Nayaks of Gingee

Rulers of Gingee, India from 16th to 18th century CE

Gingee Nayak Kingdom
1509–1649
CapitalGingee Fort
Common languagesTamil, Telugu
GovernmentGovernors under the Vijayanagara Empire
Monarchy
King 
History 
• Established
1509
• Disestablished
1649
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Chola Empire
Vijayanagara Empire
Adil Shahi dynasty
British India
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History of Tamil Nadu
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The Nayaks of Gingee (Senji) were Telugu rulers of the Gingee principality of Tamil Nadu between 16th to 18th century CE.[1] The Gingee Nayaks had their origins in the Balija warrior clans of present-day Andhra Pradesh.[2] They were subordinates of the imperial Vijayanagara emperors, and were appointed as provincial governors by the Vijayanagar Emperor who divided the Tamil country into three Nayakships viz., Madurai, Tanjore and Gingee. Later, after the fall of the Vijayanagara's Tuluva dynasty, the Gingee rulers declared independence. While they ruled independently, they were sometimes at war with the Tanjore neighbors and the Vijayanagara overlords later based in Vellore and Chandragiri. Gingee ruler Surappa nayaka had a brother called Era Krishnappa Nayak whose son established himself in Karnataka and his family came to be known afterwards as the Belur Nayakas.[3]

The Nayaka Rulers clan

The Gingee Nayak line was established by Tubaki (aka Tupakula) Krishnappa Nayaka, the son of Koneri Nayaka and grandnephew of Achyutappa Nayaka. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Brennig provide the following details on Achyutappa Nayak:[4][5]

"...Achyutappa chetti, belonged to the Balija Chetti mercantile community, originally of Telugu extraction, but settled in the Tamil region as a part of the extensive migratory movement from the Andhra to the Tamil regions that began c.1350 and continued into our period. The family tree of Achyutappa – to the extent we are aware of it – was as follows: Siblings of Achyutappa: Achyutappa—Chinnana—Kesava—Brother(unknown)--Sister(unknown). Children of Kesava': Laksmana. Children of Achyutappa's Unknown Brother: Koneri—father of Krishnappa (the founder of Senji Nayaka kingdom)..

Some of the Nayakas in the Gingee line were:

  1. Tubaki Krishnappa Nayak (1509–1521)[6][page needed]
  2. Chennappa Nayaka
  3. Gangama Nayaka
  4. Venkata Krishnappa Nayaka
  5. Venkata Rama Bhupaala Nayaka
  6. Thriyambamka Krishnappa Nayaka
  7. Varadappa Nayaka
  8. Ramalinga Nayani vaaru
  9. Venkata Perumal Naidu
  10. Periya Ramabhadra Naidu
  11. Ramakrishnappa Naidu (- 1649)

Srinivasachari takes chronicles mentioned in copper plate grants into account and mentions the following nayakas in the Gingee line, noting governorship of Gingee began in Saka era 1386 / CE 1464:[7]

  1. 1490 - Vaiyappa Nayak
  2. 1490-1520 - Tubaki Krishnappa Nayaka (originally Bala / Vala Krishnappa who became Tubbaki / Dubakki / Dubala Krishnappa in local legends).
  3. 1520-1540 - Achyuta Vijaya Ramachandra Nayak
  4. 1540-1550 - Muthialu Nayak
  5. 1570-1600 - Venkatappa Nayak
  6. 1600-1620 - Varadappa Nayak
  7. Appa Nayak - up to Muslim conquest.

Territory

The Gingee Nayak kingdom when established covered most of Northern Tamil Nadu including the present day Chennai, Puducherry and vast areas of Nellore, Chittoor, Vellore and Chandragiri. Its Southern boundary extended up to Kollidam River which marked the boundary between the Tanjavur and Madurai kingdoms. Later, during mid 16th centuries, the Gingee Nayaks lost control of the Vellore Fort and its Northern provinces when their erstwhile Vijayanagara overlords under Aravidu Dynasty took possession of these places and re-established their later Kingdom.

Origins

Origins of Nayak rule

Gingee Nayaks had their origins in the Balija warrior clans of present-day Andhra Pradesh.[2] one of the Mackenzie Manuscripts mentions the Gingee ruler Venkatapati Nayaka belonged to the Kavarai community.[8] Kavarai is the Tamil name for Balijas who have settled in Tamil nadu.[9]

Historical time

In 1509, under the orders of Krishnadeva Raya, Vaiyappa Nayak led the Vijayanagar forces against the local chieftains of the Gingee area. Thereafter, Krishnadevaraya consolidated this area under one of his men, Tubakki (or Tupakula) Krishnappa Nayaka.

