Tracing the naval prowess of Rajendra Chola I — from Eelamandalam to Kadaram
Rajendra's reign marked the most assertive phase of Chola overseas ambition. The naval campaigns launched during this period led to the annexation of Sri Lanka and an audacious expedition across the Bay of Bengal to the distant shores of the Malay Peninsula. The defeat of Malay Peninsula earned Rajendra the title Kadaram Kondan (the Conqueror of Kadaram).
Well-organised fleet
Historians pointed to the existence of a well-organised fleet of ships and boats of various grades in Chola's navy, serving both commercial and military purposes. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, in his book The Cōlas, offered a detailed account of Rajendra's naval campaigns, particularly those targeting Eelamandalam (Sri Lanka) and Kadaram, the strategic stronghold in the Kingdom of Srivijaya. In 1017 CE, Rajendra launched a decisive campaign against Sri Lanka. This was the fifth year of his reign, and it marked the culmination of the efforts initiated by his father, Raja Raja Chola I. According to inscriptions and the Ceylonese chronicle Mahavamsa, the Chola conquest coincided with the thirty-sixth regnal year of the Sinhalese ruler Mahinda V, also dated to 1017 CE. Sastri noted that the campaign was timed with precision, with political instability in the island kingdom factored in.
The Chola involvement in Sri Lanka stretched back to the reign of Parantaka Chola I, who ruled from 907 to 955 CE. However, it was Raja Raja who annexed the northern parts of the island. Though some territories remained under local Sinhalese control, the Chola grip steadily tightened. Rajendra's offensive went further than that of his father. His forces captured Mahinda V and seized the royal regalia, including the crown. His control over the island was comprehensive enough to convert it into a full-fledged Chola province, said Sastri.
Inscriptions bearing the title, tirumanni valara, attributed to Rajendra, were found near Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. Temples built in the Tamil Chola architectural style, dedicated to deities such as Shiva and Vishnu, further underscored Chola influence, the historian said.
Fresh wave of unrest
Despite these gains, resistance simmered beneath the surface. Around 1029 CE, 12 years after the invasion, a fresh wave of unrest erupted. Kassapa, son of Mahinda V, who had been raised in secrecy, led a successful rebellion. After six months of conflict, he regained control and ruled as Vikkamabahu I, re-establishing Sinhalese sovereignty.
Rajendra's imperial vision did not stop with Sri Lanka. In 1025 CE, soon after his campaign to the Ganges, he turned his gaze eastward towards the thriving maritime Kingdom of Srivijaya. This Southeast Asian empire controlled vital sea lanes connecting India to China and ruled over territories that included the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Java. Initially, relations between the Cholas and Srivijaya were cordial. Raja Raja Chola had granted land in Nagapattinam to Mara Vijayottungavarman of the Shailendra dynasty for the construction of the Chudamani Vihara. Diplomatic missions moved regularly between the two kingdoms and China. Srivijaya sent envoys in 1003 and 1008 CE, while the Cholas reciprocated the gesture in 1015, 1033, and 1077 CE, noted Sastri.
Differing views
The exact reason for the conflict remains unclear. Inscriptions on the Tiruvalangadu copper plates merely mentioned the conquest of Kadaram, while a Tamil prasasti (an inscription in praise of a ruler) provides some more details. However, several scholars offered different theories. One view attributes the conflict to interference by Srivijaya in Chola maritime trade, while another sees it as part of Rajendra's broader ambition to achieve maritime supremacy and secure overseas prestige. Decades of commercial and diplomatic engagement with Southeast Asia had equipped the Cholas with familiarity in navigating these waters.
Rajendra's Southeast Asia campaign was swift and decisive. Chola ships crossed the Bay of Bengal and struck at the heart of Srivijayan power. Kadaram was captured and Sangrama Vijayottungavarman, successor to Mara Vijayottungavarman, was taken prisoner. While the campaign projected Chola might across the seas, there was no immediate attempt to establish direct rule over the conquered territories. According to Sastri, local rulers were reinstated, likely after they were made to pay tribute and acknowledge the Chola emperor's superiority.
Kadaram reconquered
However, this control was not permanent. Rajendra's successor, Virarajendra I, claimed to have reconquered Kadaram and restored its ruler, indicating that earlier gains were only temporary. A Tamil inscription from Sumatra, dated to 1088 CE, provides further evidence of continued Chola activity in the region, at least in terms of commerce, noted Sastri.
Beyond military conquests, these expeditions highlighted the Chola empire's broader diplomatic reach. Inscriptions in the Karandai copper plates indicated that the King of Kambhoja (the Kingdom of Angkor ruled by Suryavarman I) had solicited the friendship of Rajendra by sending him a victorious war-chariot with which he had defeated hostile armies.
