Historic Alleys

At the Thrikkavil Kovilakom

While most people associate the Zamorin mainly with Calicut, avid historians opine that Ponnani was a temporary military capital of the Zamorin during the medieval years, as Calicut remained his political and business capital. Ponnani was the location where he marshaled his cavalry resources (the 50-60,000 Nair pada or foot soldiers as and when required and the armory) and went on to fight his foes. In later years it became the naval capital of the Zamorin and the stronghold of the Marakkar captains. But a deeper study reveals that it was a more permanent headquarters and affirms that the Zamorin stayed mainly at Ponnani between the 16^th to 18^th centuries, visiting Calicut sporadically for ceremonious occasions. Let’s now try to find out the underlying reasons.

While the overall time frames around the Zamorin’s expansion southwards and establishment of his regional suzerainty are still a little murky (we will get to this in the next article), I believe there is some agreement now, that most major events related to the house of the Zamorin’s took place in the 14^th-15^th century, be it the ousting of the Chinese, the conquests at Valluvanad and his marches towards Trichur, the establishment of a headquarters at Ponnani and so on. This article does not cover the Islamic culture, the Makhdums, etc. at Ponnani, nor the Malabar revolts, as they have been in numerous papers listed under references and have also been touched upon by me, earlier. This overviews the Zamorin and his Ponnani.

As we know, the Zamorin was fighting his way into the ascendancy, after decimating the Porlathiri forces and established himself in Calicut, a port that had started to flourish. Expanding southwards into the granary towns was but a necessity. The Nila River and control over it as well as its estuary, the villages and wealthy influential families on its banks was paramount since waterways were the highways of trade and transport in those times. Goods would come down from Tamilakam through Palghat pass, also from other supply centers, passing through the Bharatapuzha to the ports in vogue, and use the same route back. One should note that the local port in use then, was perhaps at or close to Tirunnavaya (Vakayur Perumthurai or Vakayur great harbor), and ships could sail right in. The Calicut roadstead on the other hand was not ideally connected to the interior production regions or the Palghat gap, until the Conolly Canal linked the rivers. So, you can imagine how strategically important the location was, for trade. Regional control had to be wrested from the powerful Velathiri, but the rules of Malayalam did not allow such conquests, there had to be an overriding reason. The trigger event was what is known to avid Malabar history followers as the Kurmatsaram, an event that we talked about some months ago (see link).

To recap - These were two affluent villages in the Ponnani region, occupied by Nambudiris, both seats of learning and rituals. Panniyur (who worshipped Vishnu as Narasimha Varahamurthy) prided itself in the number of its illoms, its wealth, and religiosity. Chovaram (Sukapuram) on the other hand was famous for its learning and culture and were Saivites. As the Sukapuram brahmins started to accept change, the puritan Panniyur Brahmins resisted it and invited teachers from "outside Kerala". All this led to disputes and eventually outright warring, dragging their suzerains into a larger conflict. The Panniyur group obtained the support of the Zamorin who had become powerful after the capture of Calicut from the Porlathiri, while the Sukapuram Brahmins had the Valluva konathiri (the Arangot Swaroopam) and the Cochin king (Perumpadappu Swaroopam) on their side. The spat was covered by me in detail earlier, but suffice to summarize here, its crucial stages towards the middle of the 14th-15th century, as follows.

The leader of the Panniyur group, the Tirumanasseri Namboodiri, who ruled over 146 desams, located at Gowardhanapuram just south of Thirunavaya, attacked and burned Chovvaram, with his soldiers. The Chovvaram group appealed to the Valluvanad Rajas for help and this resulted in Valluva konathiri and Perumpadappu Raja declaring war simultaneously against Tirumanasseri Namboothiri, who then appealed to the Zamorin of Calicut, a rising power, and promised Ponnani, in return. The Zamorin was victorious after a long and hard-fought battle.

Having defeated the Valluva konathiri the Zamorin became the conductor of the mamankam, and drove out the Perumpadappu raja from Vanneri. The Perumpadappu Rajas fled south and ended up eventually at Thiruvanchikkulam (and later Cochin) while the Zamorin established control between Kadathanad in Malabar’s North and Cochin in the south, over the decades which followed. Ponnani had by this time become his military capital, a place where he maintained his cavalry and from where he had launched his military conquests. The Zamorin after consolidating his realm built a few palaces at Ponnani and fortified the town. As new foes and foreign powers established their presence in South Malabar during the 16^th century, and as warring moved to the seas, Ponnani became the naval base with the Marakkars captaining his navy.