Krishnappa Nayaka established a heredity line of Nayak rulers who ruled Gingee from 1509 to 1648 AD. Krishnappa Nayaka reign lasted from 1507 to 1521.[10]

Krishnappa's rule

Krishnappa Nayak is said to be the founder of Gingee city. The earlier name of Gingee was Krishnapura. Krishnappa Nayak built the Singavaram Venkataramana and Venugopalaswami temples and other structures inside the Gingee Fort. Krishnappa was said be a native of Conjivaram (Kanchipuram) and kept a flower-garden dedicated to the God, Varadaraj Perumal.[11] The granaries of the Gingee Fort, the Kalyana Mahal and the thick walls enclosing the three hills of Gingee are attributed to Krishnappa Nayaka.[12] Although Gingee had been a fortified centre as early as 1240 CE, it was during the rule of Krishnappa that the present layout of the Garh Mahal (fort) was established.[13] Krishnappa is said to be the first Nayaka who converted a fort into an outstanding example of military architecture.[14] Krishnappa Nayaka's rule was fraught with wars against the Muslims. Raghunatha Nayaka of Tanjore is said to have secured the release of Krishnappa Nayaka from the Muhammedans with the sanction of the Vijayanagar emperor. A grateful Krishnappa reportedly gave away his daughter in marriage to the Tanjore king.[15]

Krishnappa's family

Krishnappa Nayaka came from a family of merchants. He was the grandnephew of Achyutappa Chetti who was a trader, a broker and a shipping merchant. Achyutappa's home-base was Devanampattinam of Cuddalore which he got fortified using his ties with the Nayakas and local militia leaders. Initially no more than a broker and an interpreter, by the 1620s Achyutappa's power as an independent merchant came to be on the rise, as was his standing in the elite politics of southern and central coromandel. He was aided by his brothers Chinanna, Kesava and an other unnamed brother. Achyutappa manoeuvered his quasi-diplomatic position by mediating in the internecine warfare of the 1620s between the poligar factions of Senji (Gingee) and Chingleput regions.

Achyutappa's quasi-diplomatic rise in status also emerged from his relations with the King of Arakan and Nayak of Madurai and even the Cochin ruler who used Achyutappa as an intermediary while attempting a rapprochement with the Dutch in the early 1630s. Acyutappa's main trade was shipping. He dominated the coromandel coast. Until 1634, the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) was almost completely dependent on Achyutappa and his relatives for the supply of rice to provision company factories. Together with Chinnana, Koneri, Kesava and Laksmana, Tubaki Krishnappa Nayak owned the Coromadel Shipping, with Royal Shipping as a partner. The Royal Shipping was owned by the rulers of Ayutthaya, Arakan and Kedah of Southeast Asia.[16]

However, Acyutappa's activities were diversified. By the 1620s, along with his brother Chinnana, Achyutappa had become increasingly involved in farming revenue in the territories of the Nayakas and the Chandragiri ruler.[17] When Acyutappa died in Mar 1634, the mantle of VOC's chief broker of Coromandel fell on his brother Chinanna.

Chinnanna lived an exorbitant lifestyle with 40 wives and innumerable children. Chinanna was politically more ambitious than his brother, Achyutappa, with a penchant for diplomacy and even direct participation as a field general in internecine warfare of the 1630s. However, his abrasiveness led him to fall out with his own brother Kesava and his nephews Seshadra and Laksmana. By early 1638, the family feud led Kesava and Lakshmana to persuade Tubaki Krisnappa to take Koneri as a prisoner. Koneri fled and sought refuge under Chinanna. However, when faced with the superior force of Tubaki Krishnappa, Chinanna surrendered.[18]