Rajendra's naval expeditions marked a bold chapter in history. They extended both political and cultural reach of the Chola empire beyond the Indian subcontinent. Though not all territorial gains endured for long, these campaigns had left a legacy on cross-cultural engagement.
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The Print
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In recent weeks, the Chola dynasty of medieval Tamil Nadu has been celebrated for various naval exploits in Southeast Asia. Also read: Do Chola kings represent a culturally united Hindu India? It's a modern fantasy Evolving views of the Chola Navy From the early 20th century onwards, the Cholas have been seen as precursors to the contemporary Indian state. Surely, if modern states have navies, so did medieval states? In various inscriptions, the early king Parantaka I (907–955 CE) described his raids in Sri Lanka; the famous Rajaraja I (985–1014 CE) claimed to have 'cut the ships' of his rivals at Kandalur, a port in present-day Kerala, and to have conquered the 'ten thousand islands of the ancient sea'. His son Rajendra I (1014–1044 CE) said he had dispatched 'innumerable ships (kalam) over the rolling waves' to attack ports in present-day Malaysia and Indonesia. The compilation and translation of these inscriptions sparked considerable excitement in colonial India, feeding into developing notions of national identity and historical pride. Historian RK Mookerji, in 1912, declared that 'the naval power of the Cholas was considerably developed, making itself felt even on the opposite shore of the Bay of Bengal.' In The Cōḷas (1937), historian KA Nilakanta Sastri wrote more cautiously that 'there is no evidence to show that the Cōḷas made any attempt to rule these lands (Southeast Asia) as provinces of their empire.' At the same time, Sastri was convinced that Chola claims of overseas victories 'must be accepted as proof of a steady naval policy pursued by the Cōḷa monarchs of the period.' Statesman and diplomat KM Panikkar later wrote in 1945 of a 'hundred years' naval war' between the Cholas and the Srivijaya polity of Southeast Asia, seeing them both as major naval powers. At the time, these views were cutting-edge, based as they were on newly uncovered evidence. However, multinational scholarly work on the Cholas has since revisited these inscriptions with a new approach: not to take their claims at face value, but to interrogate, substantiate, and find patterns. Historians James Heitzman and Kesavan Veluthat have shown that Chola eulogies were not objective historical records. Rather, they helped build alliances with other power centres, integrating them into royal temples through religious donations. This is evident in the great Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, commissioned by Rajaraja I and covered in donative inscriptions from his family, courtiers, and military regiments. While dozens of regular and irregular infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and archer regiments and captains are named, not a single admiral or standing naval unit is mentioned. All this led Prof Y Subbarayalu to write in his paper 'A Note on the Navy of the Chola State': 'Very rarely is the Chola navy mentioned in inscriptions… Except for the kalam or ship mentioned in Rajendra I's eulogy, no other information is available in the inscriptional record about the Chola fleet.' Also read: A Chola queen shaped Hinduism like no one else. Yet you haven't heard of her Comparative studies and hypothesis In my fieldwork in Tamil Nadu, I have come across dozens, if not hundreds, of sculptures of Chola infantry and elephantry, and somewhat fewer depictions of cavalry. Yet, to my knowledge, there is not a single medieval sculpture of a Chola ship. Analysing contemporaneous cultures from the Indian Ocean world may help throw light on this. First, consider a smaller coastal polity, the Kadamba kingdom of present-day Goa. The Kadambas left behind dozens of memorial stones depicting aristocrats and even kings participating in pitched naval battles on oared galleys. This makes sense: in contrast to India's broad, agrarian east coast, the Konkan coast has typically been home to small, independent, sometimes piratical states that the Kadambas needed to subjugate. Historian SL Shantakumari notes that their inscriptions lack detailed descriptions of naval hierarchies but do mention naval raids and ships armed with bowmen. So even if they had no standing navy, they left a material record that such warfare occurred. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, in the Srivijaya confederacy of Southeast Asia, we see a rather different situation. Srivijaya was a network of ports dotting the coasts of present-day Malaysia and eastern Indonesia, which controlled trade with China through the Malacca Strait. In an eye-opening paper, historian Derek Heng argues that though Srivijaya depended on commerce, it did not have dedicated navies until the 1100s. Both Chinese travellers and Srivijaya inscriptions indicate that up to and during the time of Rajendra Chola, the ships owned by the Srivijaya king were mostly intended for transporting goods and passengers. Only occasionally were they repurposed as troop transports to bully nearby ports. Even then, most troops moved overland, and only rarely by sea. This also points to the logistical complexity of such an undertaking. All this provides some explanation as to why Chola visual and epigraphical sources are silent on naval forces. If the Cholas used a standing navy to conquer Lanka and Kedah, why would their naval commanders be excluded from temple gifts and inscriptions? Why would their artisans never depict naval battles or ships? Perhaps all this evidence is yet to be discovered, or has been lost. But an entire navy could not simply disappear, leaving behind nothing but vague royal claims of overseas conquest. 