Some historians believe that the Valluvanad conquest took place in 1396 (still hotly debated), while the Arangot Swaroopam Granthavari indicates that this happened in the 1485-86 period. The decision to move his seat to Ponnani must therefore have happened during the last decades of the 15th century. We also know from the Vasco Da Gama chronicles that when Gama arrived and requested an audience, the Zamorin who was living in Ponnani, took a few days to reach Calicut by road. What is important to note is that necessity ensured that the Zamorin spend a lot of time at Ponnani, as the commander in chief of the Calicut army (in practice the Eralpad or 2^nd in command led most attacks). Before we get further, let’s get to know the terrain and significance of Ponnani geographically.

Much of it lends to the great Bharatapuzha or the Ponnani river which owes its existence to the larger Cauvery River. As Innes explains - Apart from the three great System tributaries of the Cauvery, which drain the Attapadi Valley and nearly the whole of the Wynand taluk, all the rivers of the district, flow down from their watersheds in the Western Ghats to the Arabian Sea.  With the single exception of the Ponnani river, none of them exceeds a hundred miles in length. The river traverses the taluks of Palghat and Ponnani and skirts the southern boundary of Valluvanad with the Tutha discharging itself into the sea at the port of Ponnani. Its name may have been connected to the gold dust which flowed down from the mountains. The sands of many of the rivers of South Malabar are highly auriferous and the Ponnarippu (tax on sieving for gold) tax was one of the sources of revenue for the local chieftains. Others however, feel the river was named Ponnani, due to its color at sunset, or after the golden elephant of the Azhvanchery Tambrakkal which was used in procession here, or after Pon-nanayam or Arabikasu which circulated in Ponnani markets.

Over time, both the Tiruvavaya port as well as Ponnani, lost its significance as a port since it washandicapped by shoals and sandbanks, and the annual floods of the Ponnani river created dangerous currents. Calicut’s roadstead remained the most important port of trade, but Ponnani’s port favored light country craft that was used to harass Portuguese shipping in the 16th century, since they could retreat to Ponnani and its bay without fear of being pursued by the larger European ships. Together with a series of minor ports in its vicinity, Ponnani became a stronghold of Muslim naval warfare and the corsair base in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

Perhaps one of the strategies of the Zamorin was to protect Calicut by opening a buffer capital at Ponnani and attracting his opponents from the south to attack his better-protected forces, or it could have simply been due to logistical aspects. Many sea and port battles, took place at Ponnani and kept the port busy for over a century, but at the same time, depleted the Zamorin’s treasury. It attracted many Muslim traders, the Marakkars, and Islamic scholars, during these periods, developing it as an Islamic center of education. With the Zamorin living for long periods in Ponnani, several foreign representatives also pitched camp there. The Portuguese built their first fort in Malabar at Ponnani. The English factory was initially established in Ponnani and the Dutch had representations there, as also the French, during later periods. Persian, Arab, and Gujarati merchants lived in the town, and a number of Pardesi Pattar’s lived around the temple Agraharams’ . While some senior members of the Zamorin’s families lived at the Calicut palaces, the Zamorin, and his second-in-command Eralapad were frequently located in Ponnani, during the 16^th-18^th century. It is also said that the Zamorin did not initially have permission to move out of the Calicut capital, but Ponnani was subsequently added to the list after a great amount of difficulty and after the conduct of many rituals (State formation: Archana N Girija).

What is also important to note is that until the attacks by the Mysore Sultans, the Zamorin stayed at his base at Ponnani, not at Calicut. Stein van Gollonese writes, "the king (the Zamorin) holds his court at Panany (Ponnani) where the Honorable Company has a resident, viz., the bookkeeper Gerrit Van Dorpan, who has only to watch the stratagems of the court.

Major figures such as the Rahabi’s and the Prabhus are all seen to be working off their offices in Ponnani when it came to trade meetings for the Dutch. Almost all senior visitors conducted their meetings with the Zamorin at Ponnani, such as the Dutch and French factors, the English, etc. The Kozhikode Koyas had special areas allocated to them. I will not get deep into the trade activities and the Islamic development which ensued at Ponnani, Mahmood Kooria, and Abhilash Malayail have published many excellent papers on this subject (see references). Ponnani was also home to the Makhdums and the Marakkars, subjects we discussed in detail previously.

