Susan J Lewandowsky

Changing Form and Function in the Ceremonial and the Colonial Port City in India: An
Historical Analysis of Madurai and Madras

Author(s): Susan J. Lewandowski
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1977), pp. 183-212
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Modern Asian Studies, II, 2 (I977), pp. I83-212. Printed in Great Britain.
Changing Form and Function in the Ceremonial

and the Colonial Port City in India: An
Historical Analysis of Madurai and Madras
SUSAN J. LEWANDOWSKI
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
The city has usually been first of all a 'place'-a clearly defined space
visibly possessed and controlled by human beings and often sacred to their
gods, a statement of man imposed upon the chaotic and threatening vastness
of nature. It has represented the desire of man to master his own world, creat-
ing an environment reflecting his powers of reason, his desire for convenience
and order, and his aesthetic predilection for beauty and meaningfulness in
his surroundings.1
THE model of urban building most familiar to us in the West is one

which relies on certain conceptions of the use of space dictated by
modern technology and advanced modes of productivity. We have
created cities in the twentieth century that correspond to our notions
of progress, industrial development, social welfare and aesthetic beauty
that differ intrinsically from cities in other parts of the world, built
at different points in history and embodying different notions of the
use of space. This paper will concern itself with the origin, develop-
ment and changing form and function of two types of cities found
throughout Asia, the ceremonial and the colonial port city. Urban
geographers have long used these models in defining urban develop-
ment outside the Euro-American context, but historians have yet to
employ such models in their examination of cities, particularly in
India.2 In this analysis, the ceremonial model will be used as a point
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Indian Eco-
nomic and Social History sponsored by the Social Science Research Council at St
John's College, Cambridge, England in July, I975. I should particularly like to
thank Arjun Appadurai, Dennis Hudson, Julian Smith and Burton Stein for their
useful comments on this paper, and John Robertshaw for the maps of Madurai and
Madras.
1 Norma Evenson, Chandigarh (Berkeley: University of California Press, I966), p. 2.
2 For a discussion of the ceremonial city see Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four
Quarters (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, I97I), and City as Symbol (London:
H. K. Lewis, 1969); and Nelson I. Wu, Chinese and Indian Architecture (New York:
George Braziller, I963); and for the colonial city see Ronald J. Horvath, 'In Search
I83
I84 SUSAN J. LEWANDOWSKI
of departure to further our knowledge of the nature of the colonial

port city in India. For this reason, secondary sources have been relied
on to a greater extent in the discussion of the ceremonial city, and more
emphasis has been placed on historical change within the colonial port
city.
By choosing two cities within the same geographical and linguistic
region of South India, Madras and Madurai, it is hoped that some of
the cultural variables will be limited, and the different world views
that have created these cities will be brought into focus. What this
analysis will attempt to do is to examine these cities at different periods
in their historical development in the hope that the premises under-
lying their growth will become clear. Therefore, we will focus on
Madurai during the Safigam period (between the first and fifth
centuries A.D.) and again during the Nayaka period in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Since the coming of the British to India, the
form and functions of Madurai have changed, and it no longer clearly
illustrates the world view of those who created it. Madurai is one of the
few cities in South India that can be subjected to this type of investi-
gation for it is possible to find historical data on the city, and its early
form is still in evidence today. Although many cities in India have been
destroyed and rebuilt in the course of their history, Madurai's form was
preserved by its architects. Then we will turn to Madras City and
examine its development from the seventeenth through the nineteenth
centuries. Twentieth-century industrial Madras is a topic for another
paper.
The purpose of this paper is four-fold. First of all, it will try to show
that the unitary urban form of pre-British Madurai was a direct
reflection of the Hindu world view which stressed the interrelationship
of the sacred and the secular, and the hierarchical position of different
groups within the society; that Madras, on the other hand, developed
a tripartite urban form which was predicated on a Western ideology
that allowed for horizontal linkages within the society. In this way it
will be possible to test the hypothesis that the British were, in part,
responsible for the way in which the spatial form of Madras developed.
But the paper will also ask to what extent the use of models is a pro-
ductive exercise for the historian; what can a comparison of two cities
at different points in time tell us about urban development in India;
and what can be learned about the histories of Madras and Madurai
from such an examination?
of a Theory of Urbanization: Notes on the Colonial City,' in East Lakes Geographer,

V (1969), pp. 69-82.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS I85
The Ceremonial City of Madurai
India is a country with one of the earliest traditions of town planning.

Sanskrit texts, such as the Arthasdstra of Kautilya (ascribed to the fourth
century B.C.) and the Mdnasdra Silpasdstra, written between the fifth
and sixth centuries A.D., speculated on abstract principles of urban
design that were essentially idealized versions of what a city should
look like. Since the Mdnasdra was translated into the languages of
South India, and its precepts were followed in the construction of
cities, we will use it to reveal the ideal urban form. It must be stressed
here that there was no one ancient Indian urban form, but that cities
differed on the basis of their origins and functions. For the purposes of
this paper, the ceremonial city will be defined as one which combines
the characteristics of a sacred center with those of a political capital.
The term ceremonial is not used in the literature describing ancient
cities in India, and the form it most closely resembles is that of a
rdjadhdni city, a seat of royal power and administration.3
Although literature can be a misleading source for the historian in
that it often presents an idealized version of reality, it is capable of
eliciting not only 'images' of cities, but also their underlying structural
features.4 It is the structure of the city we will look for in the images
presented to us of Madurai in the Tamil epic, Silappadikdram, reputedly
written during the Saiigam Age, sometime around the fifth century
A.D. when it is first possible to piece together references to the city.
The epic begins with 'The Blessings' that capture the imagery of the
royal umbrella, beneath which all else was contained.
Blessed be the Moon!
Blessed be the Moon that wraps the Earth
in misty veils of cooling light,
and looms, a royal parasol
festooned with pollen-laden flowers,
protecting us.5
Madurai has been characterized by a number of writers as a city of

the moral order.6 In the images of the city presented in the epic, the
3Architecture of Mdnasara, trans. Prasanna Kumar Acharya (London: Oxford

University Press, 1933), Vol. IV, p. 95 (Ch. X, paras 44-7).
4 See A. K. Ramanujan, 'Toward an Anthology of City Images,' in Urban India,
ed. Richard G. Fox (Durham: Duke University, i970), p. 224.
5 Prince Ilango Adigal, Shilappadikaram (The Ankle Bracelet) trans. Alain Danielou
(New York: New Directions, 1965), p. 3.
6 See particularly Ramanujan, 'Toward an Anthology of City Images,' pp. 235-40.
secular is subordinated to the sacred. The Pandyan king wears the

