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| Sulthan bathery,Wayanad, Kerala .hellotravel.com |
Today celebrated as Kerala’s cleanest town, Sulthan bathery owes its unusual name to an episode from the Mysore campaigns in Malabar during the late 18th century. The settlement, originally called Ganapathivattom, took its name from an ancient Ganapati temple that once stood nearby. At its heart lay a stone Jain temple built in the 13th–14th century by merchants under Vijayanagara patronage. This quiet hill town became strategically important when Tipu Sultan, seeking to extend his hold over Malabar and curb local uprisings, marched through the region after the Second Anglo-Mysore War.
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| Jain temple, Wayanad,Kerala |
Above image: Presently the idol is in the Ananthanath temple at Kalpetta, Kerala and will be annually brought here during Mahavir Jayanthi.There is no idolhere and only a pedestal meant for the idol is located in the sanctum.In this part Jainism...began its decline after the 18th century .
British records and local tradition agree that Tipu’s army converted the Jain shrine into an Armory and storehouse for guns, cannon, and ammunition—a “battery” in military parlance. The place where the weapons were kept became known as the Sultan’s Battery, which over time evolved into the Malayalam form Sulthan Bathery. A fort once guarded the store, though little remains of it except a police station on the site.
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| Wayanad Mapin.pinterest.com |
After Tipu’s death at Srirangapatna in 1799 and the subsequent reshuffling of territories, Wayanad first passed to the restored Wadiyar rulers and soon afterwards to the British in 1803. Yet the evocative name born of Mysorean occupation endured. Today the Bathery Jain Temple, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India, is a quiet monument to these layered histories. Around it has grown a lively town, known not only for its cleanliness and pleasant climate but also for preserving, in its very name, the memory of an era when a medieval shrine became a depot for a warrior-king’s artillery.
