हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Kayathar

The village where the palayakkarar Veerapandiya Kattabomman of Panchalankurichi was hanged by the Company on 16 October 1799, in front of the chiefs of the district who had been summoned to watch.

Built: Old village on the Tirunelveli road; memorial to KattabommanWhere: Tamil Nadu (Thoothukudi district)8.95° N, 77.77° E
  1. September 1799
  2. 16 October 1799
  3. 1801
Photo: AnonymousUnknown author · Public domain

01The tamarind tree

Kattabomman had refused to pay the Company the tribute that the Nawab of Arcot had made over to it, and in September 1799 Major Bannerman stormed Panchalankurichi. Kattabomman escaped north, was taken in the Pudukkottai country and handed over. Bannerman brought him to Kayathar, called the neighbouring palayakkarars together, held a short hearing and had him hanged from a tamarind tree on 16 October 1799. The chiefs were meant to go home afraid. In the Tamil country the opposite happened: the ballads of Kattabomman were sung in every village of the south.

02Remembered

Kayathar today is a small town on the highway between Tirunelveli and Kovilpatti, ringed by wind turbines. A memorial marks the place of the hanging, and the Tamil Nadu government keeps a memorial fort at Panchalankurichi, to the east, built on the site of the fort the Company razed. Kattabomman’s brother Oomaithurai fought on with the Marudhu brothers of Sivaganga until 1801.

The life of this place

  1. September 1799Bannerman takes Panchalankurichi; Kattabomman escapes.
  2. 16 October 1799Kattabomman is hanged at Kayathar.
  3. 1801The southern rising led by Oomaithurai and the Marudhu brothers is crushed.

People

Veerapandiya KattabommanWarrior
1760–1799 CE

Veerapandiya Kattabomman

Palaiyakkarar of Panchalankurichi, hanged at Kayathar

Nearby

Nellaiappar–Kanthimathi Temple, TirunelveliStanding
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Nellaiappar–Kanthimathi Temple, Tirunelveli

A twin temple of Shiva and Devi covering about 14 acres in the heart of Tirunelveli, famous for its musical stone pillars and for the Tamra Sabha, the copper hall, one of the five halls where Nataraja dances.

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.

PanchalankurichiRebuilt
Company rule and the war of 1857

Panchalankurichi

The seat of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, whose mud fort threw back the Company’s storming party in 1799. The British razed it twice; the Tamil Nadu government built a memorial fort on the site in 1974.

EttayapuramStanding
Company rule and the war of 1857

Ettayapuram

A small palace town of the black-cotton country where Muthuswami Dikshitar spent his last years and died on Deepavali 1835, and where Subramania Bharati was born in 1882. Its chiefs also sided with the Company against Kattabomman, which Tamil memory has not forgotten.