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Warrior

Puli Thevar

Palaiyakkarar of Nerkattumseval

fought 1755–1767 CE

Chief of Nerkattumseval in the Tirunelveli country, Puli Thevar refused to pay tribute to the Nawab of Arcot and his Company allies from 1755 and fought them for over a decade from his forts. Tamil Nadu remembers him as one of the first in the south to take the field against the Company.

01No tribute to Arcot

The palaiyakkarars were hereditary chiefs who held the southern country under the Nayaks of Madurai, each with a fort and a body of armed men. When the Nawab of Arcot claimed their tribute with Company help, many paid. Puli Thevar did not. In 1755 he faced the expedition of Colonel Alexander Heron and the Nawab’s brother Mahfuz Khan and held Nerkattumseval. He built a league of western palaiyakkarars against the Nawab and sought help from Mysore and the Dutch.

02Yusuf Khan and the last siege

The Company’s commandant Muhammad Yusuf Khan spent years reducing the western chiefs. Nerkattumseval and the fort of Vasudevanallur were besieged, and in 1761 Nerkattumseval fell. Puli Thevar escaped, and when Yusuf Khan himself later turned on the Company, Puli Thevar came back and retook his lands. In 1767 a Company force under Donald Campbell took his forts again. Puli Thevar slipped away, and the records lose sight of him after that. The ruins of his palace at Nerkattumseval and a memorial there are kept by the Tamil Nadu government.

Nayakas of Madurai
Dynasty · 1529–1736 CENayakas of MaduraiThe Nayakas of Madurai began as Vijayanagara governors in 1529 and ruled the far south for two centuries. Much of the Meenakshi temple as pilgrims see it today, its towering gopurams and pillared halls, was built in their time.Read →

Battles

Fall of Nerkattumseval

Puli Thevar of Nerkattumseval was among the first chiefs of the south to refuse tribute to the Nawab and his Company allies; his fort fell to Yusuf Khan’s guns in 1761.

1760–1761

Polygar Wars

The palaiyakkarars, hereditary chiefs of the far south, refused to pay tribute to the Company and fought it for six years, from the walls of Panchalankurichi to the hills of Kongu.

1799–1805

Places

NerkattumsevalRuined
Company rule and the war of 1857

Nerkattumseval

The seat of Puli Thevar, the palaiyakkarar who from 1755 refused tribute to the Nawab of Arcot and the East India Company and was among the first in the south to fight them. His mud-and-stone fort fell to Yusuf Khan’s guns in 1761.

Tirunelveli and the Nellaiappar TempleStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Tirunelveli and the Nellaiappar Temple

The old city on the Thamirabarani, centred on the twin temple of Nellaiappar and Kanthimathi. Its country was the ground of the palaiyakkarar wars of Puli Thevar and Kattabomman, and of the 1908 rising after VOC’s arrest.

VasudevanallurDestroyed
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Vasudevanallur

A town at the foot of the Western Ghats whose fort was one of Puli Thevar’s strongholds in his twelve-year war against the Nawab of Arcot and the Company. Little of the fort survives.