c.1680

Santhaayi Ammaiyar settles the forest clearing

Around 1680 a devout Christian woman, Santhaayi (Sandhai) Ammaiyar, came with her family from Thoppuvilai and made her home in what was then only forest, full of bushes, trees and pits. Being firm in her Catholic faith, the parish's own history records, she raised a little roadside Crusadi, a cross-shrine, opposite her door, and a Christian settlement began to gather around her faith.

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

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

Still in copyright. We quote a short passage with attribution, as the law allows, and do not reproduce the page.

What this source establishes

The one genuinely external leg of the Santhaayi tradition: a scholar of South Indian religion, writing independently of the parish, records a woman founder and a small shrine containing a cross. We do not hold the book — this is quoted at second hand, and it is still in copyright.