01Rings of wall on a bare rock
Sankagiri rises steep out of the plain, and the fort follows the rock rather than fighting it. Several lines of rubble-and-granite wall climb the slope one inside the other, with gates, granaries, wells cut in the rock and small shrines inside the circuits. The site guarded the pass between the Kaveri valley and the Salem country. It changed hands with the powers of the south: the Nayaks under Vijayanagara, then the rulers of Mysore under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who kept a garrison here. After 1799, when Srirangapatna fell, the Company held it as a military post for the Kongu country.
02Aadi Perukku, 1805
Dheeran Chinnamalai of Kangeyam had fought the Company for six years from his fort at Odanilai, and he had joined the southern league of the Marudhu brothers. In 1805 he was taken, by the account kept in Kongu, through the betrayal of his own cook, and brought here with his brothers. On 31 July 1805, the day of Aadi Perukku, when Tamil families go down to the Kaveri to greet the rising river, they were hanged on the fort. Tamil Nadu marks the day each year, and the people of the Kongu country still climb Sankagiri to remember him.
The life of this place
- 1799 CEAfter the fall of Srirangapatna the fort passed from Mysore to the Company.
- 31 July 1805Dheeran Chinnamalai and his brothers were hanged at the fort.
Sankagiri town is about 40 km from Salem on the Salem–Erode road; the climb takes about an hour, best in the early morning.
