Madras Presidency History, 1908
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
History
The earliest inhabitants of Southern India of whom any traces now remain were the prehistoric builders of the cairns, barrows, kistvaens, and dolmens found in many Districts the makers of the rude stone weapons discovered in considerable quantities on the tops of the rocky hills of the Deccan ; and the authors of the more finished utensils and imple- ments now in course of excavation at the wonderful burial-grounds which have recently been discovered at Adichanallur and other places in Tinnevelly. Except that they may be declared to have passed from a Palaeolithic, through a Neolithic, to an Iron age, little is known or can be conjectured regarding these ancient peoples. Presumably they were of the stock named Dravidian, which is dis- tinguished from more northern ethnic families by its comparatively low stature, its dark skin, its high nasal index, and its use of the languages, so prominent in the Presidency, known as the Dravidian family.
The great gulf which yawns between them and the earliest historical data is vaguely bridged by legends and traditions, such as the story of Rama's expedition through the Deccan and across Adam's Bridge to Ceylon in quest of his vvife Sita (whom Ravana, the ten-headed king of that island, had carried off), or the many local purdnas which still remain in the keeping of the temple priests. Some of these legends have been held to refer to the great immigration of conquerors and settlers from Northern India which undoubtedly took place at an early period ; but they are scarcely serious history, and not until the Muhammadans appear upon the scene is the literature of the country of any real value to the annalist.
The gap is filled to some extent by the many inscriptions on stone which record gifts to temples, by grants of bygone dynasties engraved on copper, and by coins. The transcription and examination of these is now proceeding under expert supervision and in a systematic fashion, but the work has not yet proceeded far enough to enable any final account to be written of the early fortunes of the South of India.
The earliest historical evidence is that furnished by the edicts of the Buddhist emperor Asoka which have been discovered at Jaugada in Ganjam and at a village in Mysore close to the border of Bellary. These perhaps go to show that about 250 R.c. at least the northern half of the Presidency formed part of the Mauryan dominions.
The south of it was divided between the Pandvas of Madura, who governed the extreme south ; the Cholas, who held the country north and east of them ; and the Cheras (Keralas), who ruled the west coast. At some period subsequent to Asoka, the dynasty of the Pallavas of Conjeeveram rose into much prominence and extended its sway along the east coast as far north as Orissa.
In the north, Mauryans were succeeded by the Andhras. They were Buddhists, and by them were erected the splendid marble stupa at Amaravati and the other Buddhist buildings of which the ruins occur in Kistna and Guntur Districts. Their curious leaden coins are still found in some numbers in those parts.
About the fifth century after Christ the Chalukyas, who were immigrants from more northern parts, began to grow into importance in the Western Deccan. In the seventh century they divided into two branches, a Western and an Eastern. The latter conquered the Pallava kings of the Vengi country — the tract between the Kistna and Godavari rivers and south of Kalinga — and settled in that locality, while the former remained in its original home.
Alongside it, in the south-west of the Deccan and the north of Mysore, the Kadambas, whose capital was at Banavasi in North Kanara, now rose to power. They defeated the Pallavas of Con- jeeveram and continually harassed the Western Chalukyas.
The latter were also vigorously opposed by the Rashtrakiltas ot Malkhed in the present Nizam's Dominions, who eventually over- threw them and were supreme in the Western Deccan from about a.d. 750 to 950.
At the end of this period the Western Chalukyas once more rose to prominence and maintained their position until a.d. 1189, when they were finally overthrown by two of their own feudatories, the Yadavas of Deogiri (Daulatabad) and the Hoysalas of Dorasamudra, the modern Halebid in Mysore.
Meanwhile, in the south and the east, the Cholas of Tanjore were rapidly extending their boundaries. By 999 they acquired by conquest the whole of the coast possessions of the Eastern Chalukyas. They had already subverted both the Pallavas and the Pandyas, annexing the dominions of the former and controlling the destinies of the latter. These events form the first great landmark in the history of. Southern India. But the Chola expansion westwards was checked by the Hoysalas, and towards the end of the twelfth century their territory in the north was taken from them by the Ganpatis of Warangal (Orangal).