broad chain of rule given to him by the gods.7 In the later writings of
the medieval period, such as the Madurai Sthala-purana, the local chron-
icle that records the early activities of the Pandyan kings, dating from
about the twelfth century, the sacred origins of the city are stressed.
According to one myth a merchant discovered a lingam in a kadamba
forest and informed the ruler of the Pandyan Kingdom of this. The king
dreamt that a city should be built in this place, and subsequently had a
city constructed around a temple, and named it Madura or sweetness,
after the Lord Siva sprinkled the city with nectar from his hair.
Another myth that recounts the creation of the Pandyan kingdom cites
the first rulers as children of the god Siva and the patron goddess of
Madurai, Minakshi.8
The source of the king's power was dhdrma, religious and moral law,
symbolized by the imagery of the umbrella. The sacrifices that legiti-
mized the position of the ruler were, in fact, performed by the priest
who was the representative of the deity. The French sociologist,
Louis Dumont, has argued that spiritual and temporal authority are
absolutely distinguished in India, and if we agree with him that 'hier-
archy integrates the society in relation to its ultimate values,' then in
India religion holds a higher rank than power-and kingly cities or
rdjadhani cities must be, by extension, sacred cities.9 As we shall see in
the following analysis of Madurai, it was not until the medieval period
that this ideology was clearly reflected in the physical form of the city.
Although it is almost impossible to date the founding of Madurai,
Kautilya's Arthasastra refers to trade between Madurai and the
Mauryan Empire of North India. We know from the Asokan inscrip-
tions of the third century B.C. that the great rival kingdoms of the
Pandyas, Cheras and Cholas were already in existence in the South.
It has been speculated that with the rise of the Chera and Chola
kingdoms, the Pandyas, who had previously been oriented primarily
towards maritime trade, shifted their administrative headquarters
inland to better protect their territory.10 The Vaigai Valley could
easily be defended from attack, a factor that has contributed to the
7 Shilappadikaram, pp. 89-90.
8 For the text of this and other stories see J. H. Nelson, The Madura Country: A
Manual (Madras: Asylum Press, I868), Pt III, pp. 3ff; and Oriental Historical Manu-
scripts in the Tamil Language, trans. William Taylor (Madras: Charles Josiah Taylor,
I835), Vol. I, p. I3.
9 See Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchichus, trans. M. Sainsbury (London: Paladin,
I972), p. i i ; and Religion, Politics and History in India (Paris: Mouton Publishers,
I970), p. 67.
0o Anon., Madura: A Tourist's Guide (Madras: Higginbothams Ltd, I913), p. 2.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS
I87
long history of the city, but it was also the physical center of the
Pandyan kingdom. The valley was bounded by a large plain which
stretched to the sea on the east and south; on the west were the Western
Ghat mountains, beyond which was the kingdom of the Cheras. The
Cholas were to the north, but the valley was protected from them by a
range of low hills, outcroppings of the Western Ghats that were
surrounded by forests. The Saigam Age was oite in which the three
ruling powers of the South attempted to expand their power base, and
vied with one another for control over smaller independent chieftancies.
Although Madurai was a political capital, and a base from which
the Pandyan ruler extended his military control over a wider area, the
city also had an economic dimension, for it was an inland market
center. One might argue that the economic function of Madurai was
to sustain the city as the center of an empire-that artha, or material
gain, was subordinated under the overarching umbrella of dhdrma.
The Pandyan king was primarily interested in expanding his holdings,
and he needed funds to achieve his ends. This being so, both the culti-
vator and the merchant were in an interdependent relationship with
the king.
Madurai was built on the banks of the Vaigai River, described in
Silappadikdram as a 'Most cherished possession of the Pandya kingdom.'11
This reference reflects not only the fact that the river provided a natural
defense barrier to the city on the north, but also that it was used for
ritual bathing, drinking, sanitation and irrigation. The river watered
the fertile land surrounding Madurai which supplied paddy, sugar
cane, millet, garlic, plantains, areca nuts, coconuts and mangoes
necessary for sustaining the city.12 It also provided a means of trans-
portation and communication with a wider area than the immediate
countryside. The epic gives us descriptions of inland and overseas trade
that centered around the city. Tribute such as silk, sandalwood,
incense, perfumes, and camphor was brought by convoys of ships
down the Vaigai River from Tondiamandalam.13 Greek and Roman
writers and geographers of the first and second centuries A.D. attest
to the well-developed overseas trade networks that linked southern
India with the Greco-Roman world. The fact that Roman coins were
found in large numbers in the Vaigai River bed has led many scholars
to believe that a colony of Roman merchants may have lived there at
one time.14 With regard to inland trade, Silappadikdram mentions three
11 Shilappadikaram, p. 9o.
12 Ibid., pp. 72, 92. 13 Ibid., pp. 9I, 96.
14 Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XVI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), p. 391.
188 SUSAN J. LEWANDOWSKI
highways that existed connecting Madurai with Kodumbalur, possibly

Cranganore in Kerala. It is known that goods were brought from the
Pandyan kingdom over, or through the passes of, the Western Ghats
to Chera desam.15 It is also believed that trade was carried on over the
rugged roads linking north and south India. We know that Madurai
was famous for its production of fine cloth, and its markets contained
foreign cloth, silk and wool. From the literary sources one receives
an impression of markets filled with luxury goods such as ivory, and
pearls which the city exported, emeralds, rubies, diamonds and gold.16
Although the revenue structure of Madurai remains obscure, both
the petty traders and larger merchants, as well as the peasants tilling
the hinterland, appear to have provided the economic support for the
city. The political and economic functions of Madurai were, in effect,
undifferentiated at a time when an expanding empire demanded an
expanding economy.
When we turn from a discussion of the functions of Madurai to its
urban form it becomes clear that Madurai shared many of the charac-
teristics of the durga-sannivesa tradition relating to the layout of forts.17
Presumably the royal city incorporated elements from the earlier
tradition of fort building, for common to both was the use of high
walls and gates necessary for defending the city. There was often a
moat or ditch beyond the walls that not only contributed to the
protection of the city, but also provided water. Moats were an intrinsic
part of the expansion of walled cities, for they were a source of earth
used for building new walls, levelling the ground and raising the urban
site.18 Silappadikdram describes the solid wall that surrounded the city,
its gates and moat, and 'ramparts, covered with thick overgrowth,'
which would remain a feature of the landscape until the advent of the
British. 19
In the idealized urban plan, the four gates facing the cardinal points
on the compass determined the four main streets that led to the center
of the city, for the favorite design was that of a square or rectangle
bisected in the middle. The grid pattern familiar to us in the West was
15 Oriental Historical Manuscripts, Vol. I, p. xiii; and K. K. Pillay, A Social History
of the Tamils, Pt I (Madras: University of Madras, i969), p. 239.
16 Shilappadikaram, pp. 97-8.
t7Julian Smith, 'Madurai, India: The Architecture of a City,' (unpublished
M.A. dissertation, M.I.T., February I976), p. I2.
18 Amita Ray, Villages, Towns and Secular Buildings in Ancient India (Calcutta:
Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, I964), pp. 71-2.
19 Shilappadikaram, p. 91. Inscriptions also refer to moat, flagstaff, rampart and
parapet as parts of the fort. T. V. Mahalingam, South Indian Polity (Madras: Univer-
sity of Madras, 1967), p. 83.
most often employed in the layout of streets that ran directly from east
to west and from north to south.20 As Julian Smith has pointed out in
his study of the architecture of Madurai, sacred geometry determined
the layout of the city, the village and the dwelling place.21 A ritual
diagram or vastu-mandala (vastu meaning abode, and mandala,
circle) was used to define the space on which construction would take
place. Although the mandala was in theory a circle, in actuality it
formed a square, for the drawing of the mandala was determined by the
cardinal directions.22 After laying out the axes of the diagram, the
perimeter was located, and lines were drawn linking the corners of the
mandala. The completion of the sacred diagram involved its division
into padas or plots where the different deities resided.
An understanding of this geometry is useful in analyzing Madurai.
The wall which surrounded the city during the Saigam period and
defined its outer limits was theoretically also the boundary of the
mandala. However, it should be pointed out that it is historically
difficult to document the use of mandalas by urban architects during
this period.23 Silapaddikdram mentions the initial journey that the hero
and heroine of the epic take around the walls of Madurai before enter-
ing the eastern gate (one of the four city gates) indicative of a ritual
circumambulation of the city.24 That Madurai was divided into quarters
occupied by different caste groups is clear from the epic which mentions
four caste groups, Brahmins, warriors, merchants and craftsmen,
protected by four gods.25 Yet, on the basis of descriptions given in this
epic and Maduraikdnchi (dated from the second to the fourth century),
it is impossible to give an accurate spatial analysis of the city. For
example, it is not clear whether the center of Madurai was occupied by
a royal palace or a temple. Today the Tamil word koyil is translated as
temple, but during the Safigam period it apparently referred to a
royal palace.26 There is mention made of four streets surrounding the
20 This plan is mentioned not only in the Mdnasara but also in the Agni Purdna
and the Sukranftsara. Ray, Villages, Towns and Secular Buildings, p. 53. The ancient
Tamil settlement of Uttaramerfir has an overall plan that fits well with certain
prescriptions of the SilpaSdstras. Francois Gros and R. Nagaswamy, Uttaramerir
(Pondichery: Institut Francais D'Indologie, I970), pp. 90-5.
21 Smith, 'Madurai, India,' Ch. III, which gives a detailed description of this
process.
22 Ibid., p. 22.
23 Ibid., p. 37.
24 Shilappadikaram, p. 91.
25 Ibid., pp. 98, I33-5.
26 George Hart, The Poems of Ancient Tamil Nadu (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1975), p. 13.
90o SUSAN J. LEWANDOWSKI
palace where Brahmins, princes, ministers, rich merchants and royal

