Latest news with #Cholas
New Indian Express
12 hours ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Cholas not new to contemporary Tamil Nadu politics
CHENNAI: The images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, clad in typical Tamil attire, walking with a small pot filled with water from the Ganges inside the Brihadeeswarar temple in Gangaikonda Cholapuram in Ariyalur district on July 27, went viral on social media. The BJP and its supporters hailed it as yet another instance of the PM honouring 'hitherto unacknowledged' glories of ancient Tamils. Former Telangana Governor and senior BJP leader Tamilisai Soundarajan, writing for this paper, even drew a parallel between the PM and Rajendra Chola himself, who founded Gangaikonda Cholapuram, with both bringing water from the Ganges. Actor Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam accused the ruling DMK of not doing enough to honour the glory of the Chola dynasty and thereby ceding space to the BJP to claim credit. It would be a disservice to a nuanced understanding of contemporary Tamil politics if one were to believe that Cholas became popular only after the release of Ponniyin Selvan I (2022), the movie based on the eponymous historical fiction written by Kalki, or to believe in the allegations of the BJP and the TVK that Cholas have not been honoured enough. The Chola dynasty has not only been part of the Tamil psyche, as evidenced by 'Rajendran' being a common Tamil name even today, but the Cholas have been an integral part of the shaping of a distinct Tamil identity for the past many decades by political forces, albeit in a complex manner. Parties and movements in TN have both lavishly praised and sharply criticised the Cholas. To begin with, the DMK and its parent organisation the Dravidar Kazhagam themselves differed. DK, founded by'Periyar' EV Ramasamy, celebrated the early Cholas, believed to have predated later Cholas by a millenia. It in particular praised Karikala Cholan, who built the Grand Anicut (Kallanai) across the Cauvery around 2,000 years ago. Periyar himself was critical of Rajaraja and Rajendra for supporting and sustaining the caste hierarchy.
New Indian Express
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
It's the Pluralistic Vision that made Our Unlikely Union Possible
When we speak of Indian unity, we often drift into the comfortable realm of mythology rather than historical fact. The Mauryan Empire, at its zenith under Ashoka, stretched across much of northern India, yet failed to penetrate deep into the Tamil kingdoms of the south. The mighty Guptas barely extended their direct control beyond the Vindhyas, while the Deccan remained under independent rulers. The Cholas dominated the seas and expanded into Southeast Asia, but their control rarely extended beyond the Vindhyas, except for Bengal and Odisha. The Pandyas remained confined to the southern tip of the peninsula. Even the Vijayanagara Empire never ventured successfully beyond the Deccan plateau. The Mughals, often cited as unifiers, reached their greatest extent under Aurangzeb. Yet, the Ahoms of Assam remained independent, and the Travancore kingdom maintained its sovereignty. The Marathas exercised more of a tribute-collecting authority rather than direct administrative control over much of their claimed territory and many parts of India remained outside their influence. This is a crucial reminder that India's current political unity is unprecedented. When we chest-thump about '5,000 years of Indian civilisation,' we conveniently forget that this civilisation flourished precisely because of its diversity, not despite it. Our modern nation-state is a British construct, and many parts of India are together only because of the historical accident of British rule.
New Indian Express
3 days ago
- New Indian Express
PM Modi's visit sets off tourism boom at Gangaikonda Cholapuram in Tamil Nadu
ARIYALUR: Ten days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Gangaikonda Cholapuram, hordes of people have also started paying a visit to the historic site. According to local officials, both domestic and international tourists are flocking to the town to explore the Chola-era architectural marvel. On July 27, Prime Minister Modi visited the temple to mark the 1,000th anniversary of Emperor Rajendra Chola I's maritime expedition to Southeast Asia, coinciding with the Aadi Thiruvathirai festival. Dressed in traditional Tamil attire, he offered prayers at the sanctum of the Brihadeeswarar temple. The PM also attended a live concert by maestro Ilaiyaraaja and released several commemorative works. Videos and images from the event quickly went viral, kindling fresh interest in the temple and the Cholas. According to the Tamil Nadu tourism department and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the average daily footfall of visitors has nearly tripled in the last one week. 'Earlier, we used to receive around 300-400 visitors per day and about 1,000 on weekends, mostly locals and heritage enthusiasts. The crowd would increase only during festival time. Ever since the PM's visit, the number has risen to over 1,200 daily, and between 5,000 and 6,000 on weekends. Tourists are now coming from other states, especially north India and even from abroad,' said a senior tourism officer in Ariyalur. 'Most of the visitors now are from north India as well as foreign tourists. Usually, foreign tourists arrive between September and March, while locals visit during summer holidays. But this time, even during the off-season, there is a huge crowd, thanks to the PM's visit. We expect the numbers to grow further,' an ASI official said.
The Print
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
Did the Cholas really have a navy?
