Rajendra I’s naval expedition against Kadaram and Srivijaya

The expedition first appears in Rajendra’s inscriptions of his fourteenth regnal year (1025/1026). The Sanskrit part of his Tiruvalangadu copper plates says only that he conquered Kataha with troops that crossed the ocean, but the Tamil prashasti gives a list: having dispatched many ships into the rolling sea and seized Sangrama Vijayottungavarman, the king of Kadaram, with the elephants of his army, Rajendra took the treasures that king had accumulated and the arch called Vidyadhara-torana at the ‘war gate’ of his city, then Srivijaya, Pannai, Malaiyur, Mayirudingam, Ilangasoka (Langkasuka), Mappappalam, Mevilimbangam, Valaippanduru, Talaittakkolam, Madamalingam, Ilamuridesam (Lamuri in northern Sumatra), Manakkavaram (the Nicobar Islands) and finally ‘Kadaram of fierce strength, protected by the deep sea’. In 1918 George Coedès identified these places with Palembang, the capital of Srivijaya, and its dependencies on both sides of the Strait of Malacca; if the order of the list is chronological, the fleet struck Palembang first and ended at Kedah, the peninsular seat of the maharaja. Kadaram was the usual landfall of ships crossing from India, which, in Nilakanta Sastri’s explanation, is why the Tamils called the ruler of Srivijaya the king of Kadaram. The route shown on the map is schematic: the port of departure is not recorded.

Relations had been friendly: under Rajaraja I the Shailendra king of Srivijaya had built a Buddhist monastery at the Chola port of Nagapattinam, and early in his reign Rajendra confirmed the grant of a village to it. The cause of the war is unknown. Nilakanta Sastri suggested either an attempt by Srivijaya to obstruct Chola trade with China or simply Rajendra’s wish to extend his conquest of the quarters (digvijaya) across the sea; R. C. Majumdar, as cited by Coedès, believed that the threat that made the Khmer king Suryavarman I seek Rajendra’s friendship came from Srivijaya, against which Rajendra may have launched a first expedition about 1017, before the great raid of 1025.

Neither Nilakanta Sastri nor Coedès saw lasting conquest in the raid. Nilakanta Sastri doubted that it led to more than a vague acknowledgement of Chola suzerainty, and there is no sign that the Cholas tried to govern these lands; for Coedès its only clear political consequence was the accession of a new king of Srivijaya, Sri Deva, who sent an embassy to China in 1028, although the shock moved Srivijaya to make peace with its old rival Java. About 1068 another Chola king, Virarajendra, ‘conquered Kadaram’ again on behalf of a ruler who had asked for his help, and a Tamil inscription of 1088 from Sumatra attests the presence of Tamil merchants.