Madurai

“ The author of the Chilappathikaram states that the revenue of the towns of Thankâl and Viyalur were once assigned by a Pandyan king to the temple of the goddess at Madura. [64] Modoura—The royal city Of the Pandyan is old Madura which is six miles south-east of the modern town of Madura.
North of the Pandyan kingdom lay the country of the Vedduvar or Vedar [65] (the Batoi of Ptolemy) , which was also known as Panri-Nadu or “the land of pigs“ — the capital of this province was Nâgai or Nâga-paddinam. Very little is known of this town from Tamil poems of this period. ”

“ THE GREAT GOPURA MADURA TEMPLE
flat-roofed city with the great gopuras, or temple gateways, standing like so many Gibraltars in its midst. These gopuras loom and dwindle away toward the sky in such a way as to make all things seem toys, and the people pygmies. One such monument would be architectural fame for any city, but Madura's rich shrine is protected by nine such soaring, pyramidal sky-scrapers, the four in the outer wall nine stories in height. ”

“ In the Manual of the Madura district, the Patnūlkārans are described as “a caste of Surat silk-weavers, whose ancestors were induced to settle in Madura by one of the earlier Nāyakkan kings, or in response to an invitation from Tirumala Naik, and who have thriven so well that they now form by far the most numerous of all the castes resident in the town of Madura. They are very skilful and industrious workmen, and many of them have become very wealthy. ”

“ If Madura was noted for its many mansions and towers, Vanchi, with its flower-gardens and tanks full of crystal water, limpid streams and little islands, shady bowers and parks with artificial hills and waterfalls, was charming to every visitor. Outside the fort resided the soldiers of the Chera king. Ascetics and philosophers also dwelt in the silent and shady groves, far away from the din and bustle of the capital. ”

“ Madura is indeed the most interesting Hindu city in India, the place where the ancient Brahminical religion has been least touched by foreign conquest, Mogul, or French, or English. There is absolutely no sign in the city of anything alien. We did not see a European face, or a trace of Saracenic architecture. A festival was going on and an immense crowd thronged the streets, thousands and thousands of men dressed in white, with ochre patches on their foreheads, and of women in their beautiful gauze drapery, and carrying flowers. ”

“ Madras seems quite as unlike the cities of Northern India as does Rangoon, and comparatively few of the thousands of tourists who frequent Northern India ever visit Southern India, a great distinction between the two being made. It is, however, conveniently near the great Seven Pagodas, which we did not visit, and is the gateway to the famous Dravidian temples which presented much interest.
We left early in the afternoon in order to visit Tanjore, Trichinopoly, and Madura, and for two days sleeping-cars were to be our home. ”

“ Within the temple there are many shrines and many Tamil worshippers; high-caste Brahmans are also there to minister to the supposed wants of the higher gods. Galleries led us out to still other shrines, where are installed additional images of gods, who on fête days are carried about in gold and silver chariots of untold value. All the most beautiful portions of the temple as it now stands were built by Tirumala Nayak, the great Madura ruler of modern times, who ascended the throne in 1623 and reigned thirty-six years. ”

“ MADURA, n.p., properly Madurei, Tam. Mathurai. This is still the name of a district in S. India, and of a city which appears in the Tables of Ptolemy as "Μόδουρα βασίλειον Πανδιόνος." The name is generally supposed to be the same as that of Mathurā, the holy and much more ancient city of Northern India, from which the name was adopted (see MUTTRA) , but modified after Tamil pronunciation. [5] [On the other hand, a writer in J. R. As. Soc. (xiv. 578, n. 3) derives Madura from the Dravidian Madur in the sense of 'Old Town,' and suggests that the northern Mathura may be an offshoot from it.] ”

“ They lie in every position. It seems a habit of the Maduran when he gets thoroughly tired in his tent, or in the bazar, to drop into this temple and fall down for a good nap at the feet of Shiva, or some other idol, for Madura is a spot which for ages has been held strangely sacred by the Hindoo worshiper. Having passed through the gopura, and completed the passage of the great corridor, you see the beginnings only of this wonderful temple. ”

