c.1680

Santhaayi Ammaiyar and her cross

About the year 1680 a Christian woman named Santhaayi Ammaiyar came with her family out of Thoppuvilai and stopped at a place that was then nothing but forest — bush, trees and pits, and a tank on its northern side that gave the place its name. She built her house there. Because she was firm in her faith she raised a little roadside crusadi, a cross-shrine, in the open ground facing her door, and she prayed at it where anyone passing could see her. Others came and built beside her. A settlement gathered around one woman's cross.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 2 sources.
Bayly 1989
a small shrine containing a cross

What this source establishes

A scholar of South Indian religion, working from the Jesuit manuscripts at the Madura Mission Archives rather than from anything the parish published, who records a woman founder and a small shrine containing a cross — and who goes further than the parish does: she calls her the actual founder of the village, and identifies her as a Shanar (Nadar) woman, a charismatic Christian teacher. The page tells the story without her caste, because the shrine does not tell its history through caste; the book says what it says, and here it is. We do not hold the volume — this is quoted at second hand, and it is still in copyright.

This is as much of the book as this site prints. It is named in full in the bibliography below.

Saints, Goddesses and KingsCambridge University Press, 1989 — pp. 405–406