Malnad · Deccan Inland Plateau
Malnad's periods are cut by the mountain, not by Delhi. Its ancient period belongs to the Banavasi province of the Kadambas and then to their Chalukya and Rashtrakuta overlords, and its medieval period is the long Kalyani Chalukya and Hoysala stretch in which the hill towns — Balligavi, Sosevur, Belur, Halebidu — were centres of learning and temple building rather than of power. The modern period begins in 1565, and for a reason peculiar to the hills. When Vijayanagara authority collapsed after Talikota, two ghat dynasties that had been feudatories became sovereign in its place: the Keladi Nayakas in the north and the Haleri line in Kodagu. For two centuries the rain country was governed by rulers who lived in it, which had never been true before and was never true again after 1763 and 1834. Kodagu was administered separately from every neighbouring district right through to 1947, which is why its calendar, its tenure and its language stayed intact.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The northern half of the region lay inside the Banavasi province of the Kadambas, the first dynasty to use Kannada in administration, and passed with it to the Badami Chalukyas and then to the Rashtrakutas. What the period leaves on the ground is not fortification but endowment. Balligavi, in the Shikaripura uplands, is first named in an inscription of 685 and grew into a town of mathas and agraharas that served Jain, Shaiva, Vaishnava and Buddhist teachers at the same time. The Sringeri matha's own tradition places its founding by Adi Shankara in the eighth century, but its documented history begins only in the fourteenth, and the gap between the two is tradition rather than record.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 345 | The Kadambas establish themselves at Banavasi; the ghat taluks of the present Shivamogga district lie inside their province. |
| c. 540 | The Badami Chalukyas absorb the Kadamba kingdom and the hill country with it. |
| 685 | The earliest inscription naming Balligavi is issued, in the Badami Chalukya period. |
| 753–973 | Rashtrakuta overlordship from Manyakheta; the hill towns continue as endowment centres rather than as seats of power. |
| 8th century, by tradition | Tradition assigns the founding of the Sringeri matha to Adi Shankara. Its continuous documented history begins only in the fourteenth century. |
Under the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani, Balligavi worked as something close to a university — six mathas, several vidyapithas, seven brahmapuris and more than fifty temples in one hill town — and its Kedareshvara temple is the earliest surviving example of the transitional manner that the Hoysalas afterwards perfected. The Hoysalas themselves began here, at Sosevur, identified with Angadi in the Mudigere taluk, before moving down to the drier maidan lip at Belur and Halebidu. The soft chloritic schist of the ghat edge is the practical reason their carving goes finer than stone carving usually goes; it cuts like wood and hardens on exposure. After the Hoysalas fell in 1343 the hills passed to Vijayanagara, and in 1499 a chief at Keladi took a grant from that empire that his successors would turn into a kingdom.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 10th–12th centuries | Balligavi flourishes under the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani as a centre of learning with mathas of four different traditions; its Kedareshvara temple is built in the eleventh century. |
| c. 1026–1048 | Sosevur, identified with Angadi in Mudigere taluk, is the Hoysala seat before the capital moves to Belur and then Dwarasamudra. |
| 1117 | The Chennakeshava temple at Belur is consecrated under Vishnuvardhana; the Hoysaleswara at Halebidu follows from about 1121. |
| 1343 | Veera Ballala III is killed at Madurai and Hoysala rule ends; the hill country passes to Vijayanagara. |
| 1336–1338 | The Vidyashankara temple is built at Sringeri. Tradition connects Vidyaranya of Sringeri with the founding of Vijayanagara; he became the matha's twelfth acharya in 1375, and the foundation story is tradition rather than record. |
| 1499 | Chaudappa Nayaka establishes the Keladi line as a Vijayanagara feudatory in the Shivamogga uplands. |
Talikota made the hill feudatories sovereign. The Keladi Nayakas moved their seat from Keladi to Ikkeri and then to the defensible basin at Bidanur, ran the pepper and rice trade with the Portuguese, Dutch and English on their own terms for two centuries, and under Shivappa Nayaka carried out a field-by-field revenue survey — the shistu — that British collectors were still praising two hundred years later. In Kodagu the Haleri line, by Lewis Rice's reading a branch of the same Ikkeri family, fortified Mercara in 1681 and held the high basin. Both were ended from outside: Bidanur fell to Hyder Ali in 1763, and Kodagu was annexed by the East India Company in 1834 after the Coorg War. What followed in the hills was not industry but plantation — coffee on the Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu slopes, worked from estates and cultivated systematically under the British administration, on hills where by tradition Baba Budan had planted the first seeds around 1670.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1565 | After Talikota the Keladi Nayakas rule as an independent kingdom; the capital moves from Keladi to Ikkeri and later to Bidanur. |
| 1618–19 | Hiriya Venkatappa Nayaka defeats Portuguese forces on the coast and extends Keladi authority along the shore. |
| 1645–1660 | Shivappa Nayaka brings the kingdom to its greatest extent and imposes the shistu land-revenue survey. |
| 1681 | Muddu Raja of the Haleri line fortifies Mercara, now Madikeri, and builds a palace there. |
| 1689–1690 | Keladi Chennamma shelters the Maratha ruler Rajaram at Bidanur; a Mughal force under Kasim Khan besieges the capital and withdraws, and a treaty recognising Keladi's autonomy follows in 1690. |
| 1763 | Hyder Ali takes Bidanur, ending 264 years of Keladi rule; the town is renamed Hydernagar. |
| 1783 | Bidanur is taken by a Bombay force under General Richard Matthews and retaken by Tipu Sultan; the garrison capitulated and Matthews died in confinement. |
| 26 October 1790 | The raja of Kodagu is restored and the kingdom becomes a protectorate of the East India Company. |
| 1834 | The Coorg War ends with the deposition of Chikka Virarajendra and the annexation of Kodagu, administered thereafter as the province of Coorg. |
| 1834 onward | Systematic coffee planting spreads on the Kodagu and Chikkamagaluru slopes and becomes the economy of both districts. |
Rulers and commanders
Took Talakad from the Cholas in 1116 and consecrated the Chennakeshava temple at Belur in 1117. The Hoysala carving manner, worked in the soft schist of the ghat edge, takes its lasting form in his reign and is the reason two small towns in western Hassan carry the region's reputation.
Dynasty: Hoysala. Seat: Belur, then Dwarasamudra
Founded the line as a Vijayanagara feudatory in the Shivamogga uplands. A grant to a local chief in 1499 becomes, after 1565, a kingdom that outlasts the empire that made it by two hundred years.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Keladi
Moved the capital from Keladi to Ikkeri and campaigned for Vijayanagara, carrying Keladi authority down the ghats into the Canara coast by about 1554. The pepper and rice trade that funded the dynasty follows from that reach to the ports.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Ikkeri
Brought the kingdom to its greatest extent and, more lastingly, imposed the shistu — a field-level assessment of land by quality and crop. It is the reason a hill kingdom with almost no cash economy could tax an areca garden accurately, and British collectors cited it into the nineteenth century.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Bidanur
Ruled for twenty-five years after her husband's death. She sheltered the Maratha ruler Rajaram at Bidanur in 1689 and withstood the Mughal force sent after him, concluding a treaty in 1690 that recognised Keladi's autonomy. She held the pepper monopoly, signed the Treaty of Barkur with the Portuguese in 1678, and granted revenue-free land to institutions of several faiths.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Bidanur
The last of the Keladi line, holding the kingdom in the name of an adopted heir. Bidanur fell to Hyder Ali in 1763 and the Malnad kingdoms passed into the Mysore state.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Bidanur
Moved the seat from Haleri and fortified Mercara — Madikeri — in 1681, building the palace there. The Haleri rajas are, on Lewis Rice's reading, an offshoot of the Ikkeri Nayaka family, which is why the two hill kingdoms look so alike in their institutions.
Dynasty: Haleri line of Kodagu. Seat: Haleri, then Mercara
The last raja of Kodagu, deposed by the East India Company in 1834 at the close of the Coorg War. His removal, rather than any tax measure, is what set off the rising of 1837 in the country below the ghats.
Dynasty: Haleri line of Kodagu. Seat: Madikeri
The history of Malnad from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)