Yet another reason for the Zamorin’s continued stay at Ponnani was perhaps due to the palace intrigues at Calicut after a Zamorin was poisoned at Albuquerque’s efforts in the 1520s, and later, the not very well studied fact, i.e., the rising water levels in Calicut, a subject we touched upon some months ago. It was around the late 16th century or the early 17th that things started to go wrong at Calicut and water levels crept up, swallowing roughly 2-4 miles of the shoreline, especially parts of the city which had previously been allocated to the foreigners and the trading communities.

Let’s now try to reconstruct the domains of the ruler at Ponnani. Many of the Calicut Granthavari’s written at Ponnani were lost (some have recently been found and are under study) in the aftermath of the Hyder - Tipu war marches, and later when they razed the palaces and Zamorin’s establishments. Another reason is the Islamization of the entire area which followed the Mysore Sultan's onslaughts and the loss of the major cultural archives in the temples. But based on British, Dutch, and English records, we can get a general idea.

At the outset, the reader should be told that there were close to 13 major (and many minor) Kovilakoms or abodes used by the various Zamorins. Not all of the aged and sometimes infirm Zamorins, who reached the position at an advanced age, lived at or administered from Calicut. Ponnani was the popular choice in those war-torn years when the Zamorin’s cavalry had to make long marches towards Cochin or other areas such as Palghat and Trichur when war was declared against a recalcitrant chieftain who rebelled, revolted, or threatened the Zamorin’s interests or strategy.

The Zamorin’s patronage of the temple of Trikkavu made it one of the prominent temples in the kingdom. According to one account a Chetti and a Moslem overtaken by a violent storm at sea vowed in their hour of peril that if their lives were spared, they would build a temple and a mosque.  They landed safely at Ponnani and fulfilled their vows by building, the Chetty built the temple, and the other the Jamat-mosque.  During the Mysore attacks, the idols were submerged in the nearby well and saved, but the temple never regained its lost glory.

The palaces or Kovilakoms built at Ponnani were his abodes from the 15^th to the 18^th century. The original Vakayur Kovilakom was replaced by the Trikkavil Kovilakom at Ponnani and was the epicenter of the Zamorin’s rule as the Kunnala konathiri. This was also the place from where he started the Mamankam processions and where he stored the crown jewels. It used to be situated about a kilometer south of the port, though nothing remains of either palace. The Kovilakom located to the south of the Trikkavu temple, was used as an armory by Tipu during the war years, and was eventually razed to the ground.

Sparse descriptions survive though of the Trikkavu Kovilakom, and it was a little difficult to get to it, due to the different ways Ponnani is mentioned in the accounts of the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and English. Panani, Panany, Pennany, Pagnani, Pagnany, Paniani, etc. were the terms used.

A 1672 French description translated by Aniruddha Ray goes thus and describes the Trikkavil Kovilakom- On the 15^th Feb 1672, the French were taken to the house of the Zamorin at Paniani for the ratification of the cessation of Alicote. La Haye, a French aristocrat, did not think this house was equivalent to the palace of a powerful king. To him, it appeared as a country house. He was asked to sit on a divan inside the beautiful building. The French were then taken through a door to the audience hall, which looked more like a room at the rooftop of a country house.  The carpet on which the king sat looked shabby. Another carpet was then brought and spread over the wooden planks of the floor, on which the French were asked to sit. Seeing that Caron was inconvenienced on sitting on the carpet, a box was brought for him to sit. The articles were signed and ratified. La Haye was surprised to see the miserable condition of this king whose power had been described by the Portuguese so often.  La Haye estimated that the king was sixty years of age. He was a man of small height. The affair of the state was then handled by the two nephews. The kingdom extends to nearly sixty French miles extending from Pudepattam river to the river of Cragnanor.

Sr. L'Estra accompanied M Caron and La Haye to Paniani. He also mentioned canon shots but stated that it was a Muslim festival.  He had found the king's house a small one, built with mud, stone, and brick, and had the appearance more of a country house of a bourgeois rather than the castle of a King. L'Estra found the king an old man of nearly seventy years with a white beard. He was a man of medium height of three and a half feet (maybe 5 ½).  He was wearing diamond rings on all his fingers, set with precious stones, and gave Caron a pearl necklace. What is interesting is that, according to L'Estra, most of his subjects were Muslims, who were celebrating the festival of March (Mamankam) for ten days in a big open space that was attended by the king, princes, and the officials of the state.