household servants resided, suggesting the palace as a central focus.27
Although there are four major temples cited in the Madurai of
silappadikdram, none of these are given a central place in the descriptions,
nor does the worship of Siva and Vishnu referred to in Maduraikdnchi
appear to have been more important than that of the 'dreaded'
Dravidian deities, Muruga, Tirumal and Kotravai.28 In spite of the
fact that the goddess of Madurai appears at the end of Silapaddikaram
to placate the heroine of the epic, there is no mention of her shrine,
and if a shrine to Siva or Minakshi did occupy a central place, which
seems rather unlikely during the Safngam period, it did not dominate
the urban landscape.
However, the Tamil puranas and other sources dating from the
twelfth century reflect the growing prominence of the Brahmin com-
munity, and Aryan religious traditions in South India and their
impact on the spatial evolution of Madurai. It is from this period
that one can document the emergence of the Siva temple in the center
of the city. Although the temple complex was increasing in importance
from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, the Pandyan kings were
struggling to maintain their power base. In the early fourteenth century,
Muslim armies destroyed part of the Siva temple and its adjacent
residential areas, and occupied the city and its hinterland until 1372
when they were forced out of the area by an agent of the Vijayanagar
rajas. Although the Pandyas were allowed to remain in power, under
the authority of a viceroy or Nayaka of Vijayanagar, by the middle of
the sixteenth century the Nayakas had themselves established a semi-
independent dynasty. The temple city of Madurai visible to us today
is a by-product of the Nayaka period.
In the centuries that preceded Nayaka rule, much of Madurai had
been destroyed and rebuilt. In order to protect the city from further
destruction, the earliest Nayaka ruler, Viswanatha, who came to power
in I559, dismantled the Pandyan ramparts and built an elaborate
double-walled fortress in their place.29 He was responsible for clearing
the jungle that had grown up around the city, and constructing two
dams across the upper Vaigai River that facilitated the irrigation of
the land around the capital, and turned the valley once again into a
27 C. P. Venkaturama Ayyar, Town Planning in Ancient Dekkan (Madras: Law
Printing House, circa I916), p. 42. Although his sources include Sangam literature,
they also rely heavily on Tamil works written after the twelfth century.
28 Maduraikanchi in Pattupattu: Ten Tamil Idylls, trans. J. V. Chelliah (Tinnevelly:
South India Saiva Siddhanta Works, I962), pp. 227, 257.
29 Oriental Historical Manuscripts, Vol. II, p. 15.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS I9I
fertile rice-producing belt.30 Madurai could now resume its position

as capital of a kingdom comprising the modern districts of Madura,
Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly and the southern parts of Travancore.
As Nayaka warriors from the Telegu-speaking region to the north of
Madurai who were representatives of the Vijayanagar Empire now
replaced the Tamil Pandyas as rulers, they insured their power base
in the Tamil heartland by sponsoring the building of temple cities and
pilgrimage centers; and as the Tamil texts tell us, Viswanatha 'received
the sceptre in the presence of the goddess Minatchi.'31 Burton Stein
stresses that these warriors were 'most often men of low ritual origin
whose participation in temple-oriented Hinduism reflected their pre-
tensions to higher rank commensurate with their political power.'32
Local merchants also contributed to the construction of temples, and
their status rose in South Indian cities as their wealth buttressed the
power of the new warrior rulers.
One might argue that the Telegus were essentially a colonial ruling
group in the Tamil country; however, they were working within the
same Hindu cosmological framework as that of the Tamils, and with
accepted notions of hierarchy; one reinforced one's political position
by building temples. The replacing of one Hindu power group by an-
other did not alter significantly the form or functions of the city. With
the rebuilding of Madurai, it became a visual expression of the strength
and expandability of the Nayaka kingdom, and a reflection of its
relationship to the sacred and divine.
The Nayaka ruler, Viswanatha, not only improved the fortifications
of Madurai, but allegedly had his civil architect redesign the city in
strict accordance with the principles laid down in the Silpasastras.33
It is for this reason that Madurai expresses the sense of unitary planning
which is not visible in ceremonial cities such as Benares. Madurai was
laid out in the shape of a square with a series of concentric streets
(squares within squares) culminating in the great temple of Minakshi.
These squares continue to retain their traditional names, Adhi,
Chitrai, Avani-moola, and Masi Streets (north, south, east and west).
The names of these streets correspond to the Tamil months in which
the most important temple deities process along the streets surrounding
Minakshi Temple.34 It was along these streets that quarters were laid
30 Anon., Madura, p. 26. 31 Oriental Historical Manuscripts, Vol. II, p. 15.
32 Burton Stein, 'Integration of the Agrarian System of South India,' in Robert
Eric Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, I969), pp. I94-5.
33J. P. L. Shenoy, Madura, The Temple City (Madura: C.M.V. Press, 1937), p. 6.
34 Smith, 'Madurai, India,' p. 70.
out for the different castes and professional groups. The streets around
the king's palace (now located southeast of the temple) contained the
houses of the royal ministers and merchants, whereas the Brahmin
community resided in agraharams or residential enclaves of their own
near the temple. It is alleged that Viswanatha was able to gain the
support of the Brahmins by repairing and building new temples and
agraharams in the city.35 The layout of the wards corresponded to the
occupational requirements of their inhabitants, and were diversified
in their appearance. But the pattern remained for the wealthiest
inhabitants to reside near the urban center, a common pattern in pre-
industrial cities.36
In the Mdnasara Silpasdstra there are elaborate prescriptions for the

expansion and reconstruction of ancient cities. Where a temple city
is to be rebuilt, it is important to begin with the central shrine and to
fashion the city around it.37 In Viswanatha's design, the temple re-
mained the focus of centrality as it had been throughout the medieval
period. By the early thirteenth century, prior to the temple's partial
destruction by Muslim invaders, it was apparently surrounded by an
outer wall with fourteen towers, indicating that the notion of architec-
tural monumentality witnessed under the Nayaks was not new to
Madurai.38 It has been argued that the type of architecture employed
by the Nayaks of Madurai was a continuation of the style used by the
Pandyas, involving the addition of a series of extensions onto the original
structure but always with the overall plan of the city in mind.39 The
design of the Minakshi Sundaresvara temple has been attributed to
Viswanatha Nayaka, who began construction of the outermost walls
surrounding the original shrines of the god and goddess, the oldest part
of the temple. However, further additions were made by princes,
nobles and wealthy merchants who competed with one another to
complete the structure without changing his original design.
The temple as well as the city faced east-for the direction of the
rising sun holds the greatest cosmological significance for the Hindus.
In accordance with orthodox principles of urban planning in India,
the city's axes were aligned with the four quarters of the compass, and
four gateways gave access to the city. One might argue, in effect, that
the city, and the temple at its center, were microcosms of the Hindu
35 Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 93.
36 Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre-Industrial City (New York: Free Press, I960), p. 323.
37Binode Behari Dutt, Town Planning in Ancient India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink
and Co., I925), p. 326.
38 Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 8i.
39 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India (Madras, I955), p. 485.
universe, for they both followed similar plans. The temple of Madurai
had gatetowers (gopurams) facing the car street; and at times of pro-
cession the presiding deity would be drawn past these gates as it circled
the temple, symbolic of the universe. The axis of Madurai was essen-
tially a vertical one, for one of the gopurams which allowed access to the
temple was I50 feet high.40 These gopurams were visible for miles
outside the city, thus attracting pilgrims to the deity and place of wor-
ship. If one were to look at the temple from above, one would see a
square within a square; the cardinal points on the compass defined by
these gopurams, with the central temple shrine marked by a sikara.
What is important here is that the outer gopurams were the last ones
to be built, symbolizing an infinitely expandable temple universe.41
Secular architecture was also an important element in the new plan
of Madurai, but subordinate to that of the sacred. It was under Tiru-
mala Nayaka, who ruled from I623-59 and who severed his ties with
Vijayanagar and created an independent kingdom centering on
Madurai, that secular architecture reached its zenith. It is speculated
that the whole front half of the fort, located in the southeastern sector
of the city, consisted of mansions, pavilions, elephant stables and
barracks.42 Tirumala is given credit for constructing the great palace
of Madurai on a large plot of land that included a series of detached
buildings and an arena for sports. The palace was an elaborate struc-
ture, supported by stone pillars and decorated with carved chunam,
a fine stucco made of limestone. The architect who designed the palace
may have come from Bisnagur where Mughal styles were popular.43
The palace is the best example of monumental secular architecture
undertaken during the reign of the Nayaks.
The spatial relationship between the temple and the palace, between
sacred and secular architecture is an important theme in the history
of Madurai. Although the Nayaks allegedly made a careful attempt to
follow urban planning principles laid down in the sastras, the location
of the palace in the southeast does not accord with the texts, for the
northwest and southeast were considered inauspicious.44 As to why the
palace was moved south, one might speculate that there was more
room for monumental building in the southern sector of the city. It
also appears that the Vaigai River may have shifted its course. Maps of
contemporary Madurai show the southeast boundary of the city to be
40 Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XVI, p. 405.
41 Wu, Chinese and Indian Architecture, p. 27.
42 Anon., Madura, p. I23.
43 Oriental Historical Manuscripts, Vol. I, p. vii.
44 Venkatarama Ayyar, Town Planning, p. 44.
further from the temple (at the theoretical center) than the northeast
boundary. One might argue that because of the directional flow of the
river, there was more land available for the stabling of elephants, and
the housing of armies in the eastern and southern sectors, and this
accounted for the substantial remains of secular architecture in this area.
It would appear that the Nayaka rulers, if they did use the sastras in
planning the city, were much less concerned about the cosmological
significance of the location of their palaces and administrative buildings
than they were about maintaining the temple in the center of the sacred
mandala.
The city of Madurai was a product of a particular Hindu world

