South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13.s1.74

c13.s1.74

13. *Kānappēr*.—The modern name of this place is Kaḷaiyār-kovil. It figures with the former name both in classical Tamil literature and in the campaigns of the Ceylonese general. Kānappēr was a remarkable fortress in the days of the early Tamil classics and had for its chief the invincible Vēngai Mārban (the man of the tiger-breast or preferably of the Margossa garland, possibly a totemic symbol). He was overthrown by the Pāṇḍyan Ugrapperuvaḷudi. It contains a Śiva temple of which the structure is rather modern and seems to have been more or less completely renewed in the days of the usurper chieftain Chinna Marudu of Ramnad. In the old days the place seems to have been surrounded by dense forests and might have belonged to the division which was called Kāna Nāḍu (forest-country) including within it a considerable part of what is now Ramnad district and the southern portion of Pudukoṭṭa. The Chetty townlet of Kānāḍukāttan seem to be a place where a frontier guard was located. This Kānappēr figured several times in the campaigns of the Ceylonese general in the war of the Pāṇḍya succession, and was reputed a fortress of very great strength though there is now no vestige of it. This bit of forest country seems to have been marked off into forests of various trees of which the country round Kānappēr, for a radius of seven or eight miles, was a forest of Jyōti or Jyōtishmatī trees (Cardiospermum halicacabum). The bit of country immediately south of it is described as a forest of Margossa. Reasons have been given in the text for regarding this place as the Jyōtishkuḍi to which the Vaishṇava fugitives of Śrīrangam retired when the second sack of the temple took place. It is reachable from Dēvakoṭṭa or Śivaganga, and even from Tiruppattūr. A road south connects it with the railway station Paramaguḍi.