Did the Cholas really have a navy?

The Print

3 days ago

To understand the 'navy' of the Cholas, we need to re-examine the epigraphic and art historical evidence. We must also study the Cholas in the light of their contemporaries, including the coastal Kadambas of Goa and the Srivijaya confederacy of Southeast Asia. The result reveals another amazing group of Indians who are yet to get their due.
But once we begin to dig deeper, we find ourselves unable to answer fairly fundamental questions. How were Chola ships sourced, and sailors recruited and trained? How was the navy budgeted and paid for, and where was it stationed? If naval warfare was a major focus of royal activity, why do Chola inscriptions provide so little insight into it? And if such knowledge and precedent existed, why did no other Indian state attempt similar expeditions?
India's coasts stretch for thousands of kilometres and have hosted international trade for millennia. Yet few Indian states seem to have bothered to maintain navies, with one exception. In recent weeks, the Chola dynasty of medieval Tamil Nadu has been celebrated for various naval exploits in Southeast Asia.
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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.'
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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.
The simpler explanation is also the more plausible one: the geopolitical situation of the Cholas did not demand a standing navy. Unlike the fragmented Konkan coast, threatened by pirates, the Chola heartland was agrarian and centralised, bordered by land-based rivals like the Chalukyas. A land army and a temple-centred revenue system served its needs better than expensive ocean-going forces. Instead, the expeditions to Sri Lanka, the Ganga, and Southeast Asia were brilliant but likely ad hoc operations. Ships used in these expeditions were requisitioned or hired, not maintained year-round as part of the court budget. These were not warships but troop transports, likely sourced through Tamil merchant corporations.
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Revisiting the inscriptions
Corporate South Indian merchant bodies, like the Ainurruvar or Five Hundred, were the true engines of Chola maritime activity. As historian Meera Abraham writes in Two Medieval Merchant Guilds of South India, they comprised not just traders but also landowners, scribes, Brahmins, and hereditary warriors. Risha Lee's doctoral work at Columbia shows that various 'franchises' of the Five Hundred followed in the wake of Chola armies, establishing outposts in frontier zones like South Karnataka and northern Sri Lanka. As such, they had a formidable logistical capacity, which may have been available to Chola forces, who generated demand for food and luxury products.
Crucially, Prof Subbarayalu ('A Note on the Navy of the Chola state') points out that the few Tamil inscriptions that mention ships relate to merchants levying taxes on them. The largest classes were called marakkalam, literally 'wooden ship', and dhoni. Particularly large dhonis, called Yatra dhonis, plied the Bay of Bengal until the 1930s and could displace upwards of 150 tonnes of water. Large, open-hulled, with thatched roofs and multiple sails, they were capable of transporting goods and passengers across the Indian Ocean. They made annual voyages to Southeast Asia. With their customisable holds, they could easily be repurposed for military transport.
In this light, Rajendra Chola's 1024–25 Ganga campaign and the 1025–26 Srivijaya raid make much more sense. Philologist Whitney Cox notes that when eulogising his Ganga expedition, Rajendra's inscriptions mostly offer stylised descriptions of conquered regions, in line with the conventions of medieval eulogies. They were intended not as objective records, but as reflections of the vast geographic and diplomatic awareness of the Chola court. The exception lies in references to verifiable incidents—like the capture of an enemy king in Jajpur, Odisha, and the defeat of three kings in Bengal. Historian Richard H Davis writes that Chola kings ceremonially displayed war loot as proof of their military prowess. Naturally, then, Rajendra must have brought back loot from Jajpur and some Bengali towns to support his inscriptions. The Ganga expedition was not a campaign of conquest, but a lightning raid with limited objectives. Ganga water was used to consecrate both the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple and its accompanying Chola Ganga tank. This was a potent, and valuable, political symbol.
Could a Chola army of thousands have marched 2,000 kilometres up the east coast without overstretching its lines of supply and communication? This would have been risky in the extreme. On the other hand, it would be much easier (and safer) to transport the army's supplies by sea on a merchant flotilla. From there, it would be a natural leap to carry some army regiments on these ships. These could take the enemy by surprise without risking a pitched battle.
We can apply a similar lens to Rajendra's inscriptions on Srivijaya, which date from shortly after. The descriptions of most 'conquered' ports are vague and literary, with the sole exception of Kedah—the only Srivijaya city known to have had diplomatic ties with the Chola court. In his inscriptions, Rajendra not only claims to have captured the king of Kedah, but also his 'rutting elephants' and a city gateway called Vidyadhara—all of which must have been ceremonially displayed. The elephants suggest a land engagement, which implies that the 'innumerable ships (kalam)' dispatched by Rajendra Chola were transport vessels, not equipped for naval combat.
Archaeological evidence also suggests that merchants profited greatly from the Chola raid on Kedah. In 1088, an inscription from Lobu Tua in Sumatra mentions that the port had been given a Tamil name and was ruled by merchants of the Ainurruvar corporation. It makes no reference to royal authority, neither Chola nor Srivijaya. The inscription also refers to 'wooden ships' or marakkalam, akin to the kalam of Rajendra's inscriptions. 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.
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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.
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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)