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Myth: Indian Kings Never Invaded Foreign Lands

By R. PRASANNAN

The Week, Jun. 29, 2003



"Chola exploits despoil the argument that India had no conquering or marauding emperors."
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"Do a Google search in [sic] the Net with words 'India never invaded' and you will get dozens of Web sites proclaiming the superiority of Indian culture, asserting that India never invaded any foreign land in 10,000 years."
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"Or read the B.J.P. [Bharatiya Janata Party] manifesto for the 12th Lok Sabha [India's lower house of parliament] elections. It opens with the Loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu lines and proceeds: 'This timeless motto of universal happiness and peace is the heritage of ancient Indian civilisation. Here, a nation, which Megasthanes noted 'never invaded others and was never invaded' existed long before the ideas of civilisation evolved elsewhere.' "
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"Books on the maritime history of India would invariably refer to the riverine navy that the Mauryas had, about Sivaji's navy, and then zoom in on the establishment of the Bombay Marine by the British. It would look as if Indian kings had no navy that could conquer overseas territories."
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"The words were true when Megasthanes wrote them in the 4th century B.C. The concept of kingship had just developed in the Gangetic plain at that time and, naturally, imperial dreams were yet to be dreamt."
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"Since then India's history has been a succession of wars and battles, invasions and conquests, sieges and sacks. Wasn't it the bloodbath at Kalinga that compelled the great Asoka to forsake territorial conquest through battle as a state policy? Kalinga may not be a foreign land, but wasn't it as foreign to Magadha then as is Bangladesh to India today? Samudragupta built one of the largest empires in the pre-Islamic period through conquests, which culminated in an asvamedha."
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"Allauddin Khilji, one of the most ruthless conquerors in Indian history, dreamt of becoming the second Sikander. The wise fool Muhammad bin Tughlaq dreamt of annexing Khurasan. They just failed. There have been many such imperial ambitions in Indian history. It is just that they all failed. Or does the claim mean that the Hindu never attempted to conquer foreign lands? Even that is not true. Ceylon was conquered and settled in by early Chola prince Elara. The early Pallava Simhavishnu vanquished all his southern neighbours including the ruler of Ceylon in the sixth century."
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"Like father like son. But the greatest of Indian monarchs who dreamt of ruling over overseas territories were undoubtedly the splendid Chola father-and-son, Rajaraja and Rajendra. Thanks to their imperial energy and unprecedented vision, the Cholas dominated the amorphous maritime empire of the Sailendras for nearly a century. As Balram Srivastava observes in Rajendra Chola: 'The Chola navigators supported the Indian colonies in the far east and established a firm rule of the Cholas in Sri Vijaya. Their success nearer home, in Sri Lanka, was also splendid. They crossed the sea between India and Sri Lanka so often that it became a lake to them.' "
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"The Cholas, originally a small clan ruling over parts of the Tamil country, could assert themselves only after the decline of the illustrious Pallavas of Kanchi. The first Chola empire was established by Karikala who subdued the Cheras and the Pandyas, but his successors were confined to a small territory between the Pallava and the Pandya kingdoms. But with the decline of the two in the 9th century, the Cholas asserted themselves, pushing back the Rashtrakutas, the Chalukyas, the Cheras and the Gangas."
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"The real imperial era of the Cholas began with Vijayalaya around 850 A.D. Taking Thanjavur from the Muttarya chiefs, Vijayalaya assumed the title Tanjaikonda Prakesari or the conqueror of Thanjavur. And then, through a series of battles and marriage alliances with their neighbours, the Cholas consolidated in the next few centuries. After a short eclipse in the 10th century, came Rajaraja who literally turned the tide in favour of the Cholas."
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"Ruthless conqueror. Having first fought and then agreed to a truce with Vengi of the eastern Chalukyas, Rajaraja, according to his own inscription, conquered Lakshadweep and the Maldives. Buddhist literature from Sri Lanka says that the Indian king took advantage of an internal strife in Sri Lanka and invaded the island. The ruthless Chola conquest was apparently no different from the conduct of Mahmud of Ghazni at Somnath. The Kulavamsa says that the capital Anuradhapura, which sported many Buddhist viharas, was 'utterly destroyed in every way by the Chola army.' Not only were the viharas decimated, but the holy stupas in them were torn apart in search of treasure. As George W. Spencer observes in The Politics of Expansion: The Chola Conquest of Sri Lanka and Sri Vijaya, 'Even if we allow for the exaggeration of the chroniclers, it is clear that the Cholas devastated the city.' "
