4 - Rajendra Chola I's Naval Expedition to Southeast Asia: A Nautical Perspective

Summary

In the civilizational history of India, the role of the Chola kings, particularly Rajaraja I and Rajendra Chola I in building a military maritime capability was unprecedented. The architecture of their pre-eminence was built through a series of expeditions in India — in the north, deep into the Indo-Gangetic plains through Odra-visaya (Orissa), Kosala, and Dandabhukti (Midnapur), in southern Radha near the mouth of Ganges; and from Venga (East Bengal), a westward expansion that saw the defeat of the Chera kingdoms on the Malabar coast; and well into the Deccan Plateau, with the defeat of the Chalukyas and the capture of their critical strongholds. In the west, the Cholas expanded towards the Arabian Sea, occupying the Lakshwadeep-Maldives archipelagos that sit astride the ancient Indian Ocean trade routes. They also made successive southward surges into Ceylon, attacking various Sinhala kingdoms.

In its expeditionary context, the 1025 naval raid in Southeast Asia in Sumatra, Indonesia, and Malaysia was a singular display of the power of the Chola king, Rajendra Chola I, who possessed and wielded strong political and military power in India. Under Rajendra Chola I, the Chola empire was perhaps the most respected Hindu State that possessed, though only for a brief period, “inconsiderable dominion over the Malay peninsula and the Eastern Archipelago”. The success of the grand foray in Southeast Asia was the result of a consistent and aggressive maritime mercantile policy of Chola kings, particularly Rajaraja I (AD 984–1014) and his son Rajendra Chola I (AD 1014–44).

The Chola kings had encouraged overseas maritime trade through trade missions, sea-based commerce, and opening the Chola heartland to the overseas trading systems from the Mediterranean and Persia in the west, and Malaya, Sumatra, and China in the east. This resulted in a powerful maritime capability built around ships that were marshalled for the 1025 expeditionary naval raid in Southeast Asia. It should be pointed out that the Chola kings did not have a navy comprising warships exclusively for naval combat, but an armada was put together with ships taken up from trade (STUFT), the modern term for such activity.