Thus at the end of the thirteenth century the three greatest dynasties in Southern India were the Hoysalas, the Cholas, and the Pandyas. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, a new power— the Musalmans of Delhi — appeared suddenly upon the scene. In 1303 the ruling king of the Khilji dynasty of Delhi sent his first expedition into the Deccan ; and seven years later, a date which makes the second landmark in the history of Southern India, the armies of his general, Malik Kafur, swept like a torrent down the peninsula. The Yadavas, Hoysalas, Ganpatis, Cholas, and Pandyas were in turn defeated and suppressed. Anarchy followed over the whole South — Musalman governors, representatives of the old ruling families, and local chiefs struggling for supremacy, until out of the confusion rose the kingdom of Vijayanagar, which from its capital at Hampi in Bellary District for the next two cen- turies and a half checked the southward expansion of Muhammadan power.
The rise of this dynasty was dramatically rapid. The several Hindu chieftains everywhere admitted its sovereignty, the more willingly in that the only alternative was a despotism of Musalmans ; and from chiefs its rulers quickly grew into kings, and from kings into emperors. Within a century and a half from the foundation of the capital at Vijayanagar, they governed the whole of the peninsula from the Kistna to Cape Comorin. The empire reached the height of its power under Krishna Deva (1509-30), the greatest of its monarchs, contemporary with Henry VHI of England.
The chief opponents of Vijayanagar had been the Sultans of the Bahmani dynasty, founded in 1347 by a rebellious subordinate of Delhi, whose capital was at Gulbarga in what is now the Nizam's Dominions. This line crumbled to pieces at the end of the fifteenth century and was followed by five separate Musalman kingdoms. For many years the mutual jealousies and animosities of these rendered it easy for the Vijayanagar kings to play off one of them against the other; but at length they combined, and in 1565 at the great battle of Talikota, the third historical landmark, they utterly defeated the Hindu forces and followed up their victory by razing the city of Vijayanagar to the ground and forcing its king to flee. The empire never recovered from the blow. One by one its local governors threw off their allegiance and established themselves as independent rulers; and Southern India passed through a second period of anarchy, during which all local power fell in many places into the hands of small chieftains called fiaiks or poligdrs, who usually harassed their subjects mercilessly.
The only governors of the fallen empire who established them- selves in any permanency were the Naiks of Madura, and the suzerainty of the rest of the country fell gradually into the hands of the Sultans of Bijapur and Golconda. The former marched upon the country directly south of the Tungabhadra river and the latter took a line farther to the eastward. By the middle of the seventeenth century the Bijapur Sultans had possessed themselves of most of the Carnatic which lay above the Ghats and of much territory below.
It was under this dynasty that the Marathas first came into promi- nence. Serving first as military vassals, they eventually, in 1646, revolted openly against them and under the famous Sivaji established their independence.
In 1686 Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor of Delhi, marched south to reduce Bijapur and Golconda, and to crush the growing power of the Marathas. He took Bijapur in that year and Golconda in the next, and the territories which had been won by these two king- doms from the Hindus thus became a portion of the Mughal empire. But with the Marathas he was less successful. He seized Sivaji's son, Sambhajl, and put him to death in 1689; but the power of the race increased rather than declined, and they levied tribute throughout the Deccan and in other parts of the South as well, and do not disappear from Madras history until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In 1724 Asaf Jah, the viceroy whom the Mughal emperor had appointed to govern his conquests in the South and who bore the title of Nizam-ul-mulk, threw off all real allegiance to his suzerain and made himself virtually independent. He and his successors are known in history as the Nizams or Siibahdars of the Deccan ; and their chief subordinate in the South was the Nawab of the Carnatic, otherwise called the Nawab of Arcot.
Meanwhile the Hindu kingdom of Mysore, which had arisen from small beginnings on the ruins of the Vijayanagar empire, had become more and more powerful, owing largely to the exploits of a soldier of fortune in its army named Haidar All. By methods which were none too scrupulous, he rapidly gained supreme authority in the kingdom, and in 1761 he usurped its throne and began with more energy than ever to extend its possessions.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, therefore, the native powers in the South which had to be reckoned with were the Musalmans under the Nizam, Mysore under Haidar All, and the Marathas. Meanwhile, however, various European powers had begun to establish a footing within its limits.