view that stressed both the sacred and secular aspects of the political
capital of an empire. It was created and developed by Hindu rulers
and the wealthier stratum of urban society which saw the city as a
symbolic expression of the empire. Like the deity who circled the temple
(his universe) on processional occasions, the king theoretically circled
his capital city at the time of his coronation, accepting the obligation
to protect the kingdom over which he ruled.45 At a time when Nayaka
rule was extending itself in South India, Madurai was remodeled on a
monumental scale. But the form chosen was a unitary one expressive of
the complementary relationship of king and deity in Hindu society-
with the first position given to the latter, as signified in the divine
palace, the Great Minakshi Temple. As one moved away from the
symbolic center, one moved down the Hindu hierarchy of caste, with
the wealthiest and ritually purest stratum in closest proximity to the
temple and palace, and the poorest on the urban fringes. The city was
a visual reflection of the world view of those who occupied it and whose
values were mirrored in its functions and residential patterns. It was
also a reflection of the infinite expandability of such a universe.
With the coming of the British, Madurai ceased to be a rdjadhdni
city, a ceremonial city which was both the seat of royal power, and of a
Hindu moral order, for the umbrella of dhdrma had collapsed. Although
the British located their administrative offices in the Nayaka Palace,
45 This is a reference to the symbolic circling of the capital by the king mentioned
in the Agni Purdna and the Mdnasdra which comes from the Hindu rite Pradakshina,
or delimitation of sacred space. Paul Wheatley cites examples of this rite in several
Southeast Asian cities. See Pivot of the Four Quarters, p. 466. Dennis Hudson suggests
that Tirumala Nayaka not only had two large cars constructed to pull the deities
giva and Minakshi around the city of Madurai during the yearly festival celebrating
their marriage, but also incorporated into the festival the coronation of Minakshi
as queen of the city. 'Siva, Minakshi and Vishnu: Reflections on a Popular Myth in
Madurai' (unpublished paper, I975), p. 5.
MADURAI CITY (1937)

-Boundary
Bown day Meenakshi Temple
Roads - ' - Railways
Ig Old City I New Residential
Subsequent . .
development 1 Administrative
[m= Industrial [land-use generalised]
MAP I.
and thus symbolically replaced their Telegu predecessors without

changing the urban form, the longer they remained in Madurai, the
more it came to look like the colonial city of Madras.
In the nineteenth century the old fortifications of Madurai were
torn down, and the urban wall was made into Veli Street, a broad
avenue circumscribing the city (see map of Madurai). Although at
first new settlements were formed on the outskirts of the old city, with
the building of the railroad in the I87os and a bridge which spanned
the Vaigai in 1889, the form of Madurai began to change.46 Now
development took place north of the river and along the railway line
to the west. Whereas previously Europeans lived to the east of the old
city, now bungalows for European residents, clubs and a race course
were constructed on the northern bank of the river.47 It was here as well
that government offices were located for the district of Madurai. On
the western limits of the town, the major industrial development began
46 K. V. Sundaram and C. S. Chandrasekhara, 'Urban Morphology and Internal

Structure of Indian Towns-Some Case Studies,' in National Geographical Journal of
India, Vol. XIV (March I968), p. 56.
47 Anon., Madura, p. 13, and Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. XVI, p. 404.
to take place. Textile factories grew up in this sector, and a colony of

railway workers has existed here since the nineteenth century. By the
early twentieth century, the southern portion of the city, bounded by
several large tanks which prevented expansion in this direction, pro-
vided an impoverished residential zone for handicraft weavers.48
Today, Madurai still remains a pilgrimage center, as it had been
prior to the British, and, as Julian Smith has argued, the yearly cycle of
festival processions that move along the car streets surrounding the
temple, and the divine palace where the king-deity resides, have
maintained the morphology of the city intact since the Nayaka period.49
Yet, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Madurai
became the district headquarters of a larger colonial political complex
and an industrial town. The city was now predicated on different
notions of the relationship between political and economic power than
had existed under its Hindu rulers. One could suggest that Madurai no
longer retained its unitary form, and instead became a collection of
urban nuclei functionally related to one another, the old city center
representing only one sector of the city. The next section of this paper
will illustrate how a city created, in part, by a European world view,
emerged with a different urban form in India, and one which bears
certain similarities to what we see in contemporary Madurai.
The Colonial Port City of Madras
In contrast to the Hindu world view expressed in the ceremonial city

of India is that of the colonial city founded by Europeans. Over time,
its form and functions became a direct reflection of its foreign origins,
and as such it represented the microcosm of the larger colonial empire
of which it was a product. The world view of those who created the
colonial city was purely secular in orientation. The city did not stand
alone as the center of its own universe, but was linked to a series of
other satellite cities, and ultimately subordinate to the foreign capital
on which it depended for its existence.
Although there are no treatises that define the colonial city in India
per se, social science literature has long used the colonial model as a
means of examining cities founded or developed by European powers.
We shall review here some of the basic characteristics ascribed to the
48 Anon., Madura, p. 12.

49 See Smith, 'Madurai, India,' Chs VI and VII, fbr a very interesting discussion
of the different festivals in the city, their historical development and their relationship
to the urban morphology.
MADRAS CITY (1901)
yj k/ BAY
OF
gt h Court BENGAL
aort St. George
/
zdras
University
Reference
Town boundary
-- Division boundary
I]J Temple
Trade & Commerce/
Old residential
Old residential
m | Garden suburbs
[mII NIndustrial
development
I - New settlement
MAP 2.
colonial scene before turning to Madras. G. Balandier in an article

which draws on a number of different disciplines points out several
traits of what he calls the 'colonial situation'. First of all, it involves the
economic and political domination of a foreign minority from one ethnic
(or racial) and cultural set of origins over an indigenous majority from
a different background. Secondly, 'this domination' links 'radically
different civilizations into some form of relationship.' Thirdly, it places
an industrialized society in contact with a pre-industrial society, and
fourthly, the tension between the two societies results primarily from
the 'subservient role to which the colonial people are subjected as
"instruments" of the colonial power.'50 All of these characteristics are
clearly evident in the form of the colonial port city of Asia. It is im-
portant to make a distinction between different stages in the develop-
ment of the colonial port city, for as we shall see in the case of Madras,
the city initially had a form similar to that of the ceremonial city, but
as the British gained greater control over India there was an unleashing
of Western notions of power which were in direct conflict with those
embedded within the Hindu tradition, and became manifest in the
urban form.
Before the coming of the British, Madrasapatam was an insignificant

town on the Coromandel Coast, almost 350 miles northeast of the
ceremonial city of Madurai. But in the course of its history, it was to
become the capital for the whole of South India, and Madurai was to
be reduced to a regional satellite-the administrative headquarters
of one of the many districts of Madras Presidency. Although Madras
was first and foremost a port city, over time it assumed the multi-
functional roles of a political, social and cultural center, and its domi-
nance was felt over a wide territory. It is the particular nature of
colonial dominance that will concern us in the following analysis of the
development of Madras from its founding in the seventeenth century
through the late nineteenth century.
Madrasapatam was already a cloth-producing center when the
East India Company came in search of cotton goods that could be
traded in Bantam, Java, for cloves, spices, and nutmeg that brought
such a good price in England.51 In 1639, after several abortive attempts
50 G. Balandier, 'The Colonial Situation: A Theoretical Approach,' in Immanuael

