Talk:Pettah, Thiruvananthapuram

Pettah: outside the fort

I had started to write a section to ask what the derivation of pettah was as it crops up in many old dusty accounts of the British in India eg the Pettah of Ahmednagar. I have now found a source that explains it while talking about the pettah of Colombo (Ashok K. Dutt, Challenges to Asian urbanization in the 21st century,p. 60):

The Pettah demonstrates its antiquity from its name which is "an Anglo-Inian corruption of Tamil Pettia, meaning outside the fort (Perera 1998, 48) (see chapter 3 for a discussion of the similar area of Kalbadevi in Mumbai). This area [in Colombo] functions originally, and continues today, as a bazaar focus of the in indigenous town. ...

If this article is to remain at Pettah I think that an explanation of the word should be given close to the start of the article. -- PBS (talk) 15:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)