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By the 1200s, writes epigraphist Jan Wisserman Christie, Tamil merchants had spread much further east, working as tax-farmers for the kings of Java. Archaeological remains show that by this time, they had even reached Quanzhou in China. Entrenched in a profitable position, these groups had little to gain from supporting military campaigns from India into Southeast Asia. A large role for merchants explains a great deal about the Chola expeditions to the Ganga and Southeast Asia: their speed, their success across such vast distances, the lack of inscriptions and art depicting a standing navy, and the fact that these expeditions were, by and large, exceptional in the history of Indian seafaring. Also read: This is how Gupta and Chola empires fell—climate catastrophe, pandemic, migration How naval cultures developed The Chola naval expeditions did leave lasting effects on the Indian Ocean world. Prof Heng ('State formation') argues that Srivijaya learned from the strategic failures of 1025–26 and thereafter invested in a standing navy. Srivijaya military ships regularly appear in Chinese sources from the 12th century onwards, though they still focussed on coastal operations. (Chinese accounts from the same period make no mention of a Chola navy, though they do refer to a large elephantry.) In contrast, 12th-century Lankan kings, according to Tamil inscriptions, built temporary ships called paduvu to transport their troops to attack the Indian mainland. Soon after, the Malay king Chandrabhanu of Tambralinga also built ships to transport an army to conquer Lanka. It's tempting to ask: was this necessary because merchant corporations saw little incentive to support such expeditions? The evidence from Srivijaya may also help us make informed guesses about Chola naval culture, though additional discoveries are needed. The people of the ships—the actual sailors, navigators, and captains—are similarly rare in Srivijaya inscriptions. Even when a standing navy existed after the 12th century, there is no record of an admiralty or naval hierarchy. Similarly, neither Tamil merchants nor Chola inscriptions shed much light on the ownership or organisation of overseas transport. We only get the sense that merchants were more directly and publicly involved with shipping than the Chola court was. Medieval sailors and navigators, it seems, were mostly illiterate and lacked the high status commanded by modern naval officers. Prestigious standing navies only evolved when European states became dependent on international trade for their political fortunes. This was never the case for India's vast, land-based riverine empires. Also read: How did taxes work in medieval India? Chola, Mughal subjects struggled like today's middle-class Where did the knowledge go? Out of sight of elite literary tradition, Tamil seafarers handed down their knowledge orally for centuries. The only written compilation I am aware of is preserved in palm-leaf manuscripts in Arabu Tamil, found in the Maldives and studied by the late Prof B Arunachalam in Chola Navigation Package (2004). Traditional seafarers were only pushed out of business by the Industrial Revolution. The last Yatra Dhoni was wrecked in the Maldives in the 1930s. Since then, most traditional seafaring knowledge has been lost. Paradoxically, around the same time—as noted at the beginning of this column—some Indian intellectuals began a chorus about Chola seafaring, culminating in today's limited public understanding. In both the 2022 Mani Ratnam blockbuster Ponniyin Selvan and the Union government's posters for the upcoming Chola millennial celebrations, the Cholas are depicted commanding a navy of East India Company vessels. There is an incalculable amount we still don't know about medieval trade and seafaring. Much of what we do know about the Cholas depends almost entirely on inscriptions— an approach that lags decades behind global academic standards. More than political bonanzas, we need investments in independent, multidisciplinary scholarship and in the communication of these findings to general readers. After all, few of us can afford Routledge Handbooks. Indonesia and Malaysia have transformed their understanding of medieval history through extensive port archaeology and the finding of shipwrecks. Indeed, in the 1980s, a Tamil merchant diaspora site in Sumatra, called Kota Cina, was briefly excavated and then forgotten. The history of our medieval seafarers will not be found through photoshoots and PR blitzes, but through difficult, rewarding investment and commitment. It's high time Indian leaders put our money where their mouths are. Until then, our coasts and ancient ports still hold eroding secrets, waiting to be discovered. Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of 'Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire' and the award-winning 'Lords of the Deccan'. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha. This article is a part of the 'Thinking Medieval' series that takes a deep dive into India's medieval culture, politics, and history. (Edited by Prashant)
News18
2 days ago
- News18
NCERT Class 8 Textbook Under Scrutiny After Former Royal Family Member Raises Objection
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