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"It was no religious conquest. The viharas were looted because they contained treasures, as did the temples of India during Mahmud's conquest. Rajaraja's adventures may be dismissed as having happened within the extended coastal waters of India. But his son Rajendra was a true conqueror of overseas territories. Says Dr. K.V. Hariharan in The Chola Maritime Activities in Early Historical Setting: 'Of the most notable was Rajendra Chola's naval expedition against Kadaram. In this expedition, he defeated a king named Sangama Vijayottungavarman, the king of Kataha, belonging to the Sailendras of Java. The territories wrested by the Cholas from this king consisted of the extensive kingdom of Sri Vijaya, which at one time included Sumatra and Java, with its capital at Palembang.' "
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"Apparently it was after the Sailendra dynasty wrested the Sri Vijaya empire that relations with the Cholas soured. Is it probable that the imperial Chola was apprehensive of the conquering energy of the Sailendras ruling over the Sri Vijaya empire? There are scholars who believe that by the time Rajendra came to [the] throne, the Sailendra power was ebbing. Anyway, at its height, it encompassed all the islands from Nicobar to Sumatra and included the entire Malayan peninsula. Its capital, the city of Sri Vijaya, was believed to be to the southeast corner of Sumatra."
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"Not only did Rajendra's army sack Kadaram and the Sri Vijaya capital, but it also took the Sri Vijaya king Sangrama Vijayottungavarman captive. The kingdom was restored to him only after he acknowledged Chola suzerainty. Tamil inscriptions recovered from the region show that there was Chola military presence till at least 1088 in the Malay archipelago."
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"Information on these raiding conquests are sketchy, but scholars like R.C. Majumdar think that the emperor despatched more than one expedition to humble the Sri Vijayas. The list of 13 towns in the archipelago sacked by the Cholas has come from Rajendra's own inscriptions. Scholars have identified all but two of them. Six are located on the Malay peninsula, four on Sumatra, the other being the Nicobar islands. Scholars like Paul Wheatley have been sceptical of Rajendra's claims about the number of towns his army sacked, but most agree that a raid did take place."
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"Says George Spencer: 'The campaign is plausible because it fits the Chola pattern of compulsive expansion in this period, fits the aim of Rajendra to exceed his father's accomplishments and fits the persistent Chola need to locate fresh sources of plunder or tribute.' There is evidence to show that the king of Kambujadesa (modern Cambodia) sent a chariot to the Chola, probably to appease him so that his strategic attention does [sic] not extend further than the Malay peninsula."
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"Lure of the Ganga. The other monumental military accomplishment of Rajendra, by far the greatest conquering monarch of south Indian history, was his expedition to the banks of the Ganga. Even today, scholars have not stopped disputing about the real intentions of this ambitious raid. Folklore has it that Rajendra wanted to fetch waters of the Ganga and other rivers of India to consecrate an irrigation tank that he built in his country. Anyway, it is true that the emperor called himself Gangaikondachola after the expedition, meaning the Chola who conquered the Ganga. His new capital was christened Gangaikondacholapuram."
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"The Chola did not personally lead his army to the Ganga. Going by evidence from two inscriptions, he marched only up to the Godavari from where his generals carried the expedition forward. But what was the purpose of the expedition? All scholars who have tried to trace the route have admitted that the listing of places, as described in the inscriptions, would have had the army crossing the same territory more than once."
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"This leads one to think that the fetching of water was an afterthought. The real intention of the expedition could have been to collect loot and tribute, and establish Chola paramountcy. The emperor could have thought of crowning his glory with a religious ceremony, and associating the Ganga with his own name and that of his newly-built capital. Accounts of Rajendra's exploits make one wonder: would India's history have been different if the father and son were ruling a kingdom farther north? All this was happening in the eastern half of the country when Mahmud's horses were trotting across the western half."
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