Wallerstein (ed.), Social Change: The Colonial Situation (New York: John Wiley and
Sons, I966), pp. 54-5. For a discussion of the Asian Port City see Rhoads Murphey,
'Urbanization in Asia,' in The City in Newly Developing Countries ed. Gerald Breese
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, I972), pp. 58-75.
51 John Bruce, Annals of Honorable East-India Company (London: East India House,
I8IO), pp. 359, 378.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS i99
to establish factories on the Coromandel Coast, the Company chose a

site south of the town of Madrasapatam. It was on the sea, and was
protected on the south by the Triplicane River (River Cooum), and
on the west by the River North. This was a rich rice-growing country,
laced with lagoons and rivers that were capable of supporting an
expanding population. But the site was considered to be waste land by
the Tamilians who referred to it by the name 'Jarimedu' or jackal
mound.52
Dr S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, who has studied the early evolution of
Madras, argues that the prosperity of the settlement was linked to its
economic success. He asserts that cotton cloth was 20 to 30 percent
cheaper at this site than in Armagon in the Telegu-speaking region to
the north of Madras where the Company had established an earlier
factory; and that ships could come closer to the shore to pick up and
deliver goods. Goods were also free from an import-export duty,
although a customs duty was paid to the local ruler of the area for
items bought or sold within his domain.53 Permission was also granted
to the British to build a fort, and to mint coins. Within a few decades
Madras became an important emporium of trade. Goods were carried
to Madras from China and the Malay Archipelago where they were
sorted and repacked before being shipped to Europe.54 This led to an
increase in the number of English ships, seamen and traders involved
in transferring food grains, fruits, vegetables, oils, oilseeds and livestock
from Madras to the ports scattered around the Bay of Bengal and the
Malabar Coast. In 1653 Madras was made a Presidency and five years
later all English settlements on the Coromandel Coast and in Bengal
were subordinated to it. Although commerce and trade continued to
thrive during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
rivalry between France and England over control of the Coromandel
Coast interfered with the commercial expansion of Madras, and ulti-
mately relegated her to a secondary position in relation to the growing
port cities of Calcutta and Bombay.
In order to enhance the commercial growth of Madras, it was
necessary to fortify the site. By I640 walls had been constructed to
52 Dr S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, 'The Character and Significance of the Founda-

tion of Madras,' in Madras Tercentenary Volume (London: Oxford University Press,
1939), PP. 39-40; and Manual of Administration of Madras Presidency, Vol. III (Madras:
Government Press, 1885), p. 446.
53 Mrs Frank Penny, Fort St. George, Madras (London: Seven Sonnenschien,
I900), p. 4; and Census of India, 1961: Madras, Vol. IX, Pt X-(I), p. 4.
54 David Leighton, Vicissitudes of Fort St. George (Madras: Addison Press, I902),
p. 6.
enclose the factory, and Fort St George came into existence. Offices,
warehouses and stores were soon built on the site.55 The meager British
garrison was supplemented by Eurasian and natives troops, and by the
end of the year an estimated 300 to 400 families of weavers had migrated
to the settlement.56 Until the early nineteenth century, the fort and
factory continued to remain the nucleus of military, commercial and
government activities in Madras, and to dominate both the physical
and functional development of the presidency capital.
The ethnic and cultural heterogeneity of the city was expressed at the
outset by the different residential enclaves that began to be formed.
Like settlement patterns in the city of Madurai, those of Madras appear
to have initially followed a hierarchical pattern. The wealthiest and
most prestigious residents of the city resided in closest proximity to the
Inner Fort, containing the factory house. White Town developed on the
north side of the Fort to house the European, Eurasian and Native
Christian population of the settlement. Black Town, the extension of
Madrasapatam, was the residential quarter for the city's indigenous
inhabitants. This segregation of residential patterns was to characterize
the city's subsequent evolution.
Expansion to the north of the fort was demarcated first by the
European residential plots in White Town and those of the Portuguese
traders who moved from the weaving village of San Thome further
to the south. They were attracted to the new settlement by offers of better
commercial facilities, a thirty-year exemption from taxation, and the
protection of the fort.57 The Portuguese were useful to the British, for
they had been on the Coromandal Coast for more than o00 years and
knew the local languages. By the late seventeenth century there was
also a community of Armenian traders who had migrated from North
India.58
The houses of the Europeans, Portuguese and Native Christians of

White Town were bounded by those of Black Town, occupied by the
Telegu Komati, Balija and Beri Chetty trading castes employed as
55 This description is taken from one of the official records of Madras Presidency,
'Account of the Present Localities of Madras as Existing in the Middle of the Seven-
teenth Century,' reprinted in the Manual of Administration, Vol. I, p. 163.
56 Henry Davison Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (London: Govt of India, 1913),
Vol. I, p. 35.
57 Manual of Administration, Vol. I, p. I63, and C. W. Ransom, 'The Growth of the
Population of Madras,' in The Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume, p. 320.
58 In I688 the Directors of the East India Company granted the Armenians a
contract enabling them to travel on Company ships and to establish settlements
where they could build their own churches. C. S. Srinivasachari, History of the City
of Madras (Madras: P. Vardachary and Company, I939), pp. o6-7.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS 20I
East India Company merchants and agents of private traders in the

city. They functioned as dubashes (from do basha-speaker of two lan-
guages) or go-betweens, advancing money to the weavers of calico,
chintz and muslin (who resided further to the north), and delivering
the finished goods to the port for shipment to Bantam, Surat and the
Persian Gulf. Telegu merchants also sold wine and other goods im-
ported from England to the European and Black Town community.59
Before reaching the hands of the merchants, cloth woven in the city
was dyed on the northern limits of the settlement. To the east of the
dyers, in a concentric arc, was the area where the Hindu and Muslim
food processors, such as the fishermen, butchers, milk suppliers and
oil-mongers resided, and where boatmen, potters, barbers and manual
laborers were increasingly attracted to the growing settlement.
White Town was initially planned by the British. Its streets formed a
uniform grid pattern, and had both British and Indian names.60
Houses here were built of brick and were several stories high with thick
walls to insure coolness in the summer heat, but unlike the later garden
house designs adopted in Madras, the early White Town house had no
garden or extensive courtyard, and was located very close to the street.
As White Town expanded, more families were encouraged to move
into Black Town, and by I7IO its western sector was occupied by the
Portuguese, Native Christian and Armenian communities.61
The streets of Black Town were also laid out on a grid in the form
of a square, a little more than a mile and a half in circumference.62 In
the early eighteenth century, the town was surrounded with a brick
wall seventeen feet thick on which bastions had been constructed for
defense. Black Town was bounded by a river on the west, and the sea
on the east. A canal built to join the river with the sea formed a natural
moat on the north. The streets of Black Town were described as being
wide, and a few were planted with trees, but the majority of houses
59 Ibid., p. 52.
60 Some of the streets were named Middle, Charles, York and Choultry Streets.
Manual of Administration, Vol. I, p. 163.
61 Although there is much discrepancy in population figures for early Madras,
one fairly reliable estimate places the population at about 50,000 in 1688, the year
in which Madras was made a Corporation by Royal Charter of the East India
Company. Census of the Town of Madras, 1871 (Madras: Fort St George Gazette Press,
I873), p. 26.
62 The following description is taken from the account of Thomas Salmon of the
city in 1707. See H. V. Lanchester, Town Planning in Madras (Madras: Govt of Mad-
ras, c. I9I6), pp. 87-8. Maps of early Madras, such as 'Prospect of Fort St. George
and Plan of the City of Madras' (I 7Io), surveyed by order of Governor Thomas Pitt,
clearly attest to the physical layout of the city. This map is located in the British
Museum, London.
were made of clay, rather than brick, and thatched, like those in the
South Indian village. To the north of Black Town were gardens stretch-
ing for half a mile planted by the British with mangoes, coconuts,
orange trees, guavas, and other fruit trees for urban consumption and
export.
It is clear from the preceding description that the nucleus of Madras
was planned by the British, and that its form was designed to meet its
principal function of trade and commerce. The early plan of Madras
exhibits both economic dominance of the colonists over the colonial
city with the fort providing the visible center, and cultural heterogeneity
with residential patterns segregated by ethnic origin. Colonial and
indigenous quarters reflected distinctly different urban images, al-
though this was much less pronounced in the early eighteenth century
than it was a hundred years later. Settlement of different caste groups
was encouraged by the British under the direction of their dubashes,
and castes were given streets on which to reside in Black Town.
During the Governorship of Elihu Yale (I687-92), for instance,
fifty weavers were brought into the city and settled on Weavers' Street
(now Nyniappa Naick Street).63 As long as those who lived in Black
Town contributed to the economic prosperity of the settlement, the
British did little to interfere with their life-styles, and during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries considerable power over Black Town
inhabitants lay in the hands of Telegu and Tamil mercantile families
who had connections with the East India Company. The British did,
however, restrict the number of Muslim settlers in the town by placing
a limit on the amount of land Muslims could occupy. This was a period
when the Sultan of Golconda and the Nawab of the Carnatic, the latter
being the hereditary Muslim ruler of the area on which the British
settlement bordered, were still powerful forces in South India.
With the expansion of Madras in the eighteenth century, new
villages were founded and those already in existence were incorporated
into the urban nexus.64 The British influenced the founding of a series of
villages that functioned as economic satellites in relation to Fort St
George. As a result of the shortage of cloth in South India in the early
part of the century, the Company established colonies of weavers on
the outskirts of Black Town to regulate its production. One such
colony was Chintadripet to the west, where settlement was controlled
63 Glyn Barlow, The Story of Madras (Madras: Oxford University Press, I92I), p. 23.
64 During the first 0oo years, villages that existed on the periphery of the Fort
were acquired on lease by the British. In 1708, for example, five villages were given
in free grant to the Company, among the most important of which were Trivatore
and Nungambakkam. Census of Town of Madras, I87I, p. 34.
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS 203
by a Hindu East India Company merchant, and spinners and weavers

