by John Keay
The comparison sometimes made is with the Frankish kingdom of early medieval Europe. ‘As for these kings,’ writes the distinguished French historian Georges Duby, ‘their prestige was a reflection of their liberality; they would plunder with seemingly insatiable greed only to give more generously.’13 Thus every royal occasion became the pinnacle of ‘a regular system of free exchange, permeating the whole social fabric and making kingship the real regulator of the economy’. Commenting on these observations, an American authority on early south India draws the obvious parallel. ‘The treasures allocated to pious causes by Charles Martel and Charlemagne have their exact counterparts in the treasures which Rajaraja I looted from the Cheras and Pandyas and then donated to his great temple of Tanjavur [Tanjore].’14
This notion of ‘the politics of plunder and gift-giving’ assumes that the Cholas inherited a ‘peasant’ or ‘segmentary’ state whose rural units enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and communal ownership which, in the absence of an effective central bureaucracy, made tax-collection difficult. Such a situation may have existed in Pallava times and earlier, but the evidence for the high Chola period is more ambiguous. The inscriptions reveal a host of what look like bureaucratic titles, and there are other pointers to the creation of a more integrated, amenable and taxable society.
For instance, the practice, well attested in the Tanjore inscriptions, of making land grants to brahmans (brahmadeya) may have been more than a royal expedient for rewarding brahman support and ensuring its continuance. Established by royal order and flourishing under royal protection, these grants also gave brahman recipients domination and direction of the non-brahman population. Brahmadeyas thus became a way of furthering political integration and, since brahmans were knowledgeable about subjects like irrigation, also of promoting productivity. The Cholas seem to have exploited such grants quite systematically so that two or three such brahman settlements became implanted in every district in their kingdom. In effect brahmadeyas became ‘the local nuclei of the Chola power structure, their function being to integrate and control the surrounding non-brahmadeya villages’.15
Likewise the Cholas successfully harnessed and institutionalised the various cults associated with the popular bhakti (‘devotional’) movement in southern India. In the dark vestibule between the main shrine and the outer walls of the Tanjore temple, paintings depict not only Lord Shiva in his nataraja and tripurantaka (‘demon-destroying’) aspects but also delightful narrative scenes from the legends of Sundramurti and his associate Ceraman Perumal. Both were Nayanars, Tamil saints associated with the worship of Lord Shiva. There were also Alvars, who were Vaishnavite saints. The number of these local Tamil and Keralan intermediaries was considerable. Some were women, some paraiyar outcastes, and many were non-brahmans. If one may judge by occasional demands for equal access to temples, the bhakti movement had originally contained an element of protest against brahman exclusivity. As such it had competed with Jainism and Buddhism for followers and patrons and had occasioned some sectarian persecution, especially of Jains. More typically it sidetracked brahmanic ritual by its emphasis on a direct personal relationship of love and impassioned subservience between the devotee and the deity.
In this manifestation as a popular (and cheaper) form of worship, bhakti revivalism had been sweeping the entire subcontinent, stirring up, for instance, the fervent devotion shown for Lord Krishna at Mathura or for Lord Jagganath at Puri, and encouraging traditions of pilgrimage and temple festivals. But the phenomenon of bhakti saints had been strongest in, if not peculiar to, the south, where it drew heavily on regional literary traditions dating back to the Sangam age. Cutting across political, caste and professional divisions, ‘it promoted a new Tamil consciousness which has significantly contributed to the Tamil heritage’.16 By the tenth century, though the movement retained its mass appeal, it centred on the celebration in hymns, verses and local tradition of the often miraculous exploits, and the always ecstatic devotion, of the saints themselves. The Cholas seem consciously, as in their Tanjore paintings, to have cultivated this tradition. ‘They adopted, elaborated, and zealously practised [its] ideology through various measures like the collection of the bhakti hymns, their popularisation through temple rituals and grants for such rituals, and the construction of temples in all the centres associated with the bhakti hymns.’17
Whatever the truth, then, about the existence of a Chola administrative bureaucracy, it is clear that for Rajaraja, and probably for other contemporary dynasts, there were alternative means of asserting royal authority and integrating a vast kingdom. The conspicuous generosity which such patronage demanded did, however, necessitate access to substantial revenue; and although taxation undoubtedly provided some of it, the rich pickings of predatory warfare were essential. For economic as well as ideological reasons, a successful digvijaya was a requisite for any new king. When, therefore, Rajendra I succeeded Rajaraja and assumed the reins of power in 1014, his priority was obvious. Sri Lanka was promptly reinvaded and more treasures and priceless regalia seized; prising open even relic chambers, says a Sri Lankan chronicle, ‘like blood-sucking yakkhas they took all the treasures of Lanka for themselves’. Next the Chera and Pandya kingdoms witnessed another triumphal progress; then the born-again Western Chalukyas were re-engaged following their unwelcome intervention in the affairs of their Eastern namesakes.