The Portuguese were the first nation to form a settlement here. By the beginning of the sixteenth century they had occupied Calicut and Goa on the west coast. Vasco da Gama, the pioneer of maritime adventure, had visited that part of the country as early as 1498. For a century they prospered ; but they were feebly supported at home after the union of Portugal with Spain, and eventually fell before the progress of the Dutch.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century the Dutch, who had long been powerful in the Eastern Archipelago, settled at Pulicat, Sadras, and other places along the east and west coasts. They rapidly ousted the Portuguese ; but their ideas were commercial rather than imperial, the remoteness of their head-quarters at Batavia hampered them, and they soon dropped out of the race.
Another European nation attracted by the wealth of the East was the French. Their original settlement had been in Madagascar. This they abandoned in 1672 in favour of Mauritius and Bourbon. Later they came on to India; and in 1674 Francois Martin founded and fortified the town of Pondicherrv, which has since been the French head-quarters in the peninsula. In 1741 the famous Dupleix suc- ceeded to the governorship of the place, and rendered it the one European settlement in the South which was capable of offering any real resistance to the English East India Company.
The earliest settlements of the English within the Presidency were at Nizampatam and Masulipatani, at which places Captain Hippon of the ship Globe landed in 161 1 and founded factories. Five years later, settlements were planted' on the west coast at Cranganur and Calicut by the permission of the Zamorin. In 1619 another settlement was effected at Pulicat, but the jealousies o!" the Dutch compelled its abandonment. In 1625, two years after the massacre of the English by the Dutch at Amboyna, the Company's agents at Bantam in Java dispatched a vessel to Armagon in the present Nellore District and set up a small trading establishment there.
In 1639, owing partly to the annoyances caused to the Company's officers at Masulipatani by the subordinates of the Sultan of Golconda, within whose territories that place lay, and partly to the desire to {)Ossess a factory nearer to the real centres of the weaving and dyeing industries of the country, Francis Day, the chief official at Armagon, sought for and obtained through a subordinate of the last represen- tative of the old Vijayanagar dynasty, who was then living at Chandra- girl in North Arcot, the grant of the land on which Fort St. George now stands. A small fort was at once erected, and two years later the place became the Company's head-quarters on the Coromandel coast. In 1653 Fort St. George was raised to the rank of a Presi- dency, independent of Bantam, and in 1658 the factories in Bengal were placed under its orders. In 1690 the Company purchased from the Marathas the land on which Fort St. David, near Cuddalorc, stands ; and at the end of the seventeenth century there were also English factories within the present limits of the Madras Presidency at Porto Novo, MadapoUam, Vizagapatam, Anjengo, Tellicherr)-, and Calicut.
Up to 1740 the Company's agents had managed to keep themselves clear of the wars between the various native governments which were going on around thein, and free from serious trouble with the other Europeans who had settlements in the South. But in 1741 the War of the Austrian Succession lit the first flame of a conflict between them and the French, which lasted until the capture of Pondicherry in 1 761, followed by the Peace of Paris in 1763.
The first notable event in this contest was the capture of Madras by I,a Bourdonnais in 1 746. Under the orders of Dupleix, who was then in command of the French possessions, the Governor and the chief merchants were taken prisoners to Pondicherry. Fort St. David then became for a time the Company's head-quarters in the South. Madras was, however, restored to the English under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749, and the Company set themselves vigorously to work to render it more defensible than it had been at the time of the French attack.
Peace being declared between the two nations, the forces which each of them had collected in the South engaged on opposite sides in the struggles between the native powers. Each espoused the cause of a different claimant for the Nawabship of the Carnatic, and each supported its own candidate for the office of Nizam of the Deccan. The stirring details of the severe conflicts which ensued fill many pages in the histories of the period, and concern themselves with the exploits of many Englishmen — Clive and Stringer Lawrence among the num- ber — whose names will ever be famous.
In 1757 news reached India that war had again broken out in Europe between England and France, and the forces of the two nations in the South were once more at each other's throats. The advantage at first lay with the French. They captured successively the English forts at Vizagapatam, Fort St. David, and Devikottai (which last had been granted to the Company by the Marathas of Tanjore), and in 1758 they besieged Madras. Here, however, tliey were unsuccessful and eventually withdrew : and meanwhile Colonel Forde, who had been dispatched by Clive from Bengal to the Northern Circars, had signally defeated them at Condore and captured Masuli- patam. This victory resulted in the cession to the Company of a considerable tract round about the latter town, which led eventually, after many vicissitudes, to the whole of the Northern Circars being granted to the British by the Mughal emperor in 1765. Parther south the struggle culminated in the batde of Wandiwash, in which Eyre Coote utterly routed the French under Tally. Gingee, Arcot, and other minor French strongholds fell in quick succession ; and in May, 1760, the English were in a position to attack Pondicherry itself. Lally called in the help of Haidar All of Mysore, but events in his own territory prevented the latter from taking any important part in the contest. Pondicherry surrendered in January, 1761. with the other French possessions, it was restored by the Peace of 'Paris in 1763 ; but the power of the French in Southern India was never again formidable, and it was thus in the Madras Presidency that the question was decided which of the European nations should be supreme in India.
