One of the earliest references to Dharmapuri is on it’s cheiftain Adiyaman/Adigaman (Atikamāṉ) and associated fort Atikamāṉ koTTai. Other similar names can be seen are Cheramāṉ, TonDaimāṉ etc. Tagadur (Tagaṭūr- Ta. Ka. Te. Mal. Tu. Thin metal plate ) (1/n)
Puṟanāṉūṟu 230 describes about defeat of Atikamāṉ Ezhini to Cēra king Cēramāṉ irumpoṟai (~2AD) (2/n) 
Kārimaṅgalam (Dharapuri district) is after malaiman king Kāri ( Cheftian of Tirukkōvilūr), who helped Cēra to defeat Atikaman (3/n)
The region has been ruled by various kingdoms & controls along the timeline- Adiyaman, Cheras, Pallavas, RashtrakooTas, Cholas, Hoysalas, Pandyas, Delhi Sultanate, Vijayanagar, Marattas, Mysore (Wodeyars, Hyder Ali, Sultan), Salem (British Madras & Tamil Nadu (Madras)) (4/n)
As a result, the places over here has seen changes in demography, change in names, migrations etc. The source thread points out abundance of Kannada inscriptions. While this is true, there are considerable Tamil inscriptions at various places in the district (5/n)
The Kalabairvar temple at fort has Tamil inscriptions which talk about Kulothunga chola III (~1200 AD), Raja Raja Chola III (~1250), Hoysala Mahendra II (~1250) and his son Someswara, who joined Cholas to stop Pandyas.* (6/n)
The south wall of the Kamakshi temple is a Tamil inscription for Kulottunga III. At Modur, a village six miles due north of Dharmapuri, there is a Tamil inscription which talks about Hoysala rule. Theerthamalai has few VaTTezhuttu inscriptions* (7/n)
Current Dharmapuri (which earlier had Krishnagiri district combined) was part of Salem district in British, even after 1947, until it got district status in 1965. The district currently has 5 taluks- Pennagaram, Dharmapuri, Harur, Pappireddipatti & Palakkode. (8/n)
While what this tweet states is seen in taluks that are west of Salem to Krishnagiri road, The taluks that are east of the road mentioned have mostly Tamil names (Harur, Pappireddipatti, partially Dharmapuri).
Some of the villages in Harur taluk seen below. (9/n)
There is village, west of Salem-K'giri road- Pāpparappaṭṭi, an agraharam which was given to Kanarese Brahmins (during Mysore rule),name also denotes it (word used in different context in Tamil sphere now) . This is noted by Richard, IFS in Salem district manual, 1910 (10/n)
Kaveri river and ghats separate Chamarajanagar district of today from Dharmapuri's Pennagaram (which is located in west of Salem-K'giri road) (11/n)
Unlike Denkanikottai (of Krishnagiri) which saw migration of Kanarese (Kannada) population to further west (to Mysore), Dharmapuri has no records (AFAIK) of migration. Tamil can be seen as majority language through out the district. (12/n)
While discussing about lowest literacy rate of the district, I have discussed with a teacher from the region (who has sound knowledge about the dist part ly western) and there is no issue of lang, which is the cause of the issue. Discussion (Tam) : (13/n)
I have collected linguistic details of Dharmapuri district from census 2011 and have tabulated it (taluk wise). 87.92% registered Tamil as mother tongue, 2.95% for Kannada, 6.50% for Telugu, 2.61% for other languages including Urdu, Malayalam, Marathi, Hindi (14/n)
Krishnagiri distirct was included the erstwhile Salem (then Dharmapuri), hence this statement will be a generalization (if directly read today). Will discuss about Krishnagiri in the next tweets . (15/n)
The cultures of Madeswaran (Malai Madeswara) apart from Tamil elements like Pongal along with other things carried along (through different kingdoms) with time are seen in Dharmapuri even in some of the Tamil households. (16/n)
Regarding Krishnagiri, which was part of Tagadur, became separate district from Dharampuri in 2004. This is really multilingual district (relatively). Here, East/south of Krishnagiri is Tamil & Tamil-Telugu, Western district (west/south west)- Tamil-Telugu-Kannada. (17/n)
The tribal languages, some of which are classified under Malayalam (too!), some under different family of both Dharmapuri & Krishnagiri are tagged under other langauges. (18/n)
Tabulation of Census 2011, Krishnagiri (I have tabulated population first, then percentage wise in the next tweet). Here, Urdu is spoken by significant population (but less than Telugu/Kannada) (19/n)
While Krishnagiri, Pochamapalli and Uthangarai taluks have Tamil at 69.7%, 81.6%, 82.5%, Hosur and Denkanikottai taluks have substantial Telugu and Kannada speaking population (trilingual taluks). (20/n)
GoTN has given options for choosing medium of instruction/eduction in the above taluk schools (where ever applicable for the major langauges mentioned in the table) -taluks (21/n)
* details regarding inscriptions are from Salem manual, 1910 Richards.
Dharmapuri & K'giri have their unique dialects. Both the dialects have close relations (more common features) with arcot. D'puri has it's unique set of vocab, some shared with western dialects (due to proximity), K'giri sees words from Tel,Kan & Urdu for obvious reasons (21/n)
The Telugu spoken over here is closely related to one spoken in Kuppam,AP, Kannada closely related to Bengaluru rural. (Absence of ha-kara is observed in Denkanikottai.) (22/n)
unroll @threadreaderapp
