Kangeyam

01Beryl, bulls and Sivanmalai

The country around Kangeyam is high, dry and rain-fed, but it has been worked for a very long time. Near the town lie old beryl mines from which the green stone went west to the Roman world, and hoards of Roman coins have been found in the area. Its farmers bred the Kangayam, a compact grey bull of great strength used for ploughing and pulling carts, now protected as a native breed. Four kilometres away the hill of Sivanmalai carries a temple of Murugan, and Kongu tradition holds Kangeyam itself to have been a seat of the region’s chiefs in early times. Today it is a busy town of rice mills and coconut oil.

02Dheeran Chinnamalai

Theerthagiri, of a landholding Kongu family, was born at Melapalayam near Kangeyam in 1756. The story told in the Kongu country is that he once seized the tax money Tipu Sultan’s collectors were carrying away and sent them on with the message that Chinnamalai, the one between Chennimalai and Sivanmalai, had taken it; the name stayed with him. After Tipu’s fall in 1799 he turned on the Company, built a fort at Odanilai and fought several actions in the Kongu country between 1800 and 1805. He was finally taken through treachery and hanged at Sankagiri fort on 31 July 1805. A memorial to him stands at Odanilai, and Tamil Nadu keeps his day each year.

The life of this place