Veeranam Tank in Cuddalore, a Chola-Era Reservoir With a 16 km Embankment, Still Irrigates 44,856 Acres, Sends Water 235 km to Chennai and Was Listed by ICID in 2021

Veeranam tank in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district has a main embankment 16 km long and a storage capacity of 1,465 million cubic feet (about 41 million cubic metres). It waters 44,856 acres (about 18,150 hectares) in 102 villages, according to the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID), which recognised it as a World Heritage Irrigation Structure at its 72nd International Executive Council meeting in Marrakesh in 2021. The same tank also supplies Chennai, about 235 km away.

The tank is a Chola-period work. Which Chola ordered it, and in which century, is a question the published sources answer in three different ways.

What the tank does today

ICID’s entry says the tank receives rain from a catchment of 165 square miles. It also takes Cauvery water from the Coleroon (Kollidam) river through the Lower Anicut, a regulator on the river, and a supply channel called the Vadavar. At full level the water spread covers 15 square miles, about 39 square km.

Twenty-eight sluices along the main bund and six along the foreshore bund feed field channels. ICID says the water moves through them by gravity alone, and the longest field channel, the Boothangudi channel, runs 24.3 km. The command area, called the ayacut, lies in the Chidambaram, Bhuvanagiri and Kattumannarkoil taluks. Two surplus channels carry flood water away to the Bay of Bengal.

The Cuddalore district administration’s page calls it one of the oldest and largest man-made lakes in Tamil Nadu. The Hindu reported in 2021 that Tamil Nadu had won three of the four Indian entries chosen by ICID that year for its heritage irrigation list. ICID’s list is its own award, separate from UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee.

How the water gets in

Most of the tank’s water comes from the river, not the sky. The 1906 South Arcot district gazetteer, edited by W. Francis for the Government of Madras, describes the Vadavar as a channel that leaves the Coleroon at the Lower Anicut and flows into the tank, irrigating land along its banks through 26 sluices on the way. It dates that anicut to 1836, built on the advice of Colonel Arthur Cotton to replace an older structure of sand and brushwood.

Francis also records that the Vadavar had no head sluice at the time, so heavy Coleroon floods sent more water into the tank than it needed, and silt reduced its capacity. A head regulator was added in the 1920s, according to the 1962 gazetteer by B. S. Baliga. ICID’s entry adds that the tank is now also linked by a channel at its northern end to the Vellar river, so surplus can be passed on to the Vellar Rajan channel when water runs short there.

The engineering has been reworked more than once. Baliga says the full tank level was raised by 2 feet between 1906 and 1913. ICID says a rehabilitation from 1997 to 2006 protected the upstream face of the bund with concrete blocks along its whole length and raised the bund top by another 2 feet under the New Veeranam Project. ICID credits that work with lifting capacity from 985 million cubic feet to 1,440 million, and a wave wall now sits on the upstream side.

Who built it, and when

ICID says the tank was dug under Parantaka I, in the 9th century, by his soldiers during rest time after a war. In ICID’s account the king named it Veeranarayanan Eri, after the Veera Narayana Perumal temple, and the name later shortened to Veeranam. The wording on the ICID page is “excavated by his soldiers during the rest time available after the war.”

The Cuddalore district page says instead that it was built in the 10th century by Rajaditya Chola, the son of Parantaka I. A third reading appears in the colonial and state gazetteers. Francis wrote in 1906 that local tradition gave the tank to the king who built the city of Gangaikondacholapuram, and that inscriptions identify that king as Rajendra I, whom he dates to 1011 to 1037. Baliga’s 1962 volume says the tank is supposed to have been made by Rajendra Chola. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri’s standard history gives Rajendra’s reign as 1012 to 1044. The city is covered in our piece on the Great Living Chola temples.

The century also needs care. Sastri dates Parantaka I to 907 to 955, which falls in the 10th century, so ICID’s “9th century” does not sit comfortably with its own choice of king. The district page’s 10th century fits both Parantaka I and Rajaditya.

The name offers the strongest clue in the sources we could open. Sastri notes that Viranarayana was a surname of Parantaka I, and that the temple town near the tank’s southern end, Kattumannarkoyil, was formally Viranarayana-caturvedimangalam, a village granted to learned Brahmins. He mentions a record of 1124 in which Vikrama Chola is living in a palace there. Francis adds that the town’s Sanskrit name was Viranarayanapura and that a person called Viranarayana was said to have founded it and given the tank his name. These facts tie the place to a name Parantaka I bore. None of the pages we read quotes an inscription that records the digging itself, so the builder remains a matter of attribution, not of a dated stone record.

For the wider picture of Parantaka’s reign, see the inscriptions at Uttaramerur. Sastri also notes that the Karandai plates credit Parantaka with digging numerous irrigation canals across the country, which gives the king a documented record of water works even though the plates do not name this tank in the passage we read.

How big it is: three sets of figures

The bund is 16 km long in ICID’s entry. Francis put it at ten miles in 1906, which is about 16 km, and he noted that for eight of those miles it carried the main road to the Lower Anicut. The district page gives 14 km.

Capacity and command area have changed with each rebuild. ICID gives 1,465 million cubic feet as the present capacity. Baliga recorded a command of about 41,700 acres and 23 sluices in 1962, against ICID’s 44,856 acres and 34 sluices now. The tank’s size, as Francis described it, was one of the largest in the Madras Presidency, with a circumference of 25 miles at full level.

The pipeline to Chennai

The tank’s second job is a modern one. ICID says the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board built a pumping station on the tank’s left flank that lifts about 70 cusecs, roughly 2 cubic metres a second, into a pipeline of about 225 km. After treatment the water goes to Chennai, which ICID places 235 km away, at between 50 and 180 million litres a day.

DT Next reported in April 2018 that the scheme supplied about 75 million litres a day at first and later 180 million, and that the Water Resources Department could draw a maximum of 78 cusecs. The same report puts the combined supply from the city’s reservoirs and desalination plants at around 650 million litres a day. A Water Resources Department official described Veeranam in the report as the city’s insurance for water supply.

Dry years and full years

Down To Earth reported, citing Chennai Metrowater data, that Veeranam stood at zero million cubic feet on 15 April 2024, after supply stopped on 28 February 2024 when inflow from Mettur ceased. On the same date in 2023 it held 687.4 million cubic feet.

It refilled. DT Next reported on 4 June 2025 that the lake had reached its full level of 47.50 feet and 1,465 million cubic feet, up from 650 million about two weeks earlier. Inflow was 342 cusecs from the Vadavar and local streams, and officials had started a regulated release of 74 cusecs for Chennai. The Indo-Asian News Service report carried by Lokmat Times gave the same figures. The most recent storage report we could open is from June 2025, and Chennai Metrowater publishes current lake levels.