Folklore · Legends · 4 min read

Two Caves, One Thief? The Legend of Thankayya, Robber of the High Ranges

On the Gap Road above Munnar, a cleft in the rocks is called the cave of the mountain thief. Twenty kilometres away, in the hills of Bison Valley, another cave tells the story of a robber with the very same name. A short look at a folk legend that seems to have wandered between two caves.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Every hill country has its outlaws, and the High Range has Thankayya. Ask around Devikulam and you will hear of a man who robbed the rich travellers on the old road over the gap, hid in a crack in the rocks, and gave his loot to the poor. Ask in Bison Valley, across the valley to the east, and you will hear of a robber of the same name who hid in a cave among the boulders there. Is it one man, or one story told twice?

The cave on the Gap Road

The Malayil Kallan Guha, "the cave of the mountain thief", is a narrow fracture between two great granite boulders beside the Gap Road, about 14 km from Munnar. According to local tradition, recorded by the Munnar historian M. J. Babu, it was the hideout of Thankayyan, a man from Tamil Nadu who worked on the Pallivasal estate before Independence, escaped from the Devikulam police after robbing a neighbour, and lived here as an outlaw, preying on travellers and sharing his loot with the poor of Tamil Nadu villages. Some say the police finally killed him; others say a woman did. The cave is said to appear in the 1954 Tamil film Malaikallan, starring M. G. Ramachandran, whose hero is himself a noble mountain outlaw. (Read the full story in Clouds, Cliffs and a Thief's Cave.)

The caves of Bison Valley

Some 20 km away, the Kalladanthy caves at Bison Valley, now part of the Indriya adventure park, are a cluster of talus caves among fallen boulders, about 200 m long, with a stream running through one of them. Here too, the story goes, a robber named Thankayya once made his hideout. (Read about the Kalladanthy caves and the parks of Munnar.)

One thief or two?

From the Lockhart Gap viewpoint, right beside the Malayil Kallan cave, you look straight down towards Bison Valley. It is tempting to imagine one outlaw moving between hideouts on either side of the valley, and perhaps that is how the story grew. Folk tales travel easily, and a famous name attaches itself to any good hiding place. There is no documentary record of Thankayya in either place, and the details of the legends differ. What both stories share is the figure of the outlaw who robs the rich and helps the poor, a hero found in the folklore of many lands, and one that clearly spoke to the plantation workers and settlers of the High Range.

(Read also the Kuthirayala cave temple and the Andavar Kovil cave of Vattavada.)