Cholas in Southeast Asia: Myth vs Reality

The famed Chola expeditions into Southeast Asia were less about conquest or cultural dominance and more about trade, prestige and unintended civilisational consequences.

The Chola kings undoubtedly ruled the seas, for almost over a century, between the end of the first and beginning of the second millennium CE. Domestically, that meant supremacy over the entire ‘Coromandel’ or actually the ‘Chola-mandala’ Coast, accomplishing victories over all the littoral kingdoms in the Bay of Bengal in 1021 CE. Internationally, or rather in terms of our today’s understanding of international maritime borders, the Cholas attacked and defeated the mighty Sri-Vijaya kingdom based in Indonesia’s Sumatra, including the base of its suzerain Shailendra dynasty in Kedah on the Malaysian Peninsula and a few neighbouring kingdoms, during their 1025 CE expedition.

Popular Myths

Many Indians, unmindful of the related historical and cultural contexts, perceive that Chola expedition as an ‘Indian victory’ over ‘foreign lands,’ touting it as an example of supremacy of Indian military prowess in its neighbourhood, before being suppressed and colonised by the technologically superior Western powers. This interpretation can be viewed as an attempt to characterize India as no less aggressive, and to project some dynasties as powers that, like Westerners, conquered others. It is also generally perceived that the Cholas were the pioneers or major contributors towards the spread of the Indic influence throughout Southeast Asia. None of these hypotheses, however, are true or accurate.

First of all, the Pallavas, the Cholas’ predecessors in the southern Indian power corridors, had played a big role in spreading the Indic influence deep and wide in Southeast Asia, just like the Guptas from the north had done before them. The historical incident of the Pallavas scouting for and fetching from Cambodia their blood-line inheritor for the Kanchipuram throne in the eighth century, is a proof of that. The Cholas were the latest entrants, though they too made some intense impact in the department of arts and architecture in the maritime Southeast Asia.

Their 1025 CE expedition was to teach a lesson or two to the rulers of Sri-Vijaya, for some of their major mischiefs that had troubled them – Firstly, to address the grievances of the Tamil trading guilds, where they themselves had a stake, about harassment and exploitation by the authorities at the Sri-Vijayan ports lining the international flow of trade, from Persia to China, through the Malacca Straits. It also included ensuring freedom to the passing ships, both Indian and others, to exercise their choice of halts, thus rescuing them from the forced halts at the Sri-Vijayan ports, and thereby brightening the business prospects for the Chola ports across the ocean. Secondly, it was to avenge the Sri-Vijayan misrepresentation of the Cholas as their vassals in the Chinese court, thus damaging the Chola prestige and their consequent entitlement to the associated privileges. Cholas had no intention to acquire Sri-Vijaya; their campaign was aimed at subjugating it to the extent of making it appear a weaker state, and thereby reversing the related perception of the Chinese court. The outcome too, proved the absence of an intention of a conquest. After defeating the reigning Sri-Vijayan king Sangrama Vijayottunga-varman, the Cholas returned home in a year’s time, after making the local successor occupy the throne, in a way following the Ramayana ideal, where Rama, after defeating Ravana, had handed over the Lanka kingdom back to the latter’s brother Vibhishana. 

Complex Histories

In contrast, what is not at all known or understood by most is about the unintentional but effective dent the said Chola expedition inadvertently caused to the future sustenance of the Indic influence throughout the Malaysian Peninsula as well as the Indonesian archipelago. It is a fact that the Chola attack of 1025 CE proved fatal for Sri-Vijaya’s sustenance, and although the latter continued to exist for some time, it disappeared from the scene by the end that century. Consequently, a number of Sri-Vijayan royals scattered and pursued their different ways thereafter. Sang Nila Utama, the founder of the Singapura kingdom, today’s Singapore, was one of them. Even, the later usurper of Singapura, Parameswara, who eventually converted to Islam and founded the historical Sultanate of Malacca on the Malaysian Peninsula, is said to be one of them. Islam is said to have set its first foot on Sumatra, in the thirteenth century, before it began its forward march throughout the rest of Indonesia. This Islamic footfall can be viewed as a result of the weakening and eventual downfall of Sri-Vijaya a century or so before, whose base was Sumatra itself. The argument in support of this claim lies in the fact that Islam never took Indonesia by surprise; Indonesians were aware about Islam’s existence as the faith of the Arab and Persian traders interacting with them since the seventh and eighth centuries. Despite that, Islam had not appealed to the Indonesians as a faith, throughout the half a millennium of their said socio-commercial interaction with the Arabs and the Persians. It finally appears to have appealed to them only after the decline and disappearance of Sri-Vijaya, followed by the Chola empire’s break-up in the thirteenth century. Joining these dots, it can be claimed that although it was obviously not foreseen by Rajendra Chola nor by Sangrama Vijayottunga-varman of Sri-Vijaya, their rivalry, later transformed into decisive battles causing the latter’s fall at the hands of the former, for justifiable reasons though, ultimately proved to be a trigger for the end of the Indic era, paving the way for an Islamic conquest of Indonesia.

(The writer is a research scholar in international relations. Views personal.)