In C1020, while completing this campaign in Vengi (Andhra), Rajendra’s general is thought to have pushed north into Kalinga (Orissa) against the Eastern Ganga dynasty of Bhuvaneshwar, who may have been helping the enemy. There he received instructions to continue north, allegedly to obtain water from the Ganga river with which to sanctify the Chola land. Thus, somewhat incidentally, was launched Rajendra’s great northern escapade. The name of the general is not known, nor is his route very clear, although it seems to have followed the east coast. He certainly crossed a lot of rivers, his elephants being lined up to breast their currents and so form bridges for his infantry to march over. Some of the peoples he defeated have been tentatively identified. ‘Strong Mahipala’, whom he put to flight in a hotly contested battle by sounding his deep-sea conch, was almost certainly Mahipala I, who briefly revived the fortunes of the Buddhist Pala dynasty in Bengal during the early decades of the eleventh century. ‘Odda-Visaya defended by thick forests’ must be Orissa, and ‘Vangala-desa where the rain water never stopped’ sounds like a fair description of Bengal in the monsoon. From the Pala king he obtained ‘elephants of rare strength, women and treasure’. No doubt there was other booty. There was certainly no question of retaining any territory. It was as short and risky a venture as any undertaken by Mahmud, and one in which any reverses were patently ‘glozed over’, as Professor Nilakantha Sastri, the champion of the Cholas, nicely puts it.
But the main trophy, according to the inscriptions, was the water of the sacred Ganga, ‘whose flow, strewn with fragrant flowers, had splashed against the places of pilgrimage’. Brought back, presumably, in jars, it was presented to Rajendra as he waited for the return of his expedition on the banks of the Godavari river. Thence he carried it home with triumphal purpose. For, like his father, Rajendra had conceived the idea of building a royal temple and, if it would not be quite as tall as the Tanjore Rajarajeswara, he intended it to be even richer in imperial symbolism, and the focus of a new Chola capital. The water was for the ceremonial tank, a vast sheet of water five kilometres long which was duly known as the ‘Chola-ganga’. Similarly the city itself was wordily named in honour of this same great exploit as ‘Gangai-konda-chola-puram’, ‘the city of the Chola who conquered the Ganga’. Whether Rajendra was aware of the earlier Rashtrakuta ploy to relocate arya-varta in the Deccan is not known, but clearly this was another attempt to appropriate the sacred geography of the Puranas and to centre it anew around the all-conquering Cholas.
‘Well worth a visit,’ says Murray’s Handbook of Gangaikondacholapuram. But few pay heed, and the site of the Cholas’ most ambitious cre
ation remains a forlorn reminder of the monumental lengths to which a king might go to validate his rule and integrate his kingdom. The city, if it was ever built, has vanished, the Cholas’ Ganga has been drained by recent irrigation canals, and the magnificent temple stands incongruously amidst straggling acacia and fields of padi, as if embarrassed by its own distinction.
An air of improbability haunts the exploits of the Cholas, not so much discrediting their authenticity as imputing their wisdom. For while, to the intense annoyance of generations of historians, other dynasties were content to let their eulogists award them impossible conquests, the Cholas, with a rare regard for the literal truth, seem to have determined on fulfilling such claims to the letter.
