Coimbatore District in the context of "Nilgiris district"

Mettupalayam is a municipal town and headquarters of Mettupalayam Taluk in the Coimbatore District of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the second largest town in the Coimbatore district after Pollachi. It is located to the north of Coimbatore city on the way to Ooty, in the foothills of Nilgiri hills. As of 2011, the town had a population of 69,213. Mettupalayam railway station is the starting point of Nilgiri Mountain Railway and it operates the only rack railway in India connecting Ooty and Mettupalayam. It is a suburban area of Coimbatore City.

Coimbatore (Tamil: kōyamputtūr, IPA: [koːjɐmbut̪ːuːɾ] ), also known as Kovai (IPA: [koːʋaj] ), is a metropolitan city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyyal River and surrounded by the Western Ghats. It is the second largest city in Tamil Nadu after Chennai in terms of population and the 16th largest urban agglomeration in India as per the census 2011. It is the administrative capital of Coimbatore District and is administered by the Coimbatore Municipal Corporation which was established in 1981.

The region around Coimbatore was ruled by the Cheras during the Sangam period between the 1st and the 4th centuries CE and it served as the eastern entrance to the Palakkad Gap, the principal trade route between the west coast and Tamil Nadu. Coimbatore was located along the ancient trade route Rajakesari Peruvazhi that extended from Muziris to Arikamedu in South India. The medieval Cholas conquered the Kongu Nadu in the 10th century CE. The region was ruled by Vijayanagara Empire in the 15th century followed by the Nayaks who introduced the Palayakkarar system under which Kongu Nadu region was divided into 24 Palayams. In the later part of the 18th century, the Coimbatore region came under the Kingdom of Mysore and following the defeat of Tipu Sultan in the Anglo-Mysore Wars, the British East India Company annexed Coimbatore to the Madras Presidency in 1799. The Coimbatore region played a prominent role in the Second Poligar War (1801) when it was the area of operations of Dheeran Chinnamalai.

The earliest deciphered epigraphy found in the Indian subcontinent are the Edicts of Ashoka of the 3rd century BCE, in the Brahmi script.

If epigraphy of proto-writing is included, undeciphered markings with symbol systems that may or may not contain linguistic information, there is substantially older epigraphy in the Indus script, which dates back to the mid 4th millennium BCE. Two other important archeological classes of symbols are found from the 1st millennium BCE, Megalithic graffiti symbols and symbols on punch-marked coins, though most scholars do not consider these to constitute fully linguistic scripts, and their semiotic functions are not well understood.