Kings of Travancore

01Marthanda Varma

Marthanda Varma came to the throne of Venad in 1729 and broke the power of the Ettuveetil Pillamar, the nobles who had defied the kings for generations. He absorbed the small chiefdoms to the north one by one. At Kolachel in 1741 his army defeated the Dutch East India Company, and its captain Eustachius De Lannoy entered his service and trained the Travancore army. In January 1750, in the Thrippadidanam, he laid his sword on the steps before Shri Padmanabha and gave the kingdom to the deity.

02Dharma Raja to Swathi Thirunal

Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma, called Dharma Raja, moved the capital to Thiruvananthapuram and opened his borders to Hindus fleeing Tipu Sultan’s invasion of Malabar in the 1780s. Tipu’s attack on the Travancore lines in 1789 brought on the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Under the young Balarama Varma, the dalawa Velu Thampi rose against the Company in 1809 and died rather than surrender. Swathi Thirunal, from 1829 to 1846, composed hundreds of songs in Sanskrit, Malayalam and other tongues and opened the first English school and an observatory at Thiruvananthapuram.

Place · Ancient shrine at the meeting of three seasKanyakumari Bhagavathy Amman TempleAt the southern tip of Bharat, where the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal meet, the Devi stands as a maiden still waiting for Shiva. Vivekananda meditated on the rock offshore in 1892.Read →

03The Temple Entry Proclamation

On 12 November 1936, his birthday, Maharaja Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma issued the Temple Entry Proclamation, opening every temple under the Travancore government to all Hindus by birth or faith, whatever their caste. It came after the Vaikom and Guruvayur satyagrahas and was hailed across Bharat. Chithira Thirunal also founded the University of Travancore in 1937. In 1949 Travancore joined Cochin to form a single state, and he became its Rajpramukh. The Padmanabhaswamy temple remains in the care of the royal family.

The rulers

1. 1Anizham Thirunal Marthanda VarmaFounder; Kolachel; Thrippadidanam, 17501729–1758
2. 2Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma (Dharma Raja)Capital to Thiruvananthapuram; sheltered refugees1758–1798
3. 3Balarama Varma IVelu Thampi’s revolt, 18091798–1810
4. 4Gowri Lakshmi BayiRuling queen1810–1815
5. 5Gowri Parvathi Bayi (regent)1815–1829
6. 6Swathi Thirunal Rama VarmaComposer; observatory and English school1829–1846
7. 7Uthram Thirunal Marthanda Varma1846–1860
8. 8Ayilyam Thirunal Rama Varma1860–1880
9. 9Visakham Thirunal Rama Varma1880–1885
10. 10Moolam Thirunal Rama Varma1885–1924
11. 11Sethu Lakshmi Bayi (regent)1924–1931
12. 12Chithira Thirunal Balarama VarmaTemple Entry Proclamation, 19361931–1949

What they left

• The Thrippadidanam: the kingdom given to Shri Padmanabha (1750)
• Padmanabhapuram Palace, a wooden palace of the old capital
• Swathi Thirunal’s kritis, still sung in concerts
• The Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936