The Nagarathars initially settled in 9 villages and built Shiva temples in them. Even after they moved away to other villages, each Nagarathar associated himself or herself with one of those 9 temples. Currently these 9 'kovils' are used as primary classification for the community. Members of each temple society treat each other as brothers and sisters or "pangalis" and thus marriage is not allowed amongst members of the same temple. Men and women of different temples marry, and the bride automatically becomes a member of the groom's temple.
Tradition has it that when the Chettiars migrated from Chola nadu, they settled in and around a village called Illayathangudi in Pandya nadu. And here he Pandya king granted to their care the village temple. Over the next decade or so, groups of Chettiars moved on from here to settle in other villages not far from their first settlement and in time, eight other clusters of villages with Chettiar settlement had been established. To each of them the Pandya king granted a temple in perpetuity The nine temples, thus, became the 'family' temples of the clusters and each cluster evolved as a subdividesion of the Chettiars or what might be described as a fraternal clan. These fraternal members and their families are called pangalis. Once, when everyone knew eaach other, the pangali bond was one of the strongest factors in keeping the community cohesive. Over theyears, the pangalis have spread further and further an, today, few know any both the pangalis in villages imediately neighbouring theirs and more often only those pangalis with whom they share a common ancestor. The growth of the community has also resulted in the three bigger temples forming sub-groups within themselves, the sub-groups themselves taking the characteristics of separate fraternal clans.
All the temples are said to have been granted to the Nagarathar in the early 8th Century, but neither their earlier history nor these grants have been convincingly documented. However, renovation, restoration, even reconstruction by the Chettiars in the 19th and 20th centuries are well recorded.
(Source: "The Chettiar Heritage"; S. Muthiah, Meenakshi Meyappan, Visalakshi Ramaswamy; 2000)
The koils are:
