What's in a Name: Aranadu, the Kara and the Land by the Water

Ask an old resident what “Aranattukara” means and you may get three or four different answers, each told with complete confidence. That is fitting. The name has never been settled, and the arguments about it say a good deal about what kind of place this was: low land at the edge of the water, a landing for boats, a row of storehouses, and a busy market on the south-western side of Thrissivaperur, the old name of Thrissur.

The book this series draws on even carries the puzzle in its title: Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu. Joy Chiramel lays out the main theories side by side, and we follow him here.

Kara: the dry land among the paddy

Start with the last part of the name. In old Kerala the kingdom was divided into nadus (districts), the nadus into desams (villages), and the desams into smaller units called karas. But kara also has a plainer, everyday meaning: firm, level ground that is not paddy field — land you can build a house on and plant around.

In Thrissur that planted garden land is called parambu. Coconut, areca, banana and tapioca grow together on it. Below it lie the padams, the paddy fields, divided into kandams (plots) by earth bunds that let farmers hold water in or let it out. A visitor once joked that half of Kerala’s farmland seemed to be bunds.

Around Thrissur, several place names end in -kara: Kanattukara, Aranattukara, Mukkattukara. A well-loved local explanation says these names measured how much dry land each place had among the water — a quarter (kal) for Kanattukara, a half (ara) for Aranattukara, three-quarters (mukkal) for Mukkattukara. It is the sort of explanation that is almost too neat, but the book points out that it fits the lie of the land: Aranattukara really was a kara with water on several sides.

The land of aras

The second theory comes from trade. Long before Thrissur had its present markets, this was the town’s landing place for boats. Tradition says the most important thing stored here was salt — and in an age without ice or refrigerators, salt was what kept the fish catch from rotting. So the place is said to have been full of upparas, salt stores.

An ara is a storeroom. A place full of them could be called Arranadu, “the land of storerooms”. Say that quickly for a few centuries and it softens into Aranadu, and the kara of Aranadu becomes Aranattukara. Older people still remember going to the market as going to the aramukham — “the face of the storerooms”. We tell that part of the story in The Port of Thrissivaperur.

Kottanadinkara: the edge of the fort-land

A third theory looks to defence. Thrissur is said to have been ringed by earth walls and a moat; today we still speak of Kizhakkekotta (East Fort) and Padinjarekotta (West Fort). Tradition holds that Tipu Sultan’s army broke through on the western side in the eighteenth century, and that the track they made later became Calvary Road.

An old Malayalam dictionary gives aran as “fort” or “place of refuge”. If Thrissur was the fort-land, Aranattukara would be its south-western kara — aran + nadu + kara, “the bank of the fort country”. The book itself notes the weakness of this idea: if the walls were raised only against Tipu, we would expect the name to be younger than it seems to be. There is no firm record either way.

A place of comings and goings

The same dictionary gives aranam a second set of meanings: stirring, going, moving about. A landing place where carts unloaded and boats loaded, where traders, boatmen and porters came and went all day, could well have been called Aranamnadu, the bustling land. Of all the theories, this one may describe the old Aranattukara best — even if we can never prove it.

The village on paper

By the time records become reliable, Aranattukara was a revenue village of the Cochin State made up of four desams: Aranattukara, Lalur, Karyattukara and Olari. A settlement register quoted in the book puts its area at a little over 1,762 acres, almost all of it paddy land and garden land, with the remainder counted as public land and waste.

It lay about three miles from the heart of Thrissur, bounded by Ayyanthole to the north, Thrissur and Koorkenchery to the east, Kanimangalam to the south, and Manakkody and Pullazhi to the west.

The census figures the book gives are small by today’s standards: 2,016 people in 1891, and 2,343 in 1901, living in 435 houses. In 1901 about three in four were Christians — 1,760 — with 575 Hindus and 8 others. Much of the land beyond the houses was still scrub and bamboo; one old name for part of the area, Pattalangadi, is said to come from those bamboo thickets.

Roads in a grid

Unusually for a Kerala village, Aranattukara’s old streets were laid out in a rough grid: parallel roads tied together by cross-roads, so that every lane led to a market. The markets gave their names to the neighbourhoods — Kizhakke Angadi, Valiyangadi, Padinjare Angadi, Puthenangadi and Anchangadi — with Kizhakkeppuram to the east and Padinjappuram to the west. Roads ran south past the church to the old kadavu (boat landing).

These were not smooth roads. Laterite earth was covered with broken stone, packed down with water and red earth, and levelled by dragging heavy cement rollers. Bullock-cart wheels cut ruts that turned into little streams in the monsoon. Motor cars and buses, the book says, began running only after 1920. Before that, carts with hurricane lanterns swinging at the back came in long lines at night, bringing produce from as far as Chittur to be loaded onto boats here.

Which name is right?

Probably none of them on its own. A half-dry kara by the water would naturally become a landing; a landing would fill with storerooms and people; and a place close to a fortified town would be described by its relation to the fort. Each theory remembers one face of the same place. That, perhaps, is the best way to read the name: as a short history in itself.

Next: The Port of Thrissivaperur.

Sources

Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 1
Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 2 and ch. 12 (bamboo country, Pattalangadi, Lalur)