Dharmapuri

Dharmapuri lies in the Baramahal country of northern Tamil Nadu, on the old road between the Kaveri plateau and the plains. The town was once Tagadur, seat of the Adhiyaman chiefs whose name survives at nearby Adhiyamankottai. The Sangam-age chieftain Adigaman Neduman Anji, patron of the poetess Avvaiyar, was counted among them.

Vijayanagara rule reached these uplands after Bukka I turned south against the Madurai Sultanate in the 1360s. After the defeat at Talikota in 1565 the Baramahal passed to a chief of Channapatna, who held it together with Mysore lands, and the Mysore rulers gradually won the district for themselves. In 1654 Kanthirava Narasaraja seized Dharmapuri, and the Marathas later contested it. In 1688 Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar took Dharmapuri back. Haidar Ali brought the district under Mysore in 1760, and Tipu Sultan lost it to the British in 1792.