In the same spirit, and probably in search of more plunder, possibly in support of Chola trade, Rajendra lit upon his most ‘quixotic’ exploit, a naval expedition to south-east Asia. Whether the Cholas actually had a navy has been disputed. But since such a unit’s function was simply troop-carrying, any shipping would have served; and there is no doubt that Indian ships were still maintaining regular commercial contacts with the Indianised kingdoms of the East and even with China, where several Chola missions are recorded. The partial conquest of Sri Lanka had demonstrated a Chola naval capacity, and no logistical barrier prevented its deployment still further overseas. What was novel about Rajendra’s expedition was his willingness to champion such an exploit, and its obviously warlike intent in a theatre where the use of Indian troops had not previously been recorded. It is, in fact, another of those rare examples of Indian aggression beyond the frontiers of the subcontinent.
The evidence for the expedition comes almost entirely from an inscription on the west wall of Rajaraja’s Tanjore temple. Presumably it was recorded there because Rajendra’s new temple at Gangaikondacholapuram was not ready for inscriptions. The precise date is disputed: it may have been before the Ganga expedition, but was probably in C1025; alternatively there may have been more than one expedition. The inscription consists mainly of a longish list of ‘taken’ places, and on their identification great theories about south-east Asian polities have been constructed. ‘Six [of the places tentatively identified] are located on the Malay peninsula or in Tenasserim while four are located on Sumatra, and “Nakkavaram” certainly represents the Nicobar islands.’18 But the first listed, and seemingly the most important, was ‘Kadaram’, or Kedah, the once Thai, then Malay and now Malaysian state north of Penang; and the second, the name on which historians invariably pounce, was ‘Srivijaya’, the maritime power which supposedly controlled the Malacca Straits and had been well known to the Chinese since Buddhist pilgrims en route to India had received instruction there in the seventh century.
One theory has it that the Cholas were endeavouring to break Srivijaya’s control of the straits. This is disputed, but commercial considerations may well have played their part. In the wake of the Cholas’ conquests in India and Sri Lanka, there had spread and prospered an organisation usually known in inscriptions as the ‘Five Hundred Swamis of Ayyavole’. More a robust trading league than a simple guild, the ‘Ayyavole Five Hundred’, or ‘Aihole Five Hundred’ (from which place it had originated), seems to have specialised in the organisation and protection of long-distance transport and exchange. It managed fortified trading depots and employed its own troops. There is no reason to suppose that, like the Hanseatic League, it pursued its own policies. Yet, as a substantial contributor to the welfare and defence of the realm, it was clearly influential. It would therefore be interesting to know more of the part it played in Rajendra’s south-east Asian exploit, particularly since later in the century the Ayyavole swamis are found to have had an outpost at Barus on the west coast of Sumatra.
Religion may also have figured. Rajaraja is known to have provided for a Buddhist vihara to be built by the ruler of ‘Kadaram’ at Tanjore’s port of Negapatnam. Presumably it was for the convenience of Kadaram Buddhists visiting India. But it seems reasonable to suppose that subsequent relations with the Buddhists of Kadaram may well have been soured by Rajendra’s ‘blood-sucking’ of Sri Lanka’s monasteries and his worsting of the Buddhist Palas in Bengal. With both of these kingdoms the Srivijayan world was in close contact. Retaliatory measures against Chola traders at the Srivijayan ports could well have followed, and so have provoked Rajendra’s raid.
Yet if one returns to the Tanjore inscription, there is mention of neither pious nor commercial gains, only of military matters, of formidable defences overcome and of desirable booty secured. The ‘jewelled gates’ of Srivijaya and the ‘heaped treasures’ of Kadaram were what mattered. Plunder once again proves to be the constant factor behind Chola expansion.
Rajendra’s reign lasted thirty-three years, during which time, we are told, he ‘raised the Chola empire to the position of the most extensive and most respected Hindu state of his time’.19 The fact that his most ambitious conquests were hurried forays in search of booty and prestige, that he failed to subdue his immediate neighbours in the Deccan, and that even Sri Lanka would have to be evacuated by his successors in no way discredits this statement. On such doubtful foundations lay most other claims to extensive empire and dynastic regard in pre-Islamic India.
