The Coromandel Coast is the southeastern coastal region of the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, In ...

, bounded by the

Utkal Plains The Utkal Plain is part of the East Coastal Plain of India. It is a coastal plain in the Odisha state of eastern India. It includes the delta of the Mahanadi River, Brahmani River, Baitarani River. The most prominent physiographic feature of th ...

to the north, the Bay of Bengal to the east, the

Kaveri The Kaveri (also known as Cauvery, the anglicized name) is one of the major Indian rivers flowing through the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Kaveri river rises at Talakaveri in the Brahmagiri range in the Western Ghats, Kodagu d ...

delta to the south, and the

Eastern Ghats The Eastern Ghats are a discontinuous range of mountains along India's eastern coast. The Eastern Ghats pass through Odisha, Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu in the south passing some parts of Karnataka as well as Telangana. They are eroded and ...

to the west, extending over an area of about 22,800 square kilometres.Encyclopædia Britannica entry on Coromandel Coast
/ref> The coast has an average elevation of 80 metres and is backed by the

, a chain of low lying and flat-topped hills. In historical Muslim sources from the 12th century onward, the Coromandel Coast was called Maʿbar.

Etymology

The land of the

Chola dynasty The Chola dynasty was a Tamil thalassocratic empire of southern India and one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the history of the world. The earliest datable references to the Chola are from inscriptions dated to the 3rd century BC ...

was called ''Cholamandalam'' (சோழ மண்டலம்) in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

, translated as ''The realm of the Cholas'', from which the Portuguese derived the name ''Coromandel''.''The Land of the Tamulians and Its Missions'', by Eduard Raimund Baierlein, James Dunning BakerSouth Indian Coins – Page 61 by T. Desikachari – Coins, Indic – 1984Indian History – Page 112''Annals of Oriental Research'' – Page 1 by University of Madras – 1960''The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea'' by

Wilfred Harvey Schoff Wilfred Harvey Schoff (1874–1932) was an early twentieth-century American antiquarian and classical scholar. Career Schoff was responsible for translating a number of important ancient texts. Among these works was the 1st century CE Greco ...

The name could also be derived from ''Karai mandalam'', meaning ''The realm of the Shores''. Coromondel is the Dutch pronunciation of the word "Karimandalam", a village in the Sriharikota island in the north of Pazhavercadu (Pulecat Lake). An Italian explorer,

Ludovico di Varthema Ludovico di Varthema, also known as Barthema and Vertomannus (c. 1470 – 1517), was an Italian traveller, diarist and aristocrat known for being one of the first non-Muslim Europeans to enter Mecca as a pilgrim. Nearly everything that is known ...

, perhaps first gave the name Coromandel in 1510, which was then used on maps by the Portuguese, but it was the Dutch who took up serious trading there.

Flora

The Coromandel Coast is home to the

East Deccan dry evergreen forests The East Deccan dry evergreen forests is an ecoregion of southeastern India. The ecoregion includes the coastal region behind the Coromandel Coast on the Bay of Bengal, between the Eastern Ghats and the sea. It covers eastern Tamil Nadu, part ...

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...

, which runs in a narrow strip along the coast. Unlike most of the other

tropical dry forest The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest is a habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature and is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive ...

Biome A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...

regions of India, where the trees lose their leaves during the dry season, the East Deccan dry evergreen forests retain their leathery leaves year round. The Coromandel Coast is also home to extensive

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

forests along the low-lying coast and

river delta A river delta is a landform shaped like a triangle, created by deposition of sediment that is carried by a river and enters slower-moving or stagnant water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or (more rare ...

s, and several important

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (Anoxic waters, anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in t ...

s, notably Kaliveli Lake and

Pulicat Lake Pulicat Lagoon is the second largest brackish water lagoon in India, (after Chilika Lake), measuring . Major part of the lagoon comes under Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh. The lagoon is one of the three important wetlands to attract nort ...

, that provide habitat to thousands of migrating and resident birds.

History

By late 1530 the Coromandel Coast was home to three Portuguese settlements at

Nagapattinam Nagapattinam (''nākappaṭṭinam'', previously spelt Nagapatnam or Negapatam) is a town in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Nagapattinam District. The town came to prominence during the period of Medieval ...

, São Tomé de Meliapore, and

Pulicat Pulicat or Pazhaverkadu is a historic seashore town in Chennai Metropolitan Area at Thiruvallur District, of Tamil Nadu state, India. It is about north of Chennai and from Elavur, on the southern periphery of the Pulicat Lake. Pulicat lake i ...

. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Coromandel Coast was the scene of rivalries among European powers for control of the India trade. The British established themselves at

Fort St George Fort St. George (or historically, White Town) is a fortress in the coastal city of Chennai, India. Founded in 1639, it was the first English (later British) fortress in India. The construction of the fort provided the impetus for further ...

(Madras) and

Masulipatnam Machilipatnam (), also known as Masulipatnam and Bandar, is a city in Krishna district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a municipal corporation and the administrative headquarters of Krishna district. It is also the mandal headquar ...

, the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

at Pulicat,

Sadras Sadras is a fortress town located on India's Coromandel Coast in Chengalpattu district, 70 km south of Chennai in Tamil Nadu state. ''Sadras'' is the anglicised form of the ancient town of ''Saduranga pattinam''. History and Etymology An ...

and

Covelong Kovalam (Covelong) is a fishing village in Chennai, India, 40 kilometres south of Chennai, on the East Coast Road en route to Mahabalipuram. Covelong (Cabelon in French = Kovalam) was a port town developed in the 1720s by the Ostend Company on ...

, the French at

Pondicherry Pondicherry (), now known as Puducherry ( French: Pondichéry ʊdʊˈtʃɛɹi(listen), on-dicherry, is the capital and the most populous city of the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the sout ...

Karaikal Karaikal ( /kʌdɛkʌl/, french: Karikal /kaʁikal/) is a town of the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. Karaikal was sold to the French by the Rajah of Thanjavur and became a French Colony in 1739. The French held control, with occa ...

and

Nizampatnam Nizampatnam is a village in Bapatla district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is the mandal headquarters of Nizampatnam mandal in Repalle revenue division. The Dutch occupied the city for trading from 1606−1668. Etymology Named a ...

, the Danish in Dansborg at Tharangambadi. The Coromandel Coast supplied

Indian Muslim Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, approximately 172.2 million people identifying as adherents of Islam in 2011 Census. India is also the country with the second or third largest number of Muslim ...

eunuch A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millenni ...

s to the Thai palace and court of

Siam Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

(modern Thailand). The Thai at times asked eunuchs from China to visit the court in Thailand and advise them on court ritual since they held them in high regard. Eventually the British won out, although France retained the tiny enclaves of Pondichéry and

until 1954. Chinese lacquer goods, including boxes, screens, and chests, became known as "Coromandel" goods in the 18th century, because many Chinese exports were consolidated at the Coromandel ports. Two of the famous books on the economic history of the Coromandel Coast are ''Merchants, companies, and commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740'' (Arasaratnam, Oxford University Press, 1986) and ''The World of the Weaver in Northern Coromandel, c.1750-c.1850'' (P. Swarnalatha, Orient Longman, 2005). On 26 December 2004, one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history, the

Indian Ocean earthquake An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time ( UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sum ...

, struck off the western coast of

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

(Indonesia). The

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

and subsequent tsunami reportedly killed over 220,000 people around the rim of the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

. The tsunami devastated the Coromandel Coast, killing many and sweeping away many coastal communities.

Applications of the name

Four ships of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...

have borne the name after the Indian coast. The

Coromandel Peninsula The Coromandel Peninsula ( mi, Te Tara-O-Te-Ika-A-Māui) on the North Island of New Zealand extends north from the western end of the Bay of Plenty, forming a natural barrier protecting the Hauraki Gulf and the Firth of Thames in the ...

in New Zealand was named after one of these ships, and the town of

Coromandel, New Zealand Coromandel, ( mi, Kapanga) also called Coromandel Town to distinguish it from the wider district, is a town on the Coromandel Harbour, on the western side of the Coromandel Peninsula, which is in the North Island of New Zealand. It is 75 kilomet ...

was named after the peninsula.

Coromandel Valley, South Australia Coromandel Valley is a semirural south-eastern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It straddles the City of Mitcham and the City of Onkaparinga council areas, with the Sturt River being the boundary between the two council areas. History ...

, and its neighbouring suburb, Coromandel East, gained their names from the ship '' Coromandel'', which arrived in Holdfast Bay from London in 1837 with 156 English settlers. After the ship reached the shore, some of its sailors deserted, intending to remain behind in South Australia, and took refuge in the hills in the Coromandel Valley region. In Slovene, the

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language ...

''Indija Koromandija'' (India Coromandel) means a land of plenty, a promised land, a utopia where "Houses are bleached with cheese and covered with cake".

Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal ...

situates his nonsense poem ''The Yonghy Bonghy Bo'' by citing Coromandel on the first line: ''On the Coast of Coromandel''.

References

External links

Encyclopædia Britannica: Coromandel Coast (region, India)
{{Authority control Coasts of India South India Regions of India Regions of Andhra Pradesh Regions of Tamil Nadu Landforms of Puducherry Landforms of Tamil Nadu Eastern Ghats Natural regions Colonial India Danish India Dutch India French India Former Dutch colonies Former French colonies