and lapis, and pottery carrying Tamil-Brahmi writing, at a site occupied from about the fifth century BCE — a manufacturing settlement placed squarely on the trans-peninsular route between the Malabar and Coromandel coasts. Karur, on the Amaravati, was a Chera seat, and Roman-period coin and amphora have come out of the riverbed there; Ptolemy names an inland trading town in this country. Politically the region was a march between the Cheras to the west and the Cholas and Pandyas to the east, held by chiefs who married into the Chera house, and it changed hands repeatedly before the Cholas took it in the ninth century.
मध्यकालीनc. 850 – 1799
Under the Cholas the region was administered as twenty-four nadus, and a semi-autonomous line conventionally called the Kongu Cholas governed it from Karur and Dharapuram into the thirteenth century, issuing its own inscriptions. Pandya, Hoysala and then Delhi authority passed over it in turn; from the later fourteenth century it was Vijayanagara's, and from the middle of the sixteenth the Madurai Nayakas divided it into twenty-four palayams held on military tenure. The last and most consequential phase of this long medieval order was Mysore's. Under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan the Kongu uplands were absorbed into Mysore, fortified, and fought over through four Anglo-Mysore wars: the Treaty of Seringapatam in 1792 transferred Coimbatore and Dindigul to the Company, and the fall of Srirangapatna in 1799 ended the arrangement.
आधुनिक1799 – 1947
The annexation of 1799 was followed within two years by the last armed resistance the region produced, and within five by a new administrative geography: Coimbatore district was constituted on 24 November 1804. Everything after that is an argument between a thin, late rainfall and an unusually good set of accidents. The railway arrived in 1861; the same wind that makes the country dry keeps humidity low and dust down, which suits spinning; the first unit of the Pykara hydro-electric scheme was commissioned in October 1932 and brought grid power to the plateau; and mill and engineering employment turned Coimbatore and Tiruppur into industrial towns with a politics of their own. That politics was not only nationalist. The Self-Respect movement was founded at Erode in 1925 by a man who had been president of the provincial Congress three years earlier, and for the next two decades the region carried a Congress nationalism and a social-reform movement in parallel, often in opposition to each other.
शासक और सेनापति
The Chera Irumporai line Chera chiefs शासक c. 1st–4th century CE
Held Karur on the Amaravati as a seat and are named in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and on coin. Whether Karuvur is the Vanji of the Chera epics is disputed; the inscriptional and numismatic evidence for a Chera presence here is not.
राजवंश: Cheras of Karuvur. राजधानी: Karur (Karuvur)
Aditya I Chola शासक c. 871–907
Brought the Kongu country under Chola control in the ninth century, beginning the administrative order — the nadu — that outlasted every dynasty here.
राजवंश: Imperial Cholas. राजधानी: Thanjavur
The twenty-four nadus and their nattar Assessment and assembly districts प्रशासक 9th–16th century
Kongu was reckoned, taxed and endowed by nadu rather than by kingdom. The nattar, the body of a nadu, witnessed land transactions, settled boundaries and administered temple endowments, and inscriptions record its decisions in its own name. The twenty-four-nadu division is the most durable political fact about this region and survived four changes of overlord.
राजवंश: An administrative order, not a dynasty. राजधानी: Across the Kongu uplands
The Kongu Chola line Chola viceroys or vassals शासक 11th–13th century
Governed the uplands with enough autonomy to issue inscriptions in their own regnal years, which is how the line is known at all.
राजवंश: Kongu Cholas. राजधानी: Karur and Dharapuram
The palayakkarar of the Kongu palayams Holder of a palayam प्रशासक c. 1550–1805
Under the Nayakas and after them, the region was held in tracts on military tenure: the holder kept troops and a fort, policed his palayam, took a share of the crop and paid a kist upward. Kongu's resistance to Mysore and then to the Company was conducted by holders of this office rather than by kings, and it ended when the tenure was abolished.
राजवंश: An office, not a dynasty. राजधानी: Twenty-four palayams across the uplands
Hyder Ali Commander-in-chief and de facto ruler of Mysore सेनापति 1761–1782
Rose through the Mysore army and governed the state without taking its throne, the Wodeyar remaining nominal ruler. He absorbed the Kongu uplands into Mysore and fortified the towns along the gap, making this country the ground of four wars.
राजवंश: Mysore. राजधानी: Srirangapatna
Tipu Sultan Sultan of Mysore शासक 1782–1799
Held the Kongu country until the Treaty of Seringapatam of 1792 removed Coimbatore and Dindigul from it, and lost the remainder at Srirangapatna in 1799.
राजवंश: Mysore. राजधानी: Srirangapatna
Dheeran Chinnamalai Chief of Odanilai विद्रोही 1756–1805
Held Odanilai in the western uplands, allied with Mysore against the Company after initially resisting Mysore's own revenue demands, and continued armed resistance in the Kongu country after 1799.
राजवंश: Kongu palayam holder. राजधानी: Odanilai, near Erode