“ Its doorposts alone, whether 57 ft. or 60 ft. in height, are single blocks of granite, carved with the most exquisite scroll patterns of elaborate foliage, and all the other carvings are equally beautiful. Being unfinished, and consequently never consecrated, it has escaped whitewash, and alone, of all the buildings of Madura, its beauties can still be admired in their original perfection.
The great temple at Madura is a larger and far more important building than the choultrie ”

“ The Collector called upon the Hindus to put the Siva temple in order within a year, on pain of its being treated as an escheat.
Near the town of Madura is a large isolated mass of naked rock, which is known as Ānaimalai (elephant hill) . "The Madura Sthala Purāna says it is a petrified elephant. The Jains of Conjeeveram, says this chronicle, tried to convert the Saivite people of Madura to the Jain faith. Finding the task difficult, they had recourse to magic. They dug a great pit ten miles long, performed a sacrifice thereon, and thus caused a huge elephant to arise from it. ”

“ Near that mountain, there is a valley, which is guarded by a goddess who may give you trouble. Praying to Vishnu for heIp you should pass through this valley and reach Madura. Between these two routes there is a middle path which is more convenient, as it passes through woodlands and hamlets, and you may safely take that road.” Having ascertained the easiest route, they pursued their journey to Madura. In the course of their journey, Kannaki having complained of her sore feet and fatigue, one day they had to stop at a Kali temple, in a village inhabited by Vedas [13] . ”

“ The temple, which contains some of the finest carving in southern India, is said to have been built in the reign of Viswanath, first ruler of the Nayak dynasty. Its chief feature is the sculptured “Hall of a Thousand Pillars.” The palace of Tirumala Nayak is the most perfect relic of secular architecture in Madras. This palace, which covers a large area of ground, has been restored, and is utilized for public offices. The Vasanta, a hall 333 ft. ”

“ MADRAS, a presidency of British India—officially styled Fort St George—occupying, with its dependencies, the entire south of the Indian peninsula. The north boundary is extremely irregular. On the extreme N.E. is the Bengal province of Orissa; then the wild highlands of the Central Provinces; next the dominions of the nizam of Hyderabad; and lastly, on the N.W., the Bombay districts of Dharwar and North Kanara. Geographically Mysore and Coorg lie within the bounds of Madras, and politically it includes the Laccadive Islands, off the Malabar coast, in the Indian Ocean. ”

“ This is probably due to the fact that the bulk of the Madura trade is in a higher class of cloth than at Salem, and the weavers are consequently less affected by fluctuations in demand for their goods due to seasonal variations. In various ways the Saurāshtras of Madura have furnished evidence that they are a progressive community, particularly in the attention which they pay to education, and the keenness with which they are on the look-out for improvements in the methods of carrying out their hereditary craft. ”

“ It describes very vividly the proud and wealthy city of Madura, the scenes in the street’s and in the palace, the personal appearance of the Pandya, and the manner in which he reçeives and rewards his courtiers; and concludes with the advice that the king should follow in the footsteps of his pious ancestors, perform sacrifices, advance the welfare and secure the loyalty of his subjects, and enjoy the good things that the gods give. It will be seen from the poem that the author was an ardent lover of Nature, and a keen observer of men and manners. ”

“ Occasionally a chameleon turns up its bright eye, as though to take our measure. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in Southern India.
The principal attraction to the traveller in Madura, which contains some fifty thousand inhabitants, is a remarkable and very ancient temple supported by two thousand stone columns. It is probably one of the largest and finest monuments of Hindoo art in existence, covering in all its divisions, courts, shrines, colonnades, and tanks, twenty acres of ground. ”

“ A town and district of Southern India, probably Tiru-nel-vēli, 'Sacred Rice-hedge.' [The Madras Gloss. gives 'Sacred Paddy-village.'] The district formed the southern part of the Madura territory, and first became a distinct district about 1744, when the Madura Kingdom was incorporated with the territories under the Nawāb of Arcot (Caldwell, H. of Tinnevelly) . ”

