Art. VII.—Account of the Province of Rámnád, Southern Peninsula of India. Compiled from the “Mackenzie Collection,” and edited by the Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society

Extract

This province, the government of which is now administered by the British, formed in ancient times the greater part of the principality, or fiefship, of the Sétu-pattis, the chiefs or guardians of the passage leading from the continent of India to the island of Ráméswara, and thence to the opposite coast of Ceylon, called Ráma's Bridge, or Adam's Bridge. These chieftains, dating their authority from the period of the establishment of a place of pilgrimage on the island of Ráméswara, by the Great Ráma, claim an antiquity even higher than that of the Pándyans, or kings of Madura, but to whom, it would appear, that they were, in general, tributary, though now and then asserting and maintaining their independence. Of their history, however, we are not now to speak, but of the province as it was in the year 1814, when the data were taken from which chiefly the following account is compiled. It lies between the ninth and tenth degrees of north latitude, and the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth of east longitude; is bounded on the north by the provinces of Tanjore and Pudukotta, on the south and east by the sea, and on the west by the districts of Tinnevelly, Madura, and Sivaganga; and comprehends an area of nearly two thousand five hundred square miles. Its general aspect is that of high and low lands, the latter having numerous artificial lakes, constructed for the purpose of promoting cultivation; the former exhibiting a variety of dry grain-fields, while the northern districts abound with extensive groves of Palmyra trees, with scarcely a vestige of jungle. The whole is divided into seventeen districts, comprising one thousand six hundred and sixtyeight towns and principal and subordinate villages, with a population, at the period to which we allude, of about one hundred and fifty-seven thousand.