From a constructional aspect, I would mention that the Kovilakom may have resembled the sketch made by Van Der Hagen of the Calicut palace (if it was indeed Calicut- From the sketch of the sea landing to meet him in 1604, I have a feeling that he landed and met him at Ponnani Trikkavil). The sketch of the Calicut palace looks remarkably similar to the painting of the Tirumanasseri Kovilakom (see the paper by Swaty S). We know that the Tirumanasseri Kovilakom was destroyed (perhaps after they moved to Chengannur) and only a gatehouse remains, but the sketch unearthed by this researcher provides a good perspective.

Some Zamorin’s passed away at either the Trikkavil or Vairanallur Kovilakom in Ponnani (A Zamorin’s average reign span was approximately eight years), affirming this to be a regular abode (from approx. 1560 AD) based on Granthavari studies. Others passed away in Calicut and other minor Kovilakoms, or elsewhere such as the Trichur or Kodungallur Kovilakoms. When Hyder attacked Calicut in 1766, the Zamorin sent the women folk to Ponnani and committed suicide by setting fire to his Calicut palace. He was at Calicut due to many reasons, one being the fact that the enemy was attacking from the North and secondly because of internal strife. The Raja of Palghat met Haider Ali and followed him to Mankara through Ponnani from Kozhikode. At Ponnani Haider completed the fort which was once used by the Portuguese.

The English records from the 18th century, before Hyder's arrival, indicate that the three Zamorins during the 1730-50 period were almost always at Ponnani, and try as they did, the English could not get them to Calicut for discussions regarding overdue debts. There are numerous mentions of their visits to the Ponnani palace and sit-downs to negotiate the debt repayments, a Zamorin’s retirement to Chavakkad (Guruvayur?) during early Mysore incursions, problems with the Tirur Moplahs and so on, but it becomes clear that visits to Calicut by the Zamorin’s were very rare.

After the Hyder-Tipu Epoch, the Zamorin families returned from Kunnathur, in Travancore, to their home base at Calicut, the new Zamorin also stayed at Calicut since then, as almost all their buildings in Ponnani had been razed to the ground by the Mysore & Ali Raja troops. Vellayude Charitram is a vivid account of the interview with Hyder Ali while he was camping at the Trikkavu temple in Ponnani, and he mentions that some Zamorins stayed at the Karikad Kovilakom, and also the interesting fact that the Tirumanasseri Kotta (fort) was in existence then.

The reasons for stays at Ponnani were complex, they perhaps had to do with mobility and ability to assume titular command of his forces and logistics due to frequent warring, the use of the port at Ponnani for much of the Dutch, French, and English trade, distancing from debt collectors, revolt from Tirur Moplahs and a couple of influential Nair chieftains and maybe the other infrastructure issues at Calicut. We can also note that the Zamorin was perpetually strapped for money in those centuries and struggled to repay much of his debts, while at the same time facing adversaries from Arangot and Venad, Palghat, and Mysore.

It was a lengthy period of strife and doubt, treachery, and despair as far as the Zamorins were concerned, perhaps family mismanagement and lack of stature as well. All this set the kingdom up for easy takings by the marauders from Mysore, which as you all know, happened in 1765-66, bringing down the house of the Zamorins. The palace at Calicut perished after Hyder’s arrival and the palaces at Ponnani were razed down a few years later by, Tipu. Accounts of Ponnani written after the Mysore invasions hardly mention the Zamorin, or his rule from that epicenter. His connections to Ponnani seem to have been forgotten.

References
Zamorins of Calicut – KVK Ayyar
The French presence at Calicut from the mid-seventeenth to the early decades of the eighteenth century - Aniruddha Ray
Madhyakala Kerala Charitram – VV Haridas
Samoothiri Peruma – VV Haridas
Vellayude Charitram – Ed NM Nampoothiri
Valluvanad Charitram – S Rajendu
An Indian Ocean Ribāṭ: War and Religion in Sixteenth Century Ponnāni, Malabar Coast - Mahmood Kooria
Between the Indian Ocean and South Asia: State Formation in Early Modern Calicut Archa Neelakandan Girija
Politics, Economy and Islam in ‘Dutch Ponnāni’, Malabar Coast - Mahmood Kooria
The Architectural Tradition of Ponnani, Kerala: A Historic Malabar Port Town - Swathy V Subramanian