TN government publication captures history of Cauvery delta

A coffee-table book, brought out recently by the Water Resources Department, gives an account of a British engineer’s reference to the Grand Anicut

Nearly 190 years ago, Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton (1803-1899), a celebrated British irrigation engineer, called the idea of building an anicut across the Cauvery “visionary.” At that time, he was toying with the proposal of building, what is now called the Upper Anicut at Mukkombu, about 18 km from Tiruchi, after studying the Grand Anicut or ‘Kallanai'’ in Tamil, which was said to have been built by Karikala Chola in the second century CE. In an account, he made a reference to the Grand Anicut by saying how it was done by “the natives hundreds of years ago” and “with their little science and poor means.”