We have now. reached the middle of the eighteenth century, when, as has been said, the native powers which had to be reckoned with were the Musalmans under the Xizam of the Deccan and the Nawab of the Carnatic, Mysore under Haidar All, and the Marathas. The only European force of any consequence was that of the English, and between these four the struggle for the possession of the peninsula now lay. The Nizam and the Marathas invited the English to assist them in clipping the wings of Haidar, who was encroaching upon their territories. Haidar, however, bought off both Musalmans and Ma- rathas, and then made a descent upon the English possessions in the Carnatic. Fighting followed on both coasts of the peninsula; but the operations were indecisive, and peace w^as eventually concluded in 1769 by a treaty based on a mutual restitution of conquests.
In 1780 broke out the next war with Haidar, who was again befriended by both the Musalmans and the Marathas. He descended upon the plains of the Carnatic in July of that year, burning crops and devastating villages, so that a cordon of blackened desert was formed all round the city of Madras, from Pulicat on the north to Pondicherry on the south and extending 50 miles inland.
Warren Hastings, then Governor-General of Bengal, dispatched Sir Eyre Coote to Madras with reinforcements. His ability soon caused the tide of fortune to turn ; but age had sapped his former energy, and it was not until after three years of severe fighting in every part of the peninsula that peace was at length made in 1784. As before, the basis of the treaty was a mutual restoration of conquests. Haidar All had died during the operations, in 1782, and was succeeded by his son, Tipu Sultan, a man in every way his inferior.
Six years later war once more ensued witli Mysore, Tipu having provoked hostilities by raiding the Native State of Travancore, which was in alliance with the British. Lord Cornwallis, the Governor- General, commanded the forces in the field in person, and this time the British were assisted by the Nizam and the Marathas. After two years' fighting, Seringapatam, the Mysore capital, was besieged ; and thereupon Tipu, in 1792, agreed to cede to the allies one-half of his territories, and to pay an indemnity of 3 crores and 30 lakhs of rupees. The British share of the territory thus ceded included the country round Dindigul and the Districts of Salem and Malabar.
Tipu then began intrigues to draw to his own side the allies of the British, and even sent an embassy to Mauritius to in\oke the aid of the French. Lord Mornington, now Governor-General, realized the danger to British supremacy in India which such action involved, and came south to deal with the situation. The Nizam again sent a con- tingent to join the British. Tipu, after a feeble resistance in the field, retired to Seringapatam. The fortress was stormed on May 4, 1799, and Tipil's body was found among the slain. A representative of the Hindu dynasty, whose rights had been usurped by Haidar in 1761, was placed upon the throne of Mysore proper, and the rest of Tipu's territories were divided between the allies. The share of the British included Kanara, Coimbatore, and the Wynaad.
In this same year, 1799, the Maratha Raja of the principality of Tanjore, in return for aid received in gaining the throne, executed a treaty resigning the administration of his kingdom to the Company in consideration of an annual payment. In 1800 the Nizam ceded to the Company, in return for a subsidiary force to be established in his dominions, all the territories he had acquired from Mysore at the partitions of 1792 and 1799. These tracts included the present Districts of Bellary, Anantapur, Cuddapah, and part of Kurnool, which are still known as the ' Ceded Districts.' ^V' hen Seringapatam fell in 1799 a treasonable correspondence had been discovered between Tipu and the Nawab of the Carnatic, who was nominally the ally of the Company. In consequence, after many negotiations, a treaty was concluded with the Nawab in 1801, under which he resigned the government of his country to the Company, but retained the titular dignity and received a considerable stipend. The existing representative of the family bears the title of Prince of Arcot and has the position of the first native nobleman of Madras.
