Gingee Fort’s Forgotten King: How Raja Tej Singh Became Tamil Folklore’s Desing Raja

On three granite hillocks in present-day Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu stands a fort that has seen empires rise and fall. The Gingee Fort, known to historians as the “Troy of the East,” was described by the Maratha king Shivaji as the most impregnable fortress in India. Its massive ramparts, sixty feet wide in places, and its eighty-foot-wide moat have withstood sieges from the Vijayanagara Empire, the Marathas, the Mughals, the French, and the British.

Gingee Fort’s Forgotten King: How Raja Tej Singh Became Tamil Folklore’s Desing Raja