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Dutch tombs, Machilipatnam

Carved granite gravestones of officers and families of the Dutch East India Company at Machilipatnam (Masulipatam), the oldest European monuments of the Telugu coast. The earliest is the tomb of Jacob Dedel, chief of the Company on the Coromandel coast, who died in 1624. A walled burial ground behind the Collector's office, at the place still called Valandupalem, holds slabs dated from 1662 to 1743, with coats of arms and verse epitaphs in Dutch.

The Dutch at Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam) buried their dead with care and expense. Alexander Rea surveyed the Company’s monuments in 1897.1 He found “a number of Dutch tombstones in various parts of the town”.1 Some were plain and others “richly carved … with raised and sunk lettering”.1 He thought it notable that among the seventeenth-century tombs at Machilipatnam “there are none French or English”.2

The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 mentions the old Dutch graveyard of Valanda-palem, “Hollander-town”.3 See Dutch East India Company and Machilipatnam.

The tombs

According to Mackenzie’s Kistna manual, the oldest stone lies in the fort.45 It bears the epitaph of “the Hon. Jacob Dedel, in his life Councillor in the Service and Chief by water and by land of the Dutch India Company on the Coromandel Coast”.45 Dedel died on 29 August 1624.45 Mackenzie took the stone as support for the tradition that the Dutch first built the fort.45

Mackenzie wrote that the site of the Dutch villas “is still known as Valandupalem, a corruption of Hollandpalem”.5 He added that “their burial ground is in a corner of the compound of a bungalow behind the Collector’s Office”.5 A masonry wall encloses it.5 Almost every stone bears a carved coat of arms.5 The grave of a sea captain shows him “with the three-cornered hat and long coat”.5

Rea counted the stones in three places:1

  • three slabs side by side at Ramanapeta, the central one dated 17011
  • sixteen in an enclosure in the cantonment, dated from 1662 to 17431
  • a broken slab in the court of the District Munsiff (local judge)1

The epitaphs

Mackenzie copied and translated five epitaphs, which Rea reprints.51 One covers Catharina van den Briel of Amsterdam and Johannes Kruyf, a junior merchant.56 They were “a young woman and young man” who died at the factory (trading post) on 3 October 1678 and 1 January 1679.56 The verse says that “their mutual meaning was of two to make one; but too cruel death forbad the union”.56

Another is of Jonna Bolwerk, wife of John Huysman, the second in charge of the factory.6 She died in 1682 after a life “ever bested” (always troubled) by sickness.6

A third stone, of 1687–88, covers six members of one family.78 Among them is the senior merchant Jacob Corbesier, second to the Governor of Pulicat.78 Another is Adrien Blockeel, chief of the factory at “Daetcherom”, whose wife was the daughter of Corbesier’s wife.78 The epitaph ends “So that here lie, one father, one mother, One sister, two brothers, Two men and two wives, But not more than six lives”.78

The latest epitaph Mackenzie copied is of Maria Wilhelmina Gambier.89 She was the wife of the second of the Coromandel coast and chief of its “Northern District”.89 She was born at Negapatam in 1702 and buried at Machilipatnam in 1735.89

Footnotes

  1. Alexander Rea, Monumental Remains of the Dutch East India Company in the Presidency of Madras (1897), p. 48 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Rea, Monumental Remains (1897), p. 45 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  3. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 324, s.v. Masulipatam (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  4. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 99 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 100 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  6. Rea, Monumental Remains (1897), p. 49 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  7. Rea, Monumental Remains (1897), p. 50 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. Rea, Monumental Remains (1897), p. 51 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  9. Rea, Monumental Remains (1897), p. 52 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

References

Sources (3)
  1. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 99–103. [Public domain]
  2. Alexander Rea, Monumental Remains of the Dutch East India Company in the Presidency of Madras (Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series, Vol. XXV) (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1897, pp. 48–52. [Public domain]
  3. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 324. [Public domain]

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