were brought from Salem shortly after the village was set up in 1734
to stimulate calico printing. The village contained two important
Siva and Vishnu temples, and had its own bazaar. Within a period of
four years, 230 familes were allegedly residing in the village.65 Washer-
manpet was a similar satellite complex designed for the washers and
dyers of cloth.
Aside from these planned settlements, there were a series of loosely
linked self-contained villages incorporated into the city which remained
for a while only marginally dependent on the commercial center. They
were an economic asset to the Company which leased them from the
local ruler at a minimal charge for privileges of rent collection. Villages
such as Mylapore and Triplicane, both eighth-century temple com-
plexes, were initially pilgrimage centers with large populations of
Brahmins. They had their own functions, service castes, bazaars and
temples. But under the British, the character of these villages slowly
began to change as they were brought into closer relationship with the
Fort and Black Town. Triplicane is perhaps the best example of this,
for it continued to remain an important Vaishnava religious center.
In the I750s the Nawab of Arcot, a Muslim ruler, was given land on
which to build a palace on the outskirts of the village. The Nawab
sought the protection of the British at a time when the French were
seeking control of the eastern coast of India. By granting him land with-
in the city, the British were able to politically encapsulate the powerful
ruler of a large territory of South India. The resettlement of the Nawab
in the following decades led to the growth of a substantial Muslim
community in the vicinity of Triplicane, initially comprising migrants
from Arcot, the Nawab's former capital. Muslim service castes,
merchants, weavers and artisans were subsequently attracted to Tripli-
cane, and this led to the rapid development of bazaars and markets in
the village. Triplicane soon became a subsidiary market center, and
satellite of Black Town and the Fort.
The mid-eighteenth century can be viewed as a turning point in the

physical and functional growth of Madras, for after this period its
colonial inhabitants play a much larger role in urban development.
We have already mentioned that the French and the English were in
conflict with one another at this time, as they each vied for a larger
slice of the colonial world. In the process, those who ruled Madras
65 C. S. Srinivasachari, 'Stages in the Growth of the City of Madras,' in Journal of
Madras Geographical Association, Vol. II, No. 3 (October 1927), p. 85; and Manual of
Administration, Vol. III, p. 446.
turned their attention towards developing the fortifications of the

city. With the French harassment of the Madras Coast, trade was slowly
diverted to Calcutta, and the city never regained its former commercial
position in the colonial empire.66 In the period after 1744, profits in
Madras trade began to decline, partially as a result of a great influx
of silver that increased prices. But handloom products were no longer
of the high quality they had been at an earlier date, and the industrial
revolution in England was producing power-driven looms that were to
have an even greater impact on the Madras market. Given slacking
profits, English traders began investing in landed property and dabbling
in local politics, and the Company began to further expand its terri-
torial holdings in the South.
One can look upon this change as symptomatic of a new British
colonial world view, emanating out of the metropole capital of London,
which would culminate a century later in the assumption of British
rule over the Indian sub-continent. In the period from 1750 to I850,
the British began moving out of Black Town and the Fort area in
larger numbers, and garden suburbs began to alter the physical form
of the city. Now there was clearly a separation between where one
worked and where one lived. This was accompanied by the decentral-
ization of shopping facilities as a European market area emerged,
the construction of administrative buildings outside the Fort, and the
general expansion of the colonial sector over a wide area of the city.
Unlike the smaller administrative centers of North India, such as
Benares, Allahabad and Lucknow, Madras had no cantonment or
civil lines where the colonial population was contained. The Presidency
Cities were, in essence, microcosms of the colonial empire, and as the
empire grew and firmly established itself as a political entity, the
colonists began to control more of the cities, and to leave an impact on
their physical structures. One can argue that as power shifted out of
the center of the city, building became more decentralized. As such,
the cities themselves became an expression of the colonial world view.
After I770, when the city of Madras was made secure against the
incursions of the French, north beach (between the Fort and the Water-
ing Place for ships), owned by the Company but occupied by native
merchants, was reclaimed by the Government; and new warehouses
were constructed and rented out to merchants. This further extended
British colonial control over mercantile activities in the city, particu-
66 In fact, the Regulating Act of 1773 limiting the political role of Madras was an
acknowledgement by the British that Calcutta and Bombay had more commercial
and industrial potential.
larly those of the native merchants.67 In 1798, the Government came

to a major decision to decentralize commercial activities by moving
the port, located since its origin in front of the Fort, to the north
outside of the town where the Master Attendant's Office and the Cus-
toms House had already been located.68 This meant the colonial
domination of the entire shoreline from the Fort northwards to the
outer limits of the city. In the course of the nineteenth century this
was to become the area where the major insurance, import-export
firms and banking companies constructed their offices.
During this period, the Government slowly began moving outside
the Fort as well. As Britain began to assume greater control over the
Indian sub-continent, it expressed itself in monumental building.
In 1833, the British Government revoked the East India Company
trading privileges and delegated to it full administrative responsibility
over its colony. In I857, the Crown itself assumed control over India.
From the I86os onwards administrative buildings began to appear
outside the Fort in larger numbers, but their construction followed no
central plan. The High Court buildings, comprising the Small Causes
Court and the City Civil Court, were built in the area just to the north
of the Fort, whereas Madras University was spread along the beach
on open land a considerable distance to the south of the Fort. Although
there is no one government complex in Madras, the apparent random
location of buildings did have the impact of creating a sense of colonial
monumentality, for wherever one turned within a few miles' radius of
the Fort, there was a symbol of colonial power.
European architects were responsible for the design of civic buildings
in Madras, and by the era of Victoria were generally officers of the
Royal Engineers or members of the Department of Public Works.
Although many of the buildings constructed during the first half of
the nineteenth century show influences of 'popularized Renaissance
style' with classical facades and pillared porticos, during the second half
of the century, Madras architecture was in the hands of several designers
who preferred to incorporate indigenous forms, and who popularized
the Hindu-Saracenic style with cupola-crowned minarets, arches and
arabesque ornamentation.69
67 In I772, of the 33 merchants who rented warehouses, only 9 were English. The
merchants protested against the sale of land, for they feared it would be re-rented at
prohibitive rates. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, Vol. III, p. 163.
68 Jacques Dupuis, Madras et le Nord du Coromandel (Paris: Librarie D'Am6rique et
D'Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1960), p. 404.
69 For a description see Percy Brown, Indian Architecture (Bombay: D. B. Tara-
porevala Sons and Co., 3rd ed., 1942), Vol. 2, p. 135.
As the government functions of Madras increased in the course of

the nineteenth century, and were reflected in the changing form of the
city, so, too, the number of native employees needed to staff government
offices and the burgeoning bureaucracy also increased. In the process,
Triplicane, the temple village of Mylapore, as well as the villages of
Puraswalkam and Vepery, inhabited by the Eurasian community,
were brought into closer satellite relationship with the Black Town
area which was now the city's central business district. These served
as residential suburbs for indigenous white-collar employees of the
British who commuted daily to the urban center.
From the mid-eighteenth century, Europeans began moving out of
the Fort and Black Town into the newly-developing garden suburbs
where their commercial and administrative dominance was now ex-
pressed in terms of their residential domination over a larger part of the
city that had previously been under cultivation. Not only were they
claiming a substantial portion of the urban landscape, but they were
segregating themselves in the process. What clearly emerges from this
point onwards are two distinct settlement patterns, the colonial and the
indigenous.
After I750, Black Town became increasingly inhabited by traders
and weavers, and Europeans who could afford to build their own houses
from the wealth acquired by the Company or government service
began investing in property in the outlying portions of Madras where
it was far less expensive to live than in the crowded urban center.70
River sites were among the most popular in Madras for they provided
open vistas, and were often thought to afford protection from the spread
of disease, particularly those located on high ground, conducive to
suitable drainage. The banks of the Adyar and the Cooum (Triplicane)
Rivers were two of the earliest areas sought for the construction of
such homes. Another condition which affected the choice of a site
was that of its defensibility; and the Choultry Plain, located further
inland, was a second popular site because it was protected by four
outposts.71 This was a vast undeveloped area which was intersected by
two important roads, one of which, Mount Road, had for centuries
connected the Fort with the Portuguese settlement of San Thome.
The other, a military road, Poonamallee High Road, led from the
70 In 1775, of the 356 lots of 2,400 sq. ft each that were available in Black Town,
253 were given to one family whose land was taken over by the Company after the
attack of the French in 1746. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, Vol. III, p. 53.
71 Richard Ellefsen, 'The Evolution of Areal Patterns in Madras City,' unpublished
Mimeographed paper, p. 6. There were four important forts in Egmore, San Thome,
Nungambakkam and Puraswalkam which attracted a colonial population.
Fort west to the village of Poonamallee and crossed Mount Road.

The area between these two roads was favored for settlement, and by
1780 there were an estimated 500 to 600 garden houses stretching over
six to seven miles of the Choultry Plain.72
The European sectors of Madras were characterized by low-popu-
lation densities, for each family constructed its own house surrounded
by a large compound often consisting of several acres of land.73 The
most common house-type was the colonial bungalow, consisting of
one or two stories divided into a verandah, dining rooms and bedrooms,
each with attached baths.74 These bungalows set in their compounds
essentially functioned as oases of cultural space. They were located off
wide, tree-lined streets built over time to serve the needs of the colon-
ists, and the entire area of settlement was usually landscaped with an
occasional park or cultivated public garden, in keeping with urban
designs familiar in the West.
The increasing segregation of the colonists from the indigenous
inhabitants of the city went hand in hand with growing permanence
among colonial settlers in India. Until the mid-eighteenth century
Englishmen viewed India as a place to earn their fortunes, before
retiring in Britain. In the course of the following century the political
hold of the mother country over the colony increased, and those who
lived in Madras began to invest their savings in urban land with the
notion of remaining in the city. The development and maintenance
of colonial areas, however, placed a great drain on the resources of the
city, and diverted municipal funds from the more crowded sectors
where basic needs of water supply, health and sanitation were being
neglected.75 This led to a growing inequality in the civic amenities of
different sectors of the city.
Indigenous settlement patterns were formulated on the basis of a
very different set of principles. As in the city of Madurai, prestige was
related to proximity to the center, and the wealthiest merchants and
72 Dupuis, Madras et le Nord du Coromandel, p. 405. For a more detailed description

of this development see Census of Town of Madras, 1871, p. 53.
73 The Book of Grants of Ground for 1774 mentions an unusual grant of 25 acres of
land on Choultry Plain to a civil servant and Member of Council (Henry Brooke)
for a period of 99 years on condition that he build a brick house on it. Love, Vestiges
of Old Madras, Vol. III, p. 56.
74 For an excellent discussion of the bungalow see A. D. King, 'The Colonial-
Bungalow Compound Complex,' Journal of Architectural Research, 312 (May, I974),
pp. 38-9.
75 Susan J. Lewandowski, 'Urban Growth and Municipal Development in the
Colonial City of Madras, 1860-I900,' Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2
(February 1975), Pp. 356-9.
dubashes in the employ of the East India Company chose to construct

their houses in Black Town. They also patronized the building of
temples and other Hindu institutions in the city, which led to the
development of a series of small ceremonial complexes in Madras.76
It is my hypothesis that in the eighteenth century, the dubash class used
a South Indian model of kingship in their exercise of power in these
centers, for they were responsible for arbitrating caste conflicts and
protecting the Hindu sacred order in the city during this period.77 In
the course of the nineteenth century this pattern changed as the indi-
genous elite began to emulate the colonial pattern of settlement, and
to participate in colonial institutions founded in the city. For the
majority of the city's inhabitants, however, the notion of living in
isolated homesteads was culturally alien, and they preferred to reside
in the vicinity of a temple. What one finds, then, is areas of high popu-
lation density, particularly towards the center of Madras.78 The most
typical house-type of the wealthy was the courtyard house, built on a
square or rectangular plan with rooms running around an inner
courtyard. By the nineteenth century, the wide streets of Black Town
originally designed by the British were reduced to narrow thorough-
fares as Indians modified their environment to fit their own needs,
and built additions onto the front of houses to accommodate more
people.
Black Town and other indigenous areas of settlement were divided
into neighborhoods where groups belonging to the same caste or
occupation resided. Over time, as migrants entered the city, the initial
composition of neighborhoods underwent change, and some became
significantly mixed. Caste neighborhoods remained more intact in the
outlying villages of Madras. Nineteenth-century Mylapore, for example,
had clearly demarcated streets inhabited by particular castes who
constructed and supported their own temples and choultries.79 Pradip
Sinha argues that the development of the heart of Calcutta shows the
juxtapositioning of huts with substantial masonry houses, indicating
that artisan and service castes were attracted to employment in large
76 V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, 'Around the City Pagodas,' in the Madras
Tercentenary Commemoration Volume, pp. 359ff.
77 Susan J. Lewandowski, 'Merchants, Temples and Power in the Colonial Port
City of Madras,' presented at the Comparative Conference on The Colonial Port
City in Asia, Santa Cruz, California, June 1976. In this paper I have focused on
the Hindu sector of Madras.
78 For figures on the late nineteenth century, see Lewandowski, 'Urban Growth,'
p. 350.
79 S. Kalyanasundaram, A Short History of Mylapore (Madras: Law Printing House,
I913), p. 23; and Manual of Administration, Vol. III, p. 447.
houses and settlement took place in the vicinity.80 The center of

eighteenth and nineteenth-century Black Town contained a large
paracheri where members of the untouchable caste resided, who may
have served similar functions as sweepers for the houses on which they
bordered.
What this analysis of Madras has revealed is a tripartite urban form

that evolves in the period after 1750. Prior to this date the city resembles
in form that of the ceremonial city of Madurai, although the factory
rather than the temple is the organizing principle. After this date,
however, there is a slow process of diffusion and decentralization that
affects both the colonial and indigenous populations and the institu-
tions they found, for the British and their elite Indian employees begin
to live and work in different locales. This new form is characterized by:
(i) British residential sectors with forms and functions that reflect
English cultural and spatial concerns; (2) native residential areas
organized on the basis of their cultural orientations, with not one but
several small ceremonial foci, reflecting the desires of the dubash class
to attain king-like status; (3) a commercial and administrative nexus,
now more loosely defined spatially than at an earlier period, but marked
by its colonial monuments, and providing an area of interaction for the
English and Indian residents of the city. This configuration, then,
reflects a new form in urban India, and one which is intrinsically
Western, characterized by the separation of work and residence-
related in part to the growth of an industrial mentality, and an ideology
of individualism becoming prevalent in the European world.
Summary and Conclusion
This paper set out to examine the origins, development and changing
form and functions of two cities in South India employing social science
models of the ceremonial and colonial port city as a way of highlighting
their historical evolution. Two different periods were chosen in the
history of each city in order to determine whether there was continuity
or change in the urban form. In the process, the paper raised the
questions to what extent Madurai and Madras conformed to these
urban types, and of what use models are to the historian.
In the case of Madurai, we have seen a continuity in its urban form
that spanned several centuries. Madurai was first and foremost a
80 Pradip Sinha, 'The City as a Physical Entity-Calcutta, I750-I850,' Bengal
Past and Present, Vol. LXXXIX, Pt II, No. I68 (July-December I970), p. 269.
2IO SUSAN J. LEWANDOWSKI
political, religious and cultural capital, hence its ceremonial designa-

tion. The relationship between the sacred and secular in Hindu society
was reflected in the urban form of the city. Centrality underscored its
basic design, for the center was an auspicious place in the world view
of the Hindus, and Madurai was a Hindu city. It was around the
temple in the urban center that the city developed as we know it today,
and in the course of Madurai's history, the temple was to grow to
monumental proportions-symbolic of notions of the ever-expandable
Hindu universe.
It was the king and secular nobility who were responsible for the
building of the temple of Minakshi, and for the existence of the city
itself, for Madurai was for centuries the capital of the Pandyan Empire
and later the Nayaka dynasty. Although the sacred and secular func-
tions of Madurai were separable on a theoretical level, and the first
rank in Hindu society went to religion, rather than power (this being a
reflection of the ultimate values that integrated the society); the king
and priest who represented the deity were dependent on one another
for legitimation and protection, respectively, and during the Nayaka
period, sacred and royal power was concentrated in one portion of the
city. Subordinate to the kingly functions of Madurai were those of the
merchants, who in part provided the capital to keep the city going,
and the funds for further expansion. As the priest was dependent on
the king, so, too, the merchant was in an interdependent relationship
with those who governed the city. The economic, political and religious
spheres were essentially undifferentiated in pre-British India. The use
of space and the concentration of power in Madurai were essentially a
reflection of the varna system, with wealth, social status and ritual
purity corresponding to proximity to the temple and palace, and
diminishing as one moved toward the urban periphery. The unitary
urban form of Madurai was an expression of hierarchical relations
within Hindu society which integrated it into a single entity and as
such it can be seen as a microcosm of the Hindu world view.
In contrast to the ceremonial city of Madurai, the colonial port city
of Madras was predicated on different notions of the relationship
between religious, political and economic power. The site of Madras
was chosen with an eye to commercial advantage rather than political
or religious motivations. In the West, economic wealth and political
power were differentiated and the former was protected by the legal
system. The initial form of Madras resembles that of Madurai with
the factory and the fort replacing the temple and palace as an organiz-
ing principle. Those who had the highest economic status in the new
FORM AND FUNCTION IN MADURAI AND MADRAS 2II
city, the European and Indian merchants, resided closest to the factory,
for economic power was of prime importance in early Madras.
Even in the initial decades of the settlement one can see three distinct
areas within the town, the Inner Factory or Fort; White Town, the
residential quarters for Europeans; and Black Town, the area where
the indigenous inhabitants lived and worked. The Europeans who were
a minority in the city encouraged the early development of indigenous
areas of settlement by patronizing temples and festivals, for these
guaranteed an economic return for the colonizers. By the mid-eight-
eenth century, however, as the notion of empire evolves outside of
India, it has an impact on the city of Madras. Now there is a decen-
tralization and diffusion of power as government activities move out of
the Fort, and are expressed in terms of monumental architecture.
Now villages on the outskirts of the city are drawn into the urban
sphere, and develop a satellite relationship with the commercial and
administrative nexus. One might argue that a new type of power
based on Western ideology has released a new urban form. In the
modern West, as economic power is differentiated from the political
sphere, so, too, political power is differentiated from religion, thus
allowing for the development of the secular nation. Although Madras
grew into a political capital, it never became a city of the moral order.
In pre-British India, this was the only possibility for a rajadhdni city,
for as we have seen in Madurai, the king could not exist without the
deity represented by the priest.
Thus, the unitary form of the ceremonial city gave way in Madras to
a tripartite urban form, characterized by the separation of residential
and work space, particularly among the elite of the city, and reflected
in the mature urban form of the city in the nineteenth century. The
reason why the British generate a new form in Indian cities has to do
with their notions of political and economic dominance based on a
Western ideology that stresses that the individual no longer primarily
holds membership in a corporate group, and, as Balandier has pointed
out, this horizontally links intrinsically different civilizations into a
relationship with one another. As we have seen in British Madurai,
it is possible to argue that the unitary form gave way to a series of
multinucleated urban enclaves.
What, then, is the benefit to the historian of employing models such
as the ceremonial and colonial port city in understanding the evolution
of two South Indian cities? In the first place, it has enabled us to trace
continuity and change over extended periods of time, and to identify
the nature of change. Secondly, it has highlighted the differences in
the urban development of two cities in India which represent two

different urban types: one based on traditional notions of design
motivated by a particular Hindu world view, and the other based on
particular Western notions of economic and political dominance. Thus,
the colonial city emerges into sharper focus when placed against an
indigenous urban form, the ceremonial city, that has existed for cen-
turies in India.

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Changing Form and Function in the Ceremonial and the Colonial Port City in India: An

Historical Analysis of Madurai and Madras

Changing Form and Function in the Ceremonial

Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts

THE model of urban building most familiar to us in the West is one

of departure to further our knowledge of the nature of the colonial

of a Theory of Urbanization: Notes on the Colonial City,' in East Lakes Geographer,

The Ceremonial City of Madurai

India is a country with one of the earliest traditions of town planning.

Madurai has been characterized by a number of writers as a city of

3Architecture of Mdnasara, trans. Prasanna Kumar Acharya (London: Oxford

secular is subordinated to the sacred. The Pandyan king wears the

highways that existed connecting Madurai with Kodumbalur, possibly

palace where Brahmins, princes, ministers, rich merchants and royal

fertile rice-producing belt.30 Madurai could now resume its position

In the Mdnasara Silpasdstra there are elaborate prescriptions for the

The city of Madurai was a product of a particular Hindu world

MADURAI CITY (1937)

and thus symbolically replaced their Telegu predecessors without

46 K. V. Sundaram and C. S. Chandrasekhara, 'Urban Morphology and Internal

to take place. Textile factories grew up in this sector, and a colony of

The Colonial Port City of Madras

In contrast to the Hindu world view expressed in the ceremonial city

48 Anon., Madura, p. 12.

MADRAS CITY (1901)

aort St. George

colonial scene before turning to Madras. G. Balandier in an article

Before the coming of the British, Madrasapatam was an insignificant

50 G. Balandier, 'The Colonial Situation: A Theoretical Approach,' in Immanuael

to establish factories on the Coromandel Coast, the Company chose a

52 Dr S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, 'The Character and Significance of the Founda-

The houses of the Europeans, Portuguese and Native Christians of

East India Company merchants and agents of private traders in the

by a Hindu East India Company merchant, and spinners and weavers

The mid-eighteenth century can be viewed as a turning point in the

turned their attention towards developing the fortifications of the

larly those of the native merchants.67 In 1798, the Government came

As the government functions of Madras increased in the course of

Fort west to the village of Poonamallee and crossed Mount Road.

72 Dupuis, Madras et le Nord du Coromandel, p. 405. For a more detailed description

dubashes in the employ of the East India Company chose to construct

houses and settlement took place in the vicinity.80 The center of

What this analysis of Madras has revealed is a tripartite urban form

Summary and Conclusion

political, religious and cultural capital, hence its ceremonial designa-

the urban development of two cities in India which represent two

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