The Navy of Cholas

The Navy of Cholas

(K. A. Nilakanta Sastry, The Colas, University of Madras,

Madras, 1984, pp.458-460 � as appearing in the book).

The �numberless ship� which carried Rajendra�s trops across the �rolling sea� to the conquest of Sri Vijaya and its dependencies could not have come up suddenly and must be accepted as proof of a steady naval policy pursued by the Cola monarchs of the period. The early Colas of the Sangam period had a good share in the maritime trade and activity of the Indian seas. The history of the Hindu colonies in the Malay Archipelago and Indo-China gives clear evidence of a steady increase, under the pallavas, in the trade and culture contacts between these lands and the countries of South India. The Tamil inscriptions of Takuapa⁵³ shows that an important mercantile corporation of South India, the manigramam, had established itself on the opposite coast of the Bay of Bengal in the ninth century A.D. the Colas only continued an ancient tradition in the attention they gave to developing their power on the sea. The conquest of Ceylon and the Maldives, and the evidence of the Chinese annals o the embassies that reached China in the period from the Cola country give us some measure of the success they attained in this direction. And the overthrow of the Cera fleet at Kandalur salai may well be taken to mark the definite establishment of Cola naval power in this period in the territorial waters of Southern India. We have little direct evidence on the build of the ships employed. Considering that the author of the periplus distinguished three types of vessels several centuries earlier on the Coromandel coast and that naval expedition of Rajendra was a great achievement in itself, the existence of a well-ordered fleet comprising ships and boats of different grades must be admitted. The Arab merchant Sulaiman made several voyages between China and the Persian Gulf in the ninth century A.D., at a time when this long distance trade was being carried on very briskly. In his curious account of Maldieves, he says that the people of these islands �built ships and houses and executed all other works with a consummate art�⁵⁴. Sulaiman had no occasion to visit the Coromandel coast; and his vyages were made before the rise of Colas of the Vijayala line into prominence. Taking into account Sulaiman�s testimony to the quality of the ships built in Maldives, and the conquest of these islands effected by Rajaraja�s fleet, we may form some idea of the efficiency of Cola navy in this period. Abu Zaid Hasan, in the notes which he added to Sulaiman�s work about the beginning of the tenth century A.D., observes that the vessels of the Indian ocean, specially those made at Saraf, differed in construction from those of the Mediterranean. �It is a fact that the type of ship built by pieces of wood sewn together is a specially of the builders of Siraf, the ship builders of Syria and of Rum (Byzantum) nail, on the contrary, these pieces of wood and never sew them one to another�⁵⁵. Today we can see boats on the maras coast with planks �sewn� together by threads of cocoanut fibre. But these are usually of a small size; and the observations of Abu Zaid based on what he saw and heard at Siraf about A.D., 916 on navigation in the Indian Ocean⁵⁶ should be no obstacle to a just estimate of the size and mportance of the navy of the Cola empire more than a century later. If the Arab writers are too early, Marco Polo comes unfortunately too late, and we are without a good contemporary account of ship-building on the Coromandel coast under the Colas. Ahmad-ibn Majid, an Arab writer of the fifteenth century and author of several nautical works, makes frequent allusion to the opinions of the Cholas which he approves or modifiues. He must have had before him a specilised nautical literature of Tamil (Cola) origin which he compared with Arab documents of a like nature. This literature must have included geographical tables with indications of the latitudes of ports for use of the mariners of the Coromandel coast⁵⁷. of this technical literature mentioned by this Arab writers, unfortunately no part seems to have survived.

Notes and References

53. Journal of Oriental Research. vi, 299ff.

54. Ferrad, Voyage, p.32; Wilson, Persian Gulf, pp.57-58 and n.Pelliot casts a doubt on Sulaiman�s authorship of the work attributed to him, T�oung Pao, xxi, pp. 401-402.

55. Ferrad, op.cit., p.93. See also Renadout-Ancient Accounts- Remarek �E�, and Marco Polo.

56. Ferrand, Voyage, p.14.

57. �Dans tous ses ouvrages nautiques, Ibn Majid fait frequemment allusion�a l� opinion des Colas qu�il appropuve ou rectifie. Ce�st qu�il devait avoir en main les Insructions nautiques tables geographuques avec indication de la latitude des ports, utilis�ees par les marins du Coromandel et qu�il les comparait avee les documents arabes des meme nature�. Ferrand, Journal Asiatique, 11:14, (1919), pp.171-172.

Cholas were Indian rulers of South India during 10th to 13th centuries imprinting their influence throughout India and as well as in SEA countries.

Dear sir:

I am wrong to believe there is a lack of documentation of the ships of those times?