“ Madura, the seat of ancient learning, Madura the favoured city of the God Sundareshwara, the holy Dwadashântakshetram of Yogis, lags behind no other Indian city in its warm admiration of your exposition of Indian Philosophy and in its grateful acknowledgments of your priceless services for humanity. ”

“ The road from the foot of the Pulney hills to Madura, a distance of upwards of forty miles, is very bad, but it passes through avenues of shady banyan and peepul trees most of the way, and is, therefore, not so wearisome for the natives on foot, as for a European jolting at the rate of three miles an hour in a bullock-cart without springs.
Near Madura there are tracts of rice cultivation, plantain groves, and topes of palm-trees ”

“ Madura was celebrated as the seat of learning in this part of the world, its college being famous all over the East, and, previous to the changes which took place after the Mohammedan conquest, exercised a strong degree of influence over the entire of the native population. It continued to flourish during seven centuries, its institutions securing to both male and female children, for the sex was not degraded in those days, an education of a very liberal nature. ”

“ In the Madras Census Report, 1901, it is stated that “in Madura and Tinnevelly, the Dēvāngas, or Sēdans, consider themselves a shade superior to the Brāhmans, and never do namaskāram (obeisance or salutation) to them, or employ them as priests. In Madura and Coimbatore, the Sēdans have their own dancing-girls, who are called Dēvānga or Sēda Dāsis in the former, and Mānikkāttāl in the latter, and are strictly reserved for members of the caste under pain of excommunication or heavy fine.” ”

“ The ruins at Madura are objects of particular interest in the present day, on account of the attempts which are making to revive learning in the East, and to restore the college at this place to its original splendour. In consequence of the influence which was exercised by this college for seven centuries over the Hindoos in the southern peninsula of India, two celebrated Jesuit missionaries, Robertus de Nobilius, and Beschi, flourishing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, formed plans for its revival, but, owing to dissensions in their order, were unable to carry them into effect. ”

“ Madras is the third city in population of India, or next to Bombay, with 452,518 souls, by the census published last year. It is on the Coromandel coast, which is nearly the whole of the Madras Presidency. It is nearly the entire western shore of the Sea of Bengal, including the bay, as the northern part of it is called in modern times. There is scarcely a single safe harbor for large vessels. ”

“ All of them pass for pure vegetarians. The proud position of Madura to this day as second city in the Presidency is mainly, if not solely, due to her prosperous and industrious community of Saurāshtra merchants and silk-weavers, who have now grown into nearly half her population, and who have also come to a foremost place among the ranks of her citizens. ”

“ If a lady from outside is to be accepted as consort, she is generally adopted into one of these families. The title Karta, or doer, appears also to have been used as a titular name by some of the rulers of Madura. [At the Madras census, 1901, Kartākkal was returned by Balijas claiming to be descendants of the Nāyak kings of Madura and Tanjore.] The Tekkumkur and Vadakkumkur Rājas in Malabar are said to have first conferred the title Karta on certain influential Nāyar families. ”

“ Subsequently Madura became a province of the Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. In the middle of the 16th century the governor Viswanath established the Nayak dynasty, which lasted for a century. The greatest of the line was Tirumala Nayak (reigned 1623-1659) , whose military exploits are recorded in the contemporary letters of the Jesuit missionaries. He adorned Madura with many public buildings, and extended his empire over the adjoining districts of Tinnevelly, Travancore, Coimbatore, Salem and Trichinopoly. ”

“ In 1628 the Dutch won over the native governor there, and the English were compelled to retreat to Armagon, where they built the first English fort in India. In 1639 Francis Day, the chief at Armagon, founded Madras, building Fort St George (1640) , and transferring thither the chief factory from Masulipatam. Here the English obtained their first grant of Indian soil, apart from the plots on which their factories were built. In 1653 Madras was raised to an independent presidency, and in 1658 all the settlements in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast were made subordinate to Fort St George. ”