Descendants

Sankariah Naidu, Zamindar of Chennappa Naicken Palayam was a descendant of Tubaki Krishnappa Nayak, the ruler of the Gingee. He was born on 1754 to a Telugu-speaking Balija merchant family in Cuddalore, then a part of the South Arcot district of the Madras Presidency. His father, Komarappa Naidu, who was a trader and a shipping merchant.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^
    • Sonti Venkata Suryanarayana Rao, ed. (1999). Vignettes of Telugu Literature: A Concise History of Classical Telugu Literature. Jyeshtha Literary Trust. p. 55.
    • George Michell, ed. (1995). Architecture and Art of Southern India: Vijayanagara and the Successor States 1350-1750. Cambridge University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-521-44110-0.
    • Jennifer Howes, ed. (2003). The Courts of Pre-Colonial South India: Material Culture and Kingship. Routledge. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-135-78996-1.
  2. ^ a b
    • David Dean Shulman, Velcheru Narayana Rao, ed. (2020). Classical Telugu Poetry. University of California Press. p. 57. ISBN 9780520344525. ..... in the Tamil country, where Telugu Balija families had established local Nāyaka states (in Senji, Tanjavur, Madurai, and elsewhere) in the course of the sixteenth century.
    • Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2001). Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India. University of Michigan Press. p. 198. ISBN 9780472112166.
    • Joseph Jerome Brennig, ed. (1987). The Textile Trade of Seventeenth Century Northern Coromandel: A Study of a Pre-modern Asian Export Industry. University of Wisconsin-Madison. p. 65.
    • Muzaffar Alam, ed. (1998). The Mughal State, 1526-1750. Oxford University Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-19-563905-6. As an arrangement, the Golconda practice in the first half of the seventeenth century was quite similar in crucial respects to what obtained further south, in the territories of the Chandragiri ruler, and the Nayaks of Senji, Tanjavur and Madurai. Here too revenue-farming was common, and the ruling families were closely allied to an important semi-commercial, semi-warrior caste group, the Balija Naidus.
    • Indira Malapaka, ed. (2021). Telugu Inscriptions In Karnataka A Socio Cultural Study. Sri Venkateswara University. p. 96. The nayaks of Madurai, Tanjore and Ginjee belonged to the balija caste.
  3. ^ Noboru Karashima (2002). A Concordance of Nayakas: The Vijayanagar Inscriptions in South India. Oxford University Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780195658453.
  4. ^ Subrahmanyam, p. 304
  5. ^ Brennig, J. J. (2008). "Chief Merchants and the European Enclaves of Seventeenth-Century Coromandel". Modern Asian Studies. 11 (3): 321–340. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00014177. S2CID 145495867.
  6. ^ Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2001). Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472112166.
  7. ^ Srinivasachari, C.S., (1943). History Of Gingee And Its Rulers, p.78-84, 96, 121-122. Available from: https://factmuseum.com/pdf/south-india/pdf/History-of-Gingee-and-its-Rulers-By-C.S.Srinivasachari.pdf
  8. ^
    • C.S. Srinivasachari, ed. (1912). History of Gingee (PDF). Srinivasa Varadachari & Co, madras. p. 7, 8.
    • Siby K. George, P.G. Jung, ed. (2015). Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain. Springer. p. 239. ISBN 9788132226017.
    • T. V. Mahalingam, Colin Mackenzie, ed. (1972). Mackenzie Manuscripts; Summaries of the Historical Manuscripts in the Mackenzie Collection: Tamil and Malayalam. University of Madras. p. 78.
    • R. Umamaheshwari, ed. (2018). Reading History with the Tamil Jainas: A Study on Identity, Memory and Marginalisation. Springer. p. 216. ISBN 9788132237563.
  9. ^
    • Mukund, Kanakalatha (1999). The Trading World of the Tamil Merchant: Evolution of Merchant Capitalism in the Coromandel. Orient Blackswan. p. 46. ISBN 978-81-250-1661-8. Kavarai (the Tamil word for Balija merchants)
    • Brimnes, Niels (1999). Constructing the Colonial Encounter: Right and Left Hand Castes in Early Colonial South India. Psychology Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-7007-1106-2. The Kavarais were Tamilized Balija Chettis of Telugu origin, returned in the census as 'Wadugas' or 'Northerners'.
    • Christopher John Baker, D. A. Washbrook, ed. (1976). South India: Political Institutions and Political Change. 1880-1940. Springer. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-349-02746-0. Kavarai was merely the Tamil equivalent of the Telugu word Balija
    • Venkatesa Iyengar, ed. (1932). The Mysore Tribes and Castes. Mittal Publications. p. 102. In the Tamil Districts , Balijas are known as Kavarais
    • Kumari, A. Vijaya; Sepuri Bhaskar (1998). Social Change Among Balijas: Majority Community of Andhra Pradesh. M. D. Publications. p. 8. ISBN 978-81-7533-072-6. Kavarai is the name for Balijas ( Telugu Trading Caste ) , who have settled in Tamil Nadu
    • Ananda Ranga Pillai, ed. (1984). The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Dubash to Joseph François Dupleix, Governor of Pondicherry: A Record of Matters, Political, Historical, Social, and Personal, from 1736-1761. Vol. 2. Asian Educational Services. p. 67. The Kavarais, known also as Balijas, are the trading caste of the Telugus, and belong to the right hand.
    • SirCharles Fawcett, ed. (2017). The Travels of the Abbarrn India and the Near East, 1672 to 1674. Routledge. p. 595. ISBN 9781351539890. The name 'Gavarai' may be a misspelling of 'Kavarai', which is now the Tamil name for Balijas (a Telegu trading caste) settled in the Tamil country