The Company had thus obtained possession of the whole of the present Madras Presidency from Cape Comorin to the Northern Circars, except part of Kurnool District, the Danish settlement of Tranquebar, the existing French settlements at Pondicherry and other places, and the territories of the five Native States still in sub- ordination to the Madras Government, the history of which will be found in the separate articles regarding them.
In 1839 internal mismanagement and treasonable intrigue on the part of the Nawab of Kurnool led to the annexation of his country. Tranquebar was purchased from the Danes in 1845. In 1S62 the District of North Kanara was transferred to Bombay. Since then no alterations of importance in the limits of the Presidency have occurred.
The territories thus rapidly acquired at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries were in most cases reduced to order with little trouble. The poligdrs in the Ceded Districts had to be suppressed by an armed force, and the turbulence of those in the extreme south necessitated more than one regular campaign. In the Northern Circars the hill chiefs gave trouble as late as 1 836. The last occasion on which the employment of regular troops has been necessary was the rebellion in the Rampa hill-tracts of the Godavari Agency in 1S79.
After the palaeolithic and neolithic implements which have been discovered in scattered sites, the oldest objects of archaeological interest in the Presidency are the prehistoric barrows, cairns, kist- vaens, and dolmens found in almost all Districts, the first three of which frequently contain pottery, ashes, arms, implements, personal ornaments, &c. The chief remains of historic times consist (besides coins) of inscriptions, temples, and forts. During the last twenty years much has been done to survey, describe, and preserve these links with the past. In 1882 the first list of antiquities in the Presidency was published, and about the same time an Archaeological Survey in charge of a specialist was set on foot, while a few years later a Govern- ment Epigraphist was appointed. These two officers make annual reports of the results of their work, and also publish the more impor- tant of their discoveries in the Imperial Series of Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India, and in South Indian Inscriptions, the Epigraphia Indica, and elsewhere. The Epigraphist is syste- matically translating and publishing the countless inscriptions on the thousands of temples in the Presidency, and his work is doing much to illuminate the existing darkness of its early history. The Archaeological Survey embraces both prehistoric and historic remains. Such prehistoric antiquities as the Madras Museum contains, including the well-known collection made in the Nllgiris by Mr. Breeks, have been catalogued and described by Mr. Bruce Foote ; and lately some extensive burial-places have been discovered at Adichanallur in Tinnevelly, the extraordinary variety and richness of the finds made in which are referred to in the notice of that place.
The remains belonging to historic times are chiefly specimens of religious architecture and sculpture. The more important examples are specially conserved by Government. The oldest of them are the Buddhist antiquities, found mainly in the valley of the Kistna, the most remarkable of which is the stupa at Amaravati. A number of mounds believed to contain Buddhist remains have been protected from molestation by order of Government, pending an opportunity for their examination by experts. Next in age come the Pallava caves and structures, of which the most famous are those at the Seven Pagodas in Chingleput. Jain antiquities are frequent in South Kanara, the temples at Mudbidri and the colossal statues at Karkai^a and Yenijr being the best known. The Muhammadan architecture in the Presi- dency is of little interest Of Hindu styles, the Chalukyan and Orissan are occasionally found, the former chiefly in Bellary and the latter in Ganjam ; but the prevailing style is Dra vidian.
The golden age of this was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during which the best portions of the famous temples at Madura, Rameswaram, Tanjore, Conjeeveram, Srlrangam, Chidambaram, Tiruvannamalai, Vellore, and Vijayanagar were constructed. These buildings impress the imagina tion rather by the immense labour which has been devoted to the elaboration of the ornament in most untractable materials — monolithic groups of figures wrought in complete relief and with the highest finish in the hardest granite being common — than by the general effect of their component parts. Too often they seem to have been erected on no set plan, and frequently the outer courts are more striking than the inner shrines, though an inversion of these conditions would have pro- duced a greater impression. Characteristic points of the Dravidian style are its bracketed capitals, cornices with double flexure, flat ceil ings — the arch being never employed — and the tall, tapering towers which crown the entrances through the walls surrounding courts. Noteworthy examples of military architecture are the forts at Gingee, Vellore, Trichinopoly, Dindigul, and Gooty. The Archaeological Survey embraces the preparation of systematic descriptions, drawings, and photographs of the more notable of all these different classes of antiquities.
See also
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Madras Presidency History, 1908
