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Coordinates 11°56'N 79°50'E? / ?11.93, 79.83 Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry&_160;(help·info)) is a Union Territory of India. It is a former French colony, consisting of four non-contiguous enclaves, or districts, and named for the largest, Pondicherry. In September 2006, the territory changed its official name from Pondicherry to the vernacular original,[1] Puducherry, which means "New village"[2] in the Tamil language. The territory is called ?????????? (Putucceri) or ???????????? (Pa??icceri) in Tamil,, or "Pondichéry" in French. It is also known as The French Riviera of the East (La Côte d'Azur de l'Est). Pondicherry consists of four small unconnected districts Pondicherry, Karaikal, and Yanam on the Bay of Bengal and Mahé on the Arabian Sea. Puducherry (Pondicherry) and Karaikal are by far the larger ones, and are both enclaves of Tamil Nadu. Yanam and Mahé are enclaves of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala respectively. The territory has a total area of 492 km² Puducherry (city) 293 km², Karaikal 160 km², Mahé 9 km² and Yanam 30 km². It has 900,000 inhabitants (2001). The History of Pondicherry can be traced back to the 2nd century AD. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, of the early 2nd Century, AD, mentions a marketplace named Poduke (ch. 60), which G.W.B. Huntingford identified as possibly being Arikamedu (now part of Ariyankuppam), about 2 miles from the modern Pondicherry. Huntingford further notes that Roman pottery was found at Arikamedu in 1937, and archeological excavations between 1944 and 1949 showed that it was "a trading station to which goods of Roman manufacture were imported during the first half of the 1st century AD".[3]
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