Kongu Nadu · Deccan Inland Plateau
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.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
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.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 5th century BCE onward | Kodumanal on the Noyyal is occupied as a manufacturing settlement — iron and steel furnaces, bead and gemstone workshops, and pottery inscribed in Tamil-Brahmi. |
| c. 1st–4th century CE | Karur, on the Amaravati, functions as a Chera seat; Roman-period coins and amphora fragments have been recovered from the riverbed there. |
| c. 150 CE | Ptolemy records an inland trading town in this country; the route through the gap links the two coasts of the peninsula. |
| 7th century | Pandya pressure under Arikesari Maravarman reaches the Kongu country; Rashtrakuta and Western Ganga authority is also felt from the north. |
| 9th century | Aditya I brings the Kongu country under Chola control, and Rajaraja I completes the annexation by the late tenth century. |
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.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 11th–13th century | A semi-autonomous Kongu Chola line governs from Karur and Dharapuram; the country is administered as twenty-four nadus. |
| 13th century | Pandya and then Hoysala authority is exercised over the uplands as Chola power recedes. |
| 14th century | Delhi Sultanate and Madurai Sultanate authority passes over the region; from the 1370s it is held by Vijayanagara. |
| 1550s | The Madurai Nayakas extend the palayam system here; the country is divided into twenty-four palayams held on military tenure. |
| 1760s–1780s | The Kongu uplands are absorbed into Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan; Coimbatore, Dharapuram and Sathyamangalam are fortified and repeatedly contested. |
| 1792 | The Treaty of Seringapatam transfers Coimbatore and Dindigul from Mysore to the East India Company. |
| 1799 | After the fall of Srirangapatna the whole Kongu country is annexed to the Madras Presidency. |
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.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1799 | The Kongu country is annexed to the Madras Presidency after the fall of Srirangapatna. |
| 1801–1805 | Dheeran Chinnamalai, holding Odanilai near Erode, resists Company authority in the western uplands; he was hanged at Sankagiri fort in 1805, the date given variously as 31 July and 2 August. |
| 24 November 1804 | Coimbatore district is constituted, with Coimbatore as its headquarters. |
| 1861 | The railway reaches Coimbatore, connecting the plateau to Madras and, through the gap, to the west coast. |
| 1925 | E. V. Ramasamy leaves the Congress after its Kanchipuram conference and founds the Self-Respect movement at Erode; the journal Kudi Arasu begins publication the same year. |
| February 1929 | The first provincial Self-Respect conference is held at Chengalpattu; the movement's programme of self-respect marriages, widow remarriage and the removal of caste disability is set out. |
| 11 January 1932 | A procession in defiance of the ban on the nationalist flag is broken up on the banks of the Noyyal at Tiruppur; Kumaran, who was carrying the flag, died of his injuries. |
| October 1932 | The first unit of the Pykara hydro-electric scheme is commissioned; grid power reaches the plateau and the spinning industry expands through the 1930s. |
Rulers and commanders
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.
Dynasty: Cheras of Karuvur. Seat: Karur (Karuvur)
Brought the Kongu country under Chola control in the ninth century, beginning the administrative order — the nadu — that outlasted every dynasty here.
Dynasty: Imperial Cholas. Seat: Thanjavur
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.
Dynasty: An administrative order, not a dynasty. Seat: Across the Kongu uplands
Governed the uplands with enough autonomy to issue inscriptions in their own regnal years, which is how the line is known at all.
Dynasty: Kongu Cholas. Seat: Karur and Dharapuram
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.
Dynasty: An office, not a dynasty. Seat: Twenty-four palayams across the uplands
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.
Dynasty: Mysore. Seat: Srirangapatna
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.
Dynasty: Mysore. Seat: Srirangapatna
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.
Dynasty: Kongu palayam holder. Seat: Odanilai, near Erode
The history of Kongu Nadu from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)