FISH-RICH WATERS
The Cholas’ supremacy in the south would last until the early thirteenth century. Territorially their sway was much reduced with the loss of Sri Lanka in C1070, the gradual reassertion of Pandyan sovereignty from about the same time, and the ebb and flow of fortune in the almost continuous hostilities with the Later Western Chalukyas and other Deccan powers. But the Cholas’ international prestige remained intact. A seventy-two-man Chola mission reached China in 1077. In 1090 the Chola king received another deputation from Kadaram in connection with the affairs of the Buddhist establishment at Negapatnam, and in subsequent years diplomatic exchanges are recorded with both of south-east Asia’s master-building dynasties, the Khmers of Angkor and the Burmans of Pagan.
The Cholas themselves continued to build, although the sites were fewer and the pace slackened as resources diminished. The classic example is the Nataraja temple of Chidambaram. Nothing if not transitional, its construction spanned several reigns from C1150 to 1250. Its profile marries ‘a compendium of the entire Chola style’ with cardinal features of later south Indian architecture, most obviously the colossal gopuras or gateways. In that the Chidambaram temple seems to have replaced those of Tanjore and Gangaikondacholapuram as the dynasty’s symbolic focus, its varied iconography and extremely confused layout (‘it is still impossible, for example, to determine its original orientation’20) may be taken as an apt commentary on the uncertain aspirations of the later Cholas.
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CHOLAS OF TANJORE
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But they did at least survive; and any continuity in a period of such dismal confusion is welcome. The historian who looks for a classic example of matsya-nyaya, that ‘big-fish-eats-little-fish’ state of anarchy so dreaded in the Puranas, need look no further than India in the eleventh to twelfth centuries. Dharma’s cosmic order appeared utterly confounded and the geometry of the mandala hopelessly subverted. Lesser feudatories nibbled at greater feudatories, kingdoms swallowed kingdoms, and dynasties devoured dynasties, all with a voracious abandon that woefully disregarded the shark-like presence lurking in the Panjab.
Even there the Muslim descendants of Mahmud, though they clung to their patrimony with a rare constancy, seemed to be succumbing to the spirit of a senseless age. Seldom did a Sultan succeed without a major succession crisis and a horrific bloodbath. Since two of Mahmud’s sons had been born on the same day but of separate mothers, this was initially understandable. But thereafter it became a habit, and the Ghaznavids’ Panjab kingdom was rent with internal dissension. Externally, sporadic raids into neighbouring Indian territories produced more treasure but few political gains. The reign of Masud, Mahmud’s immediate successor, is said to ‘mark a phase of total strategic confusi
on, as far as his relations with India go’.21 They went not far, nor for long; Masud was overthrown and killed in a palace revolution. Meanwhile, beyond the Hindu Kush, the Ghaznavids’ once-extensive territories were subject to steady encroachment by the Seljuq Turks and others. The loss of Khorasan in C1040 had the effect of shifting the focus of the shrinking empire from Afghanistan to India. Lahore virtually replaced Ghazni as the capital, which latter city, once the pride of the dynasty, was now held on sufferance and, after several devastating raids, irrevocably lost in C1157. A few years later it changed hands yet again. No longer an epicentre of empire, its principal charm was now as a strategic gateway to the Muslim kingdoms in Sind and the Panjab.
The new lords of this much-diminished Ghazni were complete outsiders from the remote region of Ghor in central Afghanistan. Warlords of possibly Persian extraction, they would nevertheless continue their presumptuous encroachment. After several incursions across the north-west frontier, in 1186 they would overthrow the last of Mahmud’s successors. Lahore thus fell to the Ghorids; and their leader Muizzudin Muhammad bin Sam saw no reason to stop there. Determined to succeed where both Alexander and Mahmud had failed, this ‘Muhammad of Ghor’ would press on, east and south, to cruise with devastating effect in the fish-rich waters of the Indian matsya-nyaya.