200 Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya. [July 



milted, dependents and servants of the Pandya monarchy. A few- 

 years after the irruption of Mujahid Shah, or about 1380, the governor 

 of Ramnad threw off bis dependence on Madura; and his successors 

 extended their authority to the neighbouring provinces, since called the 

 Great and Little Marawas. Family dissensions, fostered by the Naya- 

 kas of Madura, or Tanjore, subsequently divided these districts into se- 

 parate chieftainships; and the aggression of their neighbours, as well 

 as their domestic feuds, prevented the power of the Setu Pati from ever 

 acquiring a permanent or consolidated form. The Telinga princes of 

 Madura, and the Mahratta rulers of Tanjore, claimed, and occasionally 

 exercised, the supreme authority ; and latterly, the Nawabs of the Car- 

 natic assumed a sway which in general was little more than nominal. 

 Finally, the Madras presidency collected the tribute of the two 

 Marawas from the year 1792, and in 1801, by treaty with the Nawab 

 of Arcot, obtained the complete sovereignty.* 



The Setu Pati was not the only prince who, in this distracted state 

 of the kingdom committed encroachments on its territorial possessions ; 

 and even the adjacent province of Tinnivelly was detached from its 

 connexion with Madura, under the administration of the Nayaks. This 

 dependency was, however, recovered ; but it subsequently was occu- 

 pied by an independent Poligar, till the Nawab of the Carnatic extend- 

 ed the pretensions of his authority over this part of the peninsula, 

 which, along with the rest of his rights, w 7 ere converted into substantial 

 possession by the British government. Besides Ramnad and Tinni- 

 velly, a variety of petty chieftains assumed independence ; and, upon 

 the occupation of Madura by the first Nayak, five Rajas are said to 

 have combined to revenge the wrongs of the ancient dynasty of Madura. 

 These petty chiefs were the ancestors of some of the Poligars of the 

 south, who gave so much trouble to the British forces in the middle of 

 the last century. Others originated with grants made by Viswanath 

 Nayaka, about the middle of the sixteenth century, to the rebel leaders 

 who had co-operated with the Vijayanagar arms in the final overthrow 

 of the Madura monarchy. f Of these petty chiefs living by plunder 

 and violence, the native lists enumerate seventy-two in the Tinnivelly 

 and Trichanapali districts. Their numbers must, of course, have been 

 subject to perpetual fluctuation, and increased or diminished with the 

 absence or existence of any one preponderating power amongst them. 

 The nature of their habitations, in the bosom of unhealthy and almost 

 inaccessible wilds, gave, however, a certain security to their existence ; 

 and the efficiency of the native government was never such as to ac- 

 complish their suppression. Through a period of three centuries, 



* Hamilton, vol. ii. p. 473. 



t Mutiah's History of the Nayakas of Madura, 22. 



