Puddokothai

Pudukkottai, its name meaning the new fort, became the seat of the Tondaiman rulers in the Tamil country south of the Kaveri. Their domain was a small kingdom among the larger powers of Thanjavur, Madurai and Ramnad. Its temples, villages and wooded tracts formed the setting in which the Tondaimans built their authority.

Raghunatha Raya Tondaiman established his rule in the late seventeenth century, with the support of the Sethupathi of Ramnad. The kingdom grew from a chiefship whose boundaries were initially far from fixed. In the eighteenth century its rulers negotiated a landscape of shifting alliances and military campaigns, eventually aligning themselves with the British East India Company. Pudukkottai retained its own ruling house as British power spread through southern India.