इतिहास
Authority in this country was held by office rather than by dynasty for most of its recorded history, and that is the finding rather than an absence of one. The Sethupathi was not an ancient kingship: it was created in 1605, when a Madurai Nayak granted a local chief the guardianship of the pilgrim road to Rameswaram, and only in the later seventeenth century did its holders behave as independent rulers. Below it, the palayakkarars held tracts on military tenure — troops, a fort, a share of the crop and a kist paid upward — and the Pudukkottai Tondaimans held a chiefship on the same terms. So the region's medieval period effectively begins in 1605 and its modern period in the 1730s, when the country split into Ramnad and Sivaganga and set up the succession quarrels the Company later fought over. Two boundary notes: Panchalankurichi and the Tuticorin coast lie south-west of this region's core, in the Tirunelveli palayam country, and appear below because the confederacy of 1801 and the shipping venture of 1906 joined them to it; and the region's other great history is not political at all but a banking and shipping history conducted almost entirely outside India.
कालक्रम यहाँ क्षेत्रीय है, राष्ट्रीय नहीं — मध्यकाल हर क्षेत्र में एक ही सदी से शुरू नहीं होता।
प्राचीनc. 300 BCE – 600 CE
The dry coast between the Vaigai's tail and the Gulf of Mannar has no river and never had an agricultural surplus, so its early record is maritime and extractive rather than agrarian. Greek and Latin writers of the first century describe the pearl fishery of the gulf; Tamil poetry of the same general period names the chank divers and the dry-country chiefs. Excavation at Alagankulam, near the Vaigai mouth, has produced Roman-period pottery and other imported material, which places this shore inside Indian Ocean trade well before any of its later polities existed. The strait itself was a crossing rather than a barrier: the same fishing ground, the same reef and the same monsoon lie on both sides of it, and traffic across it is older than any of the states that later taxed it.
मध्यकालीन600 – 1730
For a thousand years this was the seaward margin of somebody else's kingdom — Pandya from Madurai, briefly Chola, then Pandya again, then the Madurai sultanate and Vijayanagara. Its own institutions begin in 1605, when Muthu Krishnappa Nayaka of Madurai granted Sadaikka Thevar the office of Sethupathi, literally the guardianship of the causeway, with the duty of protecting pilgrims crossing the dry country to Rameswaram. The grant was a policing contract; within three generations it had become a state. Kilavan Sethupathi, from the 1670s, stopped remitting to Madurai, moved his seat to Ramanathapuram and fortified it, and his successors built the palace known as the Ramalinga Vilasam. Around the same time the Tondaimans established a chiefship at Pudukkottai on the north-western edge, and the Nagarathar merchant families of the Chettinad villages began the long-distance trade that later became a banking network.
आधुनिक1730 – 1947
Everything the Company did here followed from the split of the 1730s: two chiefships with competing claims, each able to be supported or punished. Company troops attacked Kalaiyar Kovil in 1772 and the Sivaganga chief was killed; his widow recovered the chiefship in 1780 with the help of neighbouring chiefs and of the Maruthu brothers, who then administered it. The Ramnad ruler was deposed in 1795. The palayakkarar wars of 1799 and 1801 followed, and with them the end of armed chiefship: between 1801 and 1803 the palayams and the Ramnad and Sivaganga territories were converted into permanent zamindari estates, which replaced a military tenure with a rent-collecting one. What replaced politics as the region's business was capital. From the mid-nineteenth century Nagarathar firms from the Chettinad villages financed rice cultivation, trade and property in Ceylon, Burma, Malaya and Indochina, and the profits came home as the courtyard mansions the region is known for. That system contracted after 1929 and ended with the Japanese occupation of Burma in 1942.
शासक और सेनापति
The Sethupathi Guardian of the causeway प्रशासक 1605–1803 as a ruling office; a zamindari thereafter
The defining institution of this region and a policing contract before it was anything else. The holder was made responsible for the safety of pilgrims crossing the dry country to Rameswaram and was allowed to levy for the purpose; within three generations the office had acquired a fort, a revenue and a foreign policy. It was reduced to a zamindari by the Company in 1803.
राजवंश: An office granted in 1605, not an ancient kingship. राजधानी: Pogalur, later Ramanathapuram
Sadaikka Thevar Sethupathi संस्थापक from 1605
The first holder of the Sethupathi office, granted by Muthu Krishnappa Nayaka of Madurai in 1605.
राजवंश: Sethupathis of Ramnad. राजधानी: Pogalur
Kilavan (Raghunatha) Sethupathi Sethupathi शासक c. 1674–1710
Stopped remitting to Madurai, moved the seat to Ramanathapuram and fortified it, turning a Nayaka office into an independent chiefship. The palace complex at Ramanathapuram, with its painted Ramalinga Vilasam hall, dates from his line.
राजवंश: Sethupathis of Ramnad. राजधानी: Ramanathapuram
Raghunatha Raya Tondaiman Raja संस्थापक from c. 1680
Established the Pudukkottai chiefship on the north-western edge of the Marava country, at first under Ramnad. His successors allied with the Company early and Pudukkottai survived as the only princely state in the Tamil country.
राजवंश: Tondaimans of Pudukkottai. राजधानी: Pudukkottai
Muthu Vaduganathaperiya Udaiyathevar Chief of Sivaganga शासक to 1772
Held Sivaganga after the partition of the 1730s and was killed when Company forces attacked Kalaiyar Kovil in 1772.
राजवंश: Sivaganga line. राजधानी: Sivaganga
Rani Velu Nachiyar Rani, regent संरक्षक 1730–1796; held Sivaganga from 1780
Widow of the chief killed in 1772. She spent eight years in exile at Virupachi, returned in 1780 with the support of neighbouring chiefs and recovered Sivaganga, and governed it until her daughter succeeded her about 1790.
राजवंश: Sivaganga line. राजधानी: Sivaganga
Periya Maruthu (Vellai Maruthu) Commander सेनापति born 1748; died 1801
Commanded the Sivaganga forces under Velu Nachiyar and after her, and led its troops in the confederacy of 1801.
राजवंश: Sivaganga service. राजधानी: Sivaganga
Chinna Maruthu Minister of Sivaganga प्रशासक born 1753; died 1801
Administered Sivaganga on behalf of the ruling line from 1780, managing its revenue and its relations with neighbouring chiefs and with the Company, and endowed works at Kalaiyar Kovil and elsewhere.
राजवंश: Sivaganga service. राजधानी: Sivaganga