  10. ^ Alf Hiltebeitel (1991) The cult of Draupadī. Motilal Banarsidass Publisher. ISBN 8120810007. p. 452
  11. ^ P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar (1982) South Indian shrines: Illustrated. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 8120601513. pp. 182–183.
  12. ^ Indian culture: Journal of the Indian Research Institute, Volume 10, p. 176
  13. ^ Fredrick W. Bunce (2006) Royal palaces, residences, and pavilions of India: 13th through 18th centuries: an iconographic consideration. D.K. Printworld. ISBN 8124603561. p. 74.
  14. ^ Architecture and art of southern India: Vijayanagara and the successor states, Volume 1, Issue 6, p.16.
  15. ^ V. Vriddhagirisan (1995) Nayaks of Tanjore. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 8120609964. p. 48.
  16. ^ Subrahmanyam, p. 301
  17. ^ Subrahmanyam, p. 303
  18. ^ Subrahmanyam, p. 309
  19. ^ Vuppuluri Lakshminarayana Sastri, ed. (1920). Encyclopaedia of the Madras Presidency and the Adjacent States. University of Minnesota. p. 453. The illustrious House of the great Komarappa Naidu of the South Arcot District traces its ancestry to Tupakula Krishnappa Naidu, the ruler of the Ginji Fort under the aegis of the now Forgotten Empire of Vijayanagar. This ruler of Ginji constructed many new temples and renovated the old and time-honoured temple of Tirukoilur. We find inscriptions bearing the name of Tupakula Krishnappa in several temples of the South Arcot District. Komarappa Naidu belonged to the Kshatriya Balija caste; and his caste- men, who had been warriors till the advent of the Muhammadans, took up trade as their profession thereafter. It can be seen from the existing records that as early as 1752 Komarappa Naidu was carrying on his trade, which mainly consisted in the export of Indian goods to foreign countries in his ships and the import of precious stones, horses, elephants and the products of other countries. He owned sixteen ships and in a few years he made enormous profits. He constructed the Komarappa Naickenpettai, a suburb of Tiruvendipuram in 1780 to attract weavers from other parts of the country. He rendered substantial pecuniary help to the weavers and thus enabled them to purchase the looms and other necessary appliances. The East India Company, which had just settled in India for carrying on trade between India and England, sought the help of the famous overseas merchant, Komarappa Naidu and established commercial relations with him which remained cordial throughout. Komarappa Naidu, who had been religiously disposed from his boyhood, left his entire business in the hands of his son Sankariah Naidu, shortly after the latter came of age and spent the remaining years of his life in religious study. It was during this, his age of retirement, that he built many new temples and gave a fresh lease of life to the old ones in the district. The pious Komarappa used to feed large numbers of Brahmins and pandits daily and more so on festive occasions. He breathed his last in peace in 1819 at the age of eighty-five. We find the image of Komarappa carved on the stone pillars in the Mantapams of the Tiruvendipuram and Tirupapuliyur temples. A monumental Shaivite temple has been erected over his remains in one of his gardens on the bank of the Gadilam river, in which Archana is daily performed. His wife, Mangammal, has renovated the shrine of Sri Dagaleswar Perumal at Tirukoilur, in a prominent part of which we find an inscription bearing her name. Sankariah Naidu, who was sixty-five years of age at the time of his father's demise, had already risen to prominence. He considerably improved the trade of the family, particularly that with the East India Company and constructed more ships. He acquired considerable landed property in the South Arcot, Chinglepet and Tanjore districts. In 1809 he purchased the small Zamindari of Chennappa Naiken Poliem, a few miles to the west of Cuddalore, which also includes the village of Naduvirapattu. To facilitate his export and import trade, he established ports at Cuddalore, Pondicherry, Porto-Novo and Karaikal. He had a big firm at Madras, on the grounds of which now stand the Madras Christian College, the Anderson Hall and the buildings of Messrs. Parry and Company. He constructed a number of choultries among which those at Chidambaram and Tirupapuliyur deserve special mention. Sankariah Naidu married two wives. He had one son, Devanayagam Naidu by his first wife and four sons by his second wife, Ramaswami, Chandrasekhara, Balakrishna and Chinna Devanayagam. Sankariah Naidu died in 1826.
  • Epigrāphiya Karnāṭaka (5,1): Hassan district 1: Hassan, Belur, Channarayapattana, Hole-Nasipur, Arkalgud, Manjavabad, Arsikere Taluks. Available from: http://idb.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/diglit/EC_05_1_1902/0929

Bibliography

  • Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2002). The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650 (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521892261.

Further reading

  • C. S. Srinivasachari, M. A., Professor of History, Annamalai University, History Of Gingee And Its Rulers (The University, 1943), ASIN: B0007JBT3G
  • Questioning Ramayanas – by Paula Richman
  • Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman. Classical Telugu poetry: an anthology, Page 63.
  • B. S. Baliga. Tamil Nadu district gazetteers, page 427.