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. 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. 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. Also read: Cholas and Chaulukyas understood tariffs and taxes better than Trump does 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. 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)
Indian Express
04-08-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
What India can learn from the maritime prowess of the Cholas
By N Manoharan and Diya Parthasarathy In his recent public address at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Modi pointed out the legacy of the Cholas in various arenas, especially in the maritime domain. But one wonders what the larger context of the Cholas' maritime ventures was, and how relevant it is today. Understanding the Cholas' maritime ventures is necessary to realise India's maritime tradition. Acknowledging this, a decade back, the Centre released a stamp to commemorate the contribution of Cholas in laying 'a strong foundation for promotion of trade, commerce and cultural exchanges which brought fabulous economic prosperity and expansion of Indian culture and heritage across the Indian Ocean to the land of South East Asia.' The Indian Navy undertook the 'Chola Expedition' in 2008 to replicate the 'invasion' of Srivijaya kingdom (Sumatra, Southeast Asia) by Rajendra Chola I in 1017 CE. By comprehending maritime ventures during the Chola period, it is possible to understand the present Chinese ventures in the Indian Ocean under the garb of the Belt and Road Initiative. The Chinese indeed had trade connections, but not in the present form of economically tethering countries along the Maritime Silk Route. There were two main interlinked drivers for the Cholas' maritime projection: Mercantilism and military expansion. At the turn of the first millennium, the trade patterns witnessed a transformation from pre-emporia to emporia. Pre-emporia trade denoted shipping of goods directly from the source of production to the place of consumption. Whereas, the emporia trade pattern meant that several intermediate ports catered to the breaking up of bulk goods for retail sales and purchases. Coinciding with such a change in trade pattern was the rise of 'corporate empires' like the Cholas, the Srivijaya Empire, the Khmer Kingdom of Cambodia, Champa in Vietnam, and the Song Dynasty in China. Varieties of goods were traded among the ports of these regions that included metals, spices, perfumes, cosmetics, precious stones, textiles, and even animals like elephants and horses. Significantly, customs levied on these goods that transited through seas constituted a chunk of the coffers of corporate empires. Though such a financial network gave a kind of order in these 'corporate' empires, it also led to disputes among those empires that tried to arm-twist the transiting trading crafts to serve their economic and political interests. The dispute started when the Srivijayans became avaricious and imposed a high levy for the passage of goods carriers through Southeast Asia. The Cholas did not take it kindly and wanted to get away from the 'Malacca dilemma' posed by the Southeast Asian kingdom. The Srivijaya rulers were also trying to control the land crossing across Kra Isthmus. Rajendra Chola went on to occupy Malaysia to control the Malacca Straits and also acquired Java and Sumatra by defeating Sailendra rulers during his Digvijaya. As China emerged as a leading trading point and market, securing sea lanes of communication became imperative. The Chinese considered the Cholas ('Chulian' by the Chinese) as a 'first-class' trade partner. Chola kings wanted to send a clear message to the Chinese that they would not hesitate to use military options against the obstructing elements (both state and non-state) to ensure the free flow of goods. This 'choke point syndrome' pervades even today, although the Chinese are more worried now than the Indians were then. To achieve the above two objectives, the Cholas depended on a strong and well-organised navy that was built over a period of time. Kings used to get a good deal of their income from trade and could thus afford to maintain a large and powerful navy without exhausting their land revenue base. The Chola Navy consisted of an armada of ships that were constructed and used for trade purposes. According to historical records, the Chola armada comprised destroyers, frigates and battleships. Apart, they used colandia, large expeditionary vessels, and sangara, large oceangoing single log vessels, to transport troops and logistics. These ships had the capability and experience to travel long distances. Kattumarams were small boats of wood tied together to float in shallow waters and to move goods from large ships to shore, and also to make amphibious attacks. The Chola Navy also included a strong intelligence wing to track intrusion of foreign naval forces. The Chola seafarers mostly used winds, heavenly bodies and currents to sail across seas. The kings were said to have encouraged the study of astronomy, geography and cartography as part of their maritime expeditions. A specialised study on the science of shipping and ship-building was patronised and pursued. Apart from commercial and trade interests, there were larger politico-strategic and cultural drivers behind the maritime ventures of the Cholas. They had to prove their might both in peninsular India and in the maritime neighbourhood. They had to protect trade routes and traders of Tamilagam. It was, in fact, a matter of survival and pride. Also, as Saivites, they considered it their religious duty to carry Saivism beyond Indian shores. Such drivers are true in the present context as well. It is intriguing to note why the Cholas did not pay attention to West Asia and Africa as much as they focused on South and Southeast Asia. One wonders whether it was because of the quantum of direction of trade that was flowing mostly from the west to the east, or did the Cholas consider Africa and West Asia beyond their reach? This aspect needs a fresh enquiry. Manoharan is Director, and Diya is a Researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies, Christ University, Bangalore
