4 - Pudukkottai and the old regime: gift, order, and authority in a south Indian little kingdom

Summary

Mise en scène

The Tondaiman kings of Pudukkottai were ranked as the third highest of the Tamil kings among the “seventy-five” who participated in the protection of the Madurai fort under the rule of Tirumalai Nayakar in the mid seventeenth century (Taylor 1835). Together with the Rajas of Ramanatapuram and Civakankai, the Tondaimans of Pudukkottai were part of the kumaravarkkam, the group of sons, the elite corps of the Nayaka's supporters. According to all accounts, the Tondaimans were among the most important of the Tamil little kings from the late seventeenth through the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, Pudukkottai, which had played a crucial role in the political and military fortunes of the East India Company, had not merely survived the turmoil of the last years unscathed, but had achieved an even more distinguished status. It became the only Princely State in the Tamil region of Madras Presidency under British rule.

Pudukkottai means “new fort” and seems to refer to a fort that was built in the early eighteenth century in what became the capital town of the little kingdom. It did not have fixed geographical boundaries, but was the area over which the Tondaiman kings had political control at any given time. Until the end of the eighteenth century the region was simply called the “Tondiman's country” (see Orme 1803). The general area over which this political control was exercised was the historically and geographically crucial interstitial area between the traditional domains of Pantiya and Cola authority.