Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 61
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
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SEPTEMBER, 1932 ] NOTE ON THE CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE WYNAD
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The total area of the Wynad is about 1,100 sq.m., of which 821 sq.m. lie in the administrative district of Malabar, the remainder in that of the Nilgiris (Gadalûr Taluk). Even the standardizing influence of British rule has failed to merge the Wynad in the routine of normal district administration, or to obliterate the cleavage between the northern and southern halves. Till quite recently the Malabar Wynad remained a separate revenue division, with a divisional officer all to itself, and with a tahsildar at Manantoddy for the northern half, and a deputy tahsildar at Vayattiri for the southern half. The divisional officer has now been abolished, and the Wynad division is split in two, and tacked on to the adjoining coastal divisions ; hereafter the northern half is to be administered from distant Tellicherry, and the southern half from almost as distant Calicut.
The population of the Wynad in 1911 was a little over 100,000; a density of about 101 per sq.m. for the Malabar portion and 83 for Gîdalur; miserable figures, if contrasted with those of the plains (e.g., Calicut Taluk, 715; Coimbatore Taluk, 504) or the Mysore Basin (Mysore Taluk, 426), but very similar to those of contiguous areas in the Ghát Zone. (Kiggat Nåd in Coorg, 91 ; Ootacamund on the Nilgiris, 92 ; Heggadadêvankote in Mysore, 103.)
From Malabar the Western Wynad is accessible through gaps in the fringing range; the northern half is now linked by a metalled road with N. Malabar, via the Periya Pass, the southern half with S. Malabar via the Tamarasgêri Pass. The Tâmarangêri route is an old thoroughfare, but the Periya Ghat, which was constructed by the British in the interests of their port of Tellicherry, has superseded not only the old Smugglers' Pass, which led via Manattana into the heart of the Kottayam territory, but also the still important route from Korot to Kuttiyadi, whence access can be had by river to the older port of Badagara.
With Mysore the northern half of the Western Wynad is connected by a road which follows the N. bank of the Kabbani, the southern half by a road through Sultan's Battery and Gundlupet Metalled roads also link the Western Wynad with Coorg, and the Eastern Wynad with S. Malabar (Karkkûr Ghat, via Nilambůr) and the Nilgiris (Gudalúr and Sigûr Ghâts). II. History.
Of the early history of the Wynad little is known. Rice equates the name with "Bayal Nad," a term applied by the Hoysala hill-chiefs to the southern limits of their territory in the eleventh century, before they had, by the expulsion of the Tamil Cholas, made themselves masters of the Mysore basin. But the inscriptiongs do not define "Bayal Nad" with precision; Rice adduces no evidence to prove its identity with the Wynad, and elsewhere he himself locates it in the adjoining taluk of Heggadadêvankote. Moreover the term bayal, which connotos "open champaign country” is hardly applicable to the forest-stricken Wynad, and the term "Wynad " is in local usage restricted to a very limited portion of the Plateau.
A few inscriptions exist, mostly unread, or unreadable, or unintelligible or unimportant. But there is one gleam of light.
At Tirunelli is one of those ancient out-of-the-way pilgrim resorts with which India is dotted from the Himalayas almost to Cape Comorin. In the Tirunelli temple are preserved
3 Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions, p. 98. + Mysore, 1897, II, 331-2.
6 See Mr. Gopalan Nair's Wynad, Its Peoples and Traditions, pp. 7-8, where an alternative etymology ("forest tract") is suggested.
& According to Mr. Nair (op. cit., p. 20), the Wynad proper is restricted to the four amarıms ("townshipe) which cover approximately the N.E. quadrant of the Western Wynad. Mr. Cammiade writes "I know for a fact that the name Wynad was somewhere about the middle of the last century applied only to the central part of the area now known by that name. It was the most open, and, until coffee and teo came in, by far the most important part of the country." He points out, further, that the curious blunders committed in the Treaties of 1792 and 1799 referred to below would not have been made if the name Wynud had then the territorial significance now attached to it.
