It is mentioned in the book The Oriental Annual of Sceneries India published in 1834 that this image of queen Venkata Rangammal, who is said to be wearing a necklace of two shells, was painted by William Daniel 220 years ago in 1800 (pages 84 – 85).
As a late queen, she was able to wear so many gold ornaments, etc., that this shell necklace, caressed by the sea breeze, sea water and sand of her motherland, Vellore, India, was still around her neck until she was exiled again as a prisoner of Lakdivan. From that we can understand the love she had for her native land even though she stayed here
It is said that on the last day of her visit to the Vellore beach, the day before coming to Sri Lanka, she wore the two shells as a souvenir and when she came back to Sri Lanka the next day, she brought them and attached them to a necklace.
The mountain range seen in the background of this painting is said to be the Hantana mountain range overlooking the sea of milk. On the left is a picture of the Milky Way Lake by the British Captain O'Brien around 1854.
But experts who have studied the history of archeology further and know about this matter say that it is a blatant lie that Queen Rangammal is wearing two shells. It has become strange for the white artist who did not know about the old jewelry fashion.
Accordingly, Othomo wears the Thirumadagalayam (Siri Madagalam) worn by her husband at her wedding, or the Thalia made of gold as we all have heard. The two large gold round medals symbolize the wife's devotion to her husband and her submissiveness to his relative.
Applying the two round medallions equally means that the husband and their relatives are treated equally. The small medallion in the middle represents the caste deity of the husband's family. Often it depicts the image of that god or goddess. As Murugan drew Rangammal queen, it may have had an image of Skanda Kumaran. As the foreigner who drew the picture is not familiar with the jewelry patterns at that time, slight differences may occur. With those differences, people who don't know about the old charms seem to have identified them as shells and made up a strange story.
Mahatma Rasitha Perera, who researched further the facts, said that saying that queen Rangammal wore shells is an insult to her, as according to the South Indian caste hierarchy, women of the standard castes wear shell shells. Shown below is a modern arrangement of a Thirumadagalayam. A large medal of Thirumadagalayam is also shown in a separate photograph
Accordingly, even though Queen Rangamma was exiled from the country, until her death, she wore the wedding necklace that her husband King Sri Wickrama Rajasingha had put on her neck, not a shell necklace.
