Indian Antiquary Vol 46

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 225

SEPTEMBER, 1917] THE HISTORY OF THE NAIK KINGDOM OF MADURA
213
His Tragic End.
The plan of the confederates was a well-devised one. The two chieftains bound themselves by a mutual agreement that, after the recovery of Râmnad from their adversary, the kingdom south of the Pámban was to be divided into five divisions, and that three of them were to go to Katta Têvan and the other two to Sasivarna. The Tanjore general Ananda Rao Peshwa, 73 was immediately after the fulfilment of his task to receive the territory north of the Pâmban. These arrangements completed, a Tanjore army soon found itself in 1729 within the territory of Râmnâḍ. Bhavani Sankara had not been unprepared. He marched to meet the allies, but in the battle at Orûr he was signally defeated and taken prisoner, and taken to Tanjore in irons.
The Partition of Ramnaḍ.
With the tragic end of Bhavani Sankara, the history of a united Râmnâd ends. Henceforward it became divided into two estates, one of which continued under the old name of Râmnâḍ and the other under that of Sivaganga. The head of the former continued to be styled the Sêtupati. The chiefs of the post-partition period were obscure chieftains as compared with the predecessor of Bhavâni Sankara, whose valour had defied, often with success, the armies of Tanjore, of Madura and Pudukkottai. With the loss of union power was lost, and the Sêtupati, once a rival to Tanjore and a terror to Pudukkottai, was from this time a Zemindar of minor status and worn out prestige. In fact, Râmnâḍ became less powerful than its child, Sivaganga; for the latter, though smaller in size, was more fertile by nature, and with the advance of time the sterility of the bigger province was not overcome, while the fertility of the smaller was improved.
It is thus a strange coincidence that Râmnâd, as a united power, was a power only so long as Madura was a united power under the Nâiks. For, within a decade of the partition of Râmnaḍ, the dynasty in Madura was, as we shall see presently, to fall, and both were to come under dominance of the Nawab of Arcot.
CHAPTER X.
Queen Minakshi (1731-1737) 74 and the Extinction of the Naik Raj.
On the death of Vijaya Ranga Chokkanâtha, the Puritan, his queen Minâkshi, a figure around whose name and career a good deal of pathetic and melancholy interest has gathered, assumed the duties of government. Wilks 75 says, on what authority I have not been able to discover, that Mînâkshi was the surviver of his three wives (the two others having committed sati)-an arrangement, he says, due to the dying king's communication to his confidential minister that his eldest queen should succeed him to the government.
7 He was the minister of the Tanjore kings, from 1686 to 1736,-the Anandarayamakhin of literary fame. An inscription of Köttür (463 of 1912), of year Subhakrit says that he gave a grant to the local temple. Madr. Ep. Rep.. 1913, p. 130.
7 The date of her accession is, as usual, different in different chronicles. According to the Carna. Gours, she came in S. 1644, Virodhikrit (1732); to the Pand. Chron. in Virodhikrit Maki: but according to the Telugu Chron., in 1669. The last is of course wrong. Calicavi Rayan's Account gives Mangammal in place of Minakshi and attributes 5 years. This is, of course, wrong. For epigraphical evidence we have a grant (in Telugu) of land for a charity in Trichinopoly in 1732 (K. 4833, Pramadicha) and another at Samayavaram in 1733. In both Viravenkatadeva of Ghânagiri is said to be suzerain.
75 Wilks I. p. 155. Wilks' account of the circumstances of the Muhammadan advent is very meagre and dismissed in a page. It is necessarily very deficient and inadequate.