A deed remembered: The inscription on the wall of the Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal temple kitchen records the donation by Revenue Board Sherishtadar Jayaram Chetty.
| Photo Credit: V. Sriram
I have come to the conclusion that there is a book waiting to be written on Saidapet. It was after all once a district headquarters and had it not been absorbed into Madras in 1947, it would have still held its own. I was stunned by the sheer volume of history on the place and enjoyed myself immensely putting together a heritage walk that, owing to time limitation, was restricted to just one quarter of Saidapet. And among my finds was Jayaram Chetty.
You would imagine that with a name like Saidapet, the place would be replete with mosques but what it has almost in excess are temples. There is practically one in every street. The big ones are the Karaniswarar, Sivasubramania Swami, Soundareswarar, and Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal temples. Of them, the last named is privately managed by the Balija Chetty community and is spotlessly maintained. And it was here that I discovered our man, who also has a street named after him in the vicinity.
The temple, located on Perumal Koil Street, has an interesting history. At one end of the fairly long thoroughfare is an exquisite Hanuman shrine with what must have at one time been direct line of sight to the main temple, which was originally dedicated to Rama. In fact, the area itself was known as Raghunathapuram. Sometime in the mid 19th Century, idols of Vishnu and consorts were added to the sanctum, which still also houses Rama with Sita and Lakshmana. The temple thereafter became associated with the new deity: Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal.
Completed by son
A stone inscription on the wall of the temple kitchen, dating to 1896 but so well maintained that it could have been sculpted yesterday, records the donation by the Revenue Board Sherishtadar (head clerk) Jayaram Chetty. The temple kitchen was constructed using this money. The donor was probably dead by then, for the slab says the work was completed under the supervision of his son, Veerasami Chetty.
A search on the Internet revealed that Jayaram Chetty was no ordinary head clerk. In the 1850s, with all of what would become Madras Presidency under its control, the East India Company was faced with the necessity to standardise land revenue records which were in a bewildering array of languages, and followed various systems and procedures. It was to Jayaram Chetty they turned. He, in his capacity as Head Accountant in the North Arcot Collector’s Cutcherry, was already engaged in such a task. He was consequently transferred to the Board of Revenue as Uncovenanted Special Assistant in 1854 to complete his study. In course of time, he became the Head Sherishtadar.
Survey of practices
His report, dated March 21, 1855, and forwarded to the Government by J.D. Bourdillon, Secretary to the Government, was a masterly survey of practices in 14 districts of Madras Presidency. The document bristles with native terms, all of them with suitable explanations. Some of these are recognisable even now — chitta and adangal are still in use in land transactions. Several age-old agricultural terms such as sagupadi, nanjai, punjai, and dittum also appear. To standardise revenue assessment and collection, Jayaram Chetty created forms for use across all the districts. These were subject to scrutiny by the Government and approved. There were even suggestions that these could be translated into Tamil and English. Further details on this remarkable man are sadly not available. A report dated 1879 tells us that his recommendations certainly helped in uniform accounting in the mofussil, but subsequent developments necessitated changes. Clearly, land records were always in a state of flux, as they are now, digitisation notwithstanding.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)
Published